Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are colluding to reverse the democratic gains made by the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall and to destroy the liberal international order, according to experts. Jianli Yang and Lianchao Han, writing in Providence said that the West must not let Xi Jinping protect Putin and give the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) another “strategic opportunity”.
The crisis in Ukraine has taught the democratic world a grave lesson: appeasement of tyrannical dictators will inevitably wreak havoc around the globe on the ever-fragile state of freedom, democracy, and rule of law. It could even threaten the entirety of human civilization in the case of nuclear war. Jianli and Lianchao said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a dangerous activity in which the two dictators are conspiring to change the global landscape and establish their tyrannical dominance in the new world order.
After US President Joe Biden’s nearly two-hour video call with Xi Jinping on March 18, the media widely believed that the US had obtained two bottom-line commitments from China: no military aid to Russia and no economic aid to Russia in direct violation of the United States-led economic sanctions. Even if China maintains these two commitments, they do not indicate an essential shift from its refusal to condemn Russia’s aggression and call it an invasion or even a war, reported Providence.
Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to criticize the West for cornering a nuclear power and continues to denounce the international community’s economic sanctions against Russia. China and Russia’s real intentions are to dominate the world and restore their past glory, which necessitates that they weaken America’s power and create a new world order, said Jianli and Lianchao.
In the past few years, democratic states have gradually awakened to the CCP’s nature and its threat to the international order of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. So Western countries have begun to overcome various difficulties to come together and counter China. A new cold war seemed imminent. Correspondingly, the CCP has successfully transformed one of the pillars of its legitimacy–nationalism–into anti-Americanism. But knowing that it does not yet have the capacity to engage in a full-scale confrontation with the democratic world, the CCP has deliberately sought to avoid a cold war while continuing to exploit democracies’ markets and technologies and seeking to weaken the United States. However, the war demonstrates that Russia is no longer a world superpower.
A post-war Russia ruled by Putin would be a much weaker nuclear country, which would be in China’s best long-term interest. Such a weakened nuclear power would not be able to challenge China’s geostrategic interests for many years or even generations to come, but it would be able to cause trouble for the US-led democratic world and distract it from effectively responding to China’s expansion, said Jianli and Lianchao. Xi understands well that if Putin’s regime falls, China will lose an important bulwark. Because of the fundamental values disparity between China and the democratic world as well as the strategic and economic competition, the CCP will inevitably become a direct protagonist on one side of a new cold war, prematurely bringing China into a full confrontation with the democratic world, reported Providence.
Moreover, the failure of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may cause Xi to rethink an armed reunification with Taiwan. Xi has vowed to annex Taiwan, which he describes as the CCP’s “historic mission” and an “unshakable commitment.” And he has ordered the Chinese military to accelerate war preparations. Xi’s determination is, in part, based on his assessment that the “East is rising and the West is declining.” The democratic world must have a visionary plan to end the war in a way that would lead to the end of Putin’s dictatorship in Russia; otherwise, the world will suffer severe and endless consequences, said Jianli and Lianchao.