A few months back, stories about Russia buying shells from North Korea started circulating. Of course, this surprised many of us: How reliable can North Korean shells be? How many shells can North Korea spare, given their paranoia toward South Korea? Most of us, however, just shrugged and accepted the reporting at face value. We should not have. We should have realized that those shells were, in fact, coming from China. North Korea lacks the industrial capacity to supply Russia with the quantity of shells it needs, but China has more than enough. North Korea was merely a middleman offering China cover and deniability.
Chinese businesses are selling “sporting rifles” to Russia in unprecedented numbers. There are reports of Chinese companies building factories in Belarus. While China appears to be selling Russia low-ticket items, such as rifles, shells, and body armor in an attempt to avoid Western scrutiny, China could be following along its own path of escalation. In a year, China might be providing considerably more aid to Moscow. Consider how far US support for Ukraine has come in that time.
If China is supplying Russia while the West supplies Ukraine, then this is not a US proxy war against Russia but rather a proxy war between the US and China—where Ukraine is our proxy and Russia is China’s. This has grave geopolitical implications.
Why did China encourage Russia to invade Ukraine, and why is China supporting Russia militarily despite the invasion going so poorly?
China has a lot to gain from this invasion:
Russian’s invasion of Ukraine is testing the West’s resolve, helping China judge the West’s reaction to an invasion of Taiwan.
US sanctions against Russia, esp. in the banking sector, have caused other countries to doubt its suitability as a reserve currency, opening the possibility that certain countries begin to use the yuan instead.
The invasion requires the US to maintain a larger military presence in Europe, deflecting resources from the South China Sea.
Supplying Ukraine has reduced US military supplies. In the event China invades Taiwan, even this modest reduction in military supplies could help improve China’s military prospects.
The invasion has given China access to cheap energy; China no longer has to outbid Europe for access to Russian oil and gas.
The invasion has made Russia wholly dependent on China, which brings China one step closer to establishing its “multipolar” political order.
Strangely enough, if China’s purpose is to reduce the US’s military supplies, this suggests that China will not provide Russia with heavy equipment: It makes no sense to deplete yourself of much-needed equipment when your goal is to do that to others, not unless you can guarantee your enemy is losing more than you are—not a safe bet when the country you are providing weapons to is Russa.
Apart from that, however, all the remaining items on this list except cheap energy support China’s efforts to overthrow the US-led world order. Both Russia and China are pursuing strategies of provocation and escalation intended to provoke the US into frittering away its central position in the world’s political and economic order: The main difference being that China’s provocations are clever and hidden while Russia’s are abrupt and ill-considered.