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Opinion | Two Ukraine war scenarios and what they mean for US-China power rivalry
- The war could end up pushing the EU closer towards the US, hardening the notion of China as a systemic rival
- But if Russia wins the war, the distraction for the West would buy China time to get stronger
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China’s official stance on the Ukraine war has been controversial. Beijing’s position is seen by the anti-Russia alliance as ambiguous. On the one hand, Beijing does not deny that the war is relevant to the issues of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. But, on the other hand, Beijing sees Nato’s expansion as the cause of the war and shares Russia’s national security concerns.
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It is true that, across Chinese social media, an overwhelming majority of the Chinese public have expressed their deep understanding of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. This should not be interpreted as “supporting” the war, but it is a kind of a shared sentiment that both Russia and China are becoming the target of attacks and containment by a US-led Western alliance.
Ironically, while the United States and the European Union are emphasising Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integration in light of the war, they may be forgetting their “double standards” on many world affairs.
One of the most striking post-Cold-War phenomena was that the liberal international order abandoned the Westphalian principle and weakened the United Nations’ authority under the banner of “globalisation”, “transnationalisation”, and “interdependence.”
In the name of its so-called responsibility to protect human rights, the US-led West legitimised “armed humanitarian intervention” in connection with self-defined “violations of state responsibility”, overthrew legitimately elected governments and leaders and launched all kinds of “colour revolutions”.
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What China could gain, and lose, in the Ukraine-Russia crisis
What China could gain, and lose, in the Ukraine-Russia crisis
More paradoxically, Nato’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 were illegal actions without UN authorisation.
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