Why Xi-Jinping’s Fascist Regime Will Directly Arm Putin’s Genocidal Aggression On Ukraine.
Xi Jinping has bought a “new attack dog” over the last year. His old vicious but pampered North Korean poodle Kim Jong-un and his overworked videos of eager missiles were losing their effect. Xi now has a really mental looking animal, who is kennelled conveniently on the eastern edge of still non Nato Europe, and has “form” from a track record of genocide and mindless intimidation over the last twenty years. Currently it is mauling the population of Ukraine with near impunity (in its kennel at least), and has been doing this for over a year now.
Is this dog an insurance in case the world gets more “turbulent” in the words of Qin Gang (Chinese Foreign Minister), or is this a warning to the West to ensure China-West relations remain calm whatever Xi’s Fascist (in reality big ‘F’ not small ‘f’) regime does? Qin Gang at a side meeting of the annual Chinese parliamentary meetings (“two sessions”) is reported to have spelled it out fairly clearly – in the context of Chinese diplomatic doublespeak – the dog is a warning:
“One immediate consequence of the hardening positions on both sides is the strengthening of China-Russia relations, with US officials warning in recent weeks that Beijing is considering supplying lethal aid to Moscow to sustain the floundering Russian offensive in Ukraine. In a section of his remarks that drew less attention, Qin [Gang] claimed that China and Russia were ‘joining hands’ to build a new model of international relations that will ‘move towards a multipolar world and [a] more democratic international system’.
Contrary to the periodic wishful thinking in Western capitals that Xi might eventually distance himself from Vladamir Putin, Qin stressed that: ‘The more turbulent the world is, the more China-Russia relations should keep moving forward.’ The questions for the press conference had been submitted in advance, so it was Qin’s choice to address this issue and to signal that Beijing will not change its approach to Moscow.”
[“China is laying out a path to conflict with the US.” by Katie Stallard, NewStateman. 8/3/2023]
There are a multitude of perplexing uncertainties surrounding the scenario of Xi Jinping’s Fascist regime directly arming Putin’s Fascist regime, so that the crushing of Ukraine can be completed. Clearly Fascist is an overworked adjective of abuse, but in the case of these two revisionist regimes its justification is emerging. These are the apparent three core questions, ordered by their relationship dependency:
1. Can Xi Jinping’s regime supply the support Putin’s regime needs to crush Ukraine? (ie Can Xi feed the dog?)
Yes. China has an extensive arms industry, and an economy that is the secondest largest in the world, and is ten times bigger than Russia.
2. Is the Putin regime intent on using its military to control all of Ukraine, and then Eastern Europe? (ie Is this an attack dog?)
Yes. Russia is a major producer of fossil fuels and has an advanced weapons industry. It is run by a regime that comprehensively suppresses and steals from the Russian people. Aggression is its special talent. Putin’s ambitions are measured against the Soviet Era extent of Russian influence. Putin has written and often stated that Ukraine does not exist. There is no possibility of Putin’s regime settling for anything less than resurrecting Russia as a Fascist simulacrum of the Communist Soviet Union.
3. Would Xi Jingping’s regime benefit from directly arming Putin’s war on Ukraine? (ie Does Xi want an attack dog?)
Yes (the reasons for this are critically important).
Clearly the Chinese economy would suffer in the short term due to a sharp escalation in sanctions. This would be muted by the entangled interdependence of the supply chains of the economies of China and the West that has developed over the last twenty years.
Xi Jinping’s regime has demonstrated its comprehensive and robust control over China during the covid lockdowns. The regime has prepared the Chinese people with propaganda about a Western campaign to “suppress and contain” China, while domestic Chinese media has echoed Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine. Xi Jinping has consistently expanded the power of his regime to suppress the Chinese people over the last decade. A democratic leader could not weather a large economic storm caused by a sharp escalation in sanctions, but Xi Jinping’s Fascist regime manifestly can.
Xi Jinping restated his goal of making China the world’s primary superpower at the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022:
“After basically realizing modernization, we will continue to work hard and build China into a great modern socialist country that leads the world in terms of composite national strength [1] and international influence by the middle of the century.”
Paradoxically Xi Jinping’s Fascist regime has created an ideology tied to this goal of global supremacy, together with a related economic structure that ensures it cannot be achieved without reverting to aggressive intimidation of the West. Since 2012 Xi Jinping has created an extremely repressive ultra-nationalistic socialist (Fascist) regime.
“Upon coming to power, Xi Jinping suppressed emerging civil society and strengthened Party leadership in all areas, eliminating spaces of autonomy and establishing the cult of personality. Party hegemony over society and government, cult of the leader, nationalism, China is in no way comparable to ‘democratures’ [quasi dictatorships with democratic elements]. Dictatorship has been imposed, and his system more and more recalls fascism.”
[China of Xi Jinping: Towards Chinese Fascism? by Jean-Philippe Béja. 2019]
Xi needs to promote the status of China on the scale of the upsurge caused by Deng Xiaoping’s opening up of China. The regime is however also busy creating a system that works against the further modernisation of China, that it needs to move to the next stage of technological development:
“Although Xi assesses centralization and his nationalist modernization drive to be in a highly symbiotic relationship, in practice these two trends may very well work at cross-purposes…..Lower-level officials and economic decision-makers are now simultaneously beset with an increasingly complex set of modernization mandates from the top as well as an increasingly coercive performance monitoring regime, creating fear and paralysis…..
Finally, Xi’s re-centralization process to overcome parochial vested interests may simply be leading one set of regime insiders to replace another. The Party-state’s growing control over economic resources and capacity to steer the economy reinforces incentives for corruption and state capture and only expands the role for vested interests, at least in the economic arenas and industries Xi favors. At the same time, a growing coterie of Xi loyalists is nested throughout the Party-state structure, creating the potential for insiders to operate below the surface so long as they espouse political loyalty and limit ostentatious signs of corruption…..”
This leaves the regime with the need to use “economics by other means” to attempt to reach the goal of superpower supremacy that it is shackled to.
China has moved beyond the stage of inviting Western companies to use Chinese workers to lower production costs, in return for Chinese companies copying their technology and then beating them on price. This does not mean China is not stealing “intellectual property” on an industrial scale to give its economy a chance to develop more profitable next generation technology. This is a more sophisticated process than copying, that utilizes the strength of the Chinese university educational system. Western governments led by the US, have responded by imposing sanctions on access to critical technologies.
Xi Jinping’s regime therefore needs mechanisms beyond economics to force concessions from the West.
Pressure can be applied by acts of omission, such as refusing to cooperate with the West over climate change and pandemics. This works because Xi Jinping’s regime is insulated from the crises that afflict ordinary Chinese people, by a vast apparatus of state oppression.
More controlled and targeted pressure can also be applied by acts of commission, such as supplying arms and components to client dictatorships. This is already happening with Russia, North Korea, Iran and Myanmar.
China is not currently supplying arms to Russia directly, but is supporting the Russian economy by buying oil and gas, and is supplying dual purpose civilian-military components. Indirect supply of military equipment is already happening. An example is China supplying chips to Iran, that are then incorporated into their “suicide” drones, that are sold to Russia and then used to kill Ukrainians.
China supplying unlimited quantities of weapons to Russia directly would empower the Putin regime to crush Ukraine, and then threaten other ex-Soviet states. The resulting tensions would lead inevitably to a threat of escalation to a nuclear confrontation. This situation would give the Xi Jinping regime a great deal of leverage, because it would have the power to rein in a resurgent expansionist Putin by threatening to withdraw arms supplies.
In addition the Xi Jinping regime has other similar tools to induce crises; by supplying the nuclear ICBM programmes of the North Korean and Iranian regimes, and directly by invading Taiwan.
Joe Biden reported in a speech in April 2022 these cryptic words from Xi Jingping, during a previous phone conversation congratulating Biden on being elected US president:
“And he’s [Xi Jingping] just very straightforward with me. He doesn’t think that democracies can be sustained in the 21st century, in the second quarter of the century [2025-50], because things are moving so rapidly, so incredibly fast that only — he doesn’t say ‘autocracy’ — only autocracies are able to handle it. Because democracies require consensus, and it takes too much time, too much effort to get it together. And by that time, the event, the circumstance has gone beyond your ability to fix it.”
Xi Jinping’s regime has the capability and motivation to induce the development of these “incredibly fast” unsolvable crises.
As Xi Jinping’s conversation with President Biden illustrates, his regime believes in the superiority of an autocratic Fascist Chinese model. The regime appears to believe its aggressive expansionist actions will be vindicated by history, as Fascism is in Xi’s mind the future.
[1] This should be the concept of “Comprehensive National Strength” defined by the leading regime think tank CICIR as the “total of the powers or strengths of a country in economics, military affairs, science and technology, education, resources, and influence.” ↩