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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

> Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Houthi

China is the odd man out in this list. China is emphatically not a friend of Russia. Official CCP policy is that Russia stole Outer Manchuria from China in the aftermath of the Opium Wars of the 1850s. Russia is in fact the only country that still holds on to territory gained from the Qing via the Unequal Treaties.

If China ever arms enough to attempt to retake Taiwan (which is highly plausible before the end of the decade; 2027 is the current aim), Outer Manchuria--including Vladivostok, Russia's most strategically important port--will be the next target.

In the meantime, China is happy to hold Putin over the barrel and wring out Russian exports for bargain-bin prices. Russia is already a Chinese client state, even if it doesn't know it yet.

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Not sure if you saw my original posting, the thread you're writing in. China is definitely a friend of Russia. On top of what I mentioned, China is the top buyer of Russian oil, and thus its major financial partner. And China just recently said relations with Moscow are at an historic high [1]

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/china-lauds-russia-...

> China just recently said relations with Moscow are at an historic high

Yes, and the scorpion promises the frog that it won't sting. Politicians can say what they please, the actions of the state speak louder:

https://www.newsweek.com/china-map-borders-territory-dispute...

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-andrey-rudenko-responds-chin...

China will continue economically plundering Russia so long as it's in their favor; the Western sanctions mean that Putin's options for oil exports are limited.

Arguable destabilizing NATO has some significant advantages in whatever eventual aims China has towards Taiwan.

China benefits from destabilizing the US, but NATO in general does not concern China, because, unlike Russia, China doesn't have its sights set on conquering Europe. If anything China would have preferred that Russia didn't invade Ukraine, because it's (slowly, slowly, slowly) putting the US on a war footing and eroding the advantage in inertia that China currently possesses over the US. Fortunately for China, Congress includes enough Russian assets that the resulting political deadlock seems likely to continue paralyzing the US, to China's benefit. If the US doesn't miraculously turn around its legislative (and, potentially soon, its executive) obstructionism, then Taiwan will probably fall to China, regardless of the intervention of the US and its allies (with the only hope for Taiwan being a sudden onset of incompetence from the Chinese military).

> China benefits from destabilizing the US,

Does it? A destabilized and broke US can't buy as many goods from China as a rich and powerful one, even if there are other advantages/disadvantages to be had.

The CCP purposefully subsidizes its own industries to the point of economic lunacy specifically to destroy the domestic industries of other countries, and thereby make them dependent on Chinese exports (yes, this is the famous venture capital model of "subsidize the service until we have a monopoly and then jack the prices to the moon", but applied to geopolitics). They have plenty of headroom (and a huge domestic market) to pivot away from an export-focused economy while still gripping the rest of the world by the balls for at least a few decades.

China spends a lot of diplomatic breath on NATO not because NATO is a direct threat, but because it wants to discredit the concept of defence treaty organisations, especially within and standing against the aspired spheres of influence of great powers. A South China Sea NATO lookalike is a major nightmare, and if NATO proper is discredited the odds of that fall dramatically. If the US is seen to fink out on Estonia or whatever, the geopolitical calculations in the Philippines change dramatically.

True, but I think it's unlikely that Putin will test article 5 by invading the Baltics before China attacks Taiwan (if anything, the invasion of Taiwan is Putin's best chance of establishing a land bridge to Kaliningrad; without the US's complete attention, NATO's ability to break a Russian blockade in the Baltic Sea is bleak). And once China has Taiwan and a secured route to the Pacific, it doesn't need to care nearly as much whether or not the rest of its neighbors are militarily aligned.

Right but territory disputes (without actual fighting) are also just political speaks. Money and military supplies from China to Russia speak louder than political speaks - even without some of the Chinese bank settlements, China is still the main funder of Russia's war

Alliances and friendship are orthogonal. An alliance is a pragmatic short-term matter. Friendship is something more fundamental and typically lasts longer.

Germany and the USSR were almost allies during the early years of WW2. The Soviets supplied Germany with massive amounts of raw materials, helping them to circumvent the British blockade. There were even serious talks on the USSR formally joining the Axis powers. The talks ultimately failed, as Germany and the USSR could not agree on their spheres of influence in the south.

Then the war between Germany and the USSR broke out, and Cold War followed after the war. All these changes happened in less than a decade.

China and Russia haven’t fought a border clash since the 1990s. But they are mire frenemies than friends, both fear each other because they share such a huge border and don’t have a very peaceful past, but they can be friends when both are threatened by the USA.

> China is emphatically not a friend of Russia.

China seems to be manufacturing drones for Russia these days, which puts them in a very specific light.

Chinese arms and tech dealers are pretty open about who they trade with. Although I can’t imagine that they are trading without at least tacit approval from the CPC.

> Chinese arms and tech dealers are pretty open about who they trade with.

Are you meaning it should be excused or discounted?

And yeah, it's impossible the CCP wouldn't be involved in some way.

Those manufacturers are literally creating military weapons.

2027 is the current aim

That's what some say. But how do you know?

Outer Manchuria - including Vladivostok - will be the next target.

Very unlikely, even if Taiwan collapses quickly.

2027 is the target that both China and the US have projected for the invasion of Taiwan. Whether it will actually come to pass, who can say, but this is the timeframe that military planners are using to procure equipment today.

> Very unlikely, even if Taiwan collapses quickly.

Indeed, it won't be easy for China to take Taiwan. But modern US power projection is accustomed to using overwhelming force against weak adversaries; the US hasn't had a peer conflict in decades. I give the advantage to China because of geography: it will be easier for China to project power into Taiwan than it will be for the US to project power across the pacific. China knows that carriers and a known number of fixed airfields in allied nations are the weak links. And if China takes Taiwan it will result in the greatest outpouring of Chinese nationalist fervor in our lifetimes, and there's no chance that the newly-triumphant military will want to sit on its laurels when it could be asserting China's new status on the world stage by turning its revanchism towards Russia.

2027 is the target that both China and the US have projected for the invasion of Taiwan

The US has not released a definitive assessment. Jinping apparently did make some announcement that the PLA should be "ready to" invade Taiwan, but that's not the same as "is going to." And may just be propaganda for the PLA's 100th anniversary.

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