Given Blinkens statements about the Palestinian genocide, I wouldn’t believe a word he says about anything else.
I’ve heard it said before that most of China’s geopolitical strategies can be explained with two statements:
- War is bad for business.
- China is big on business.
And nuclear fallout is pretty fucking bad for business.
Except for people selling nuclear shelters.
Vault-Tec has entered the chat.
So China is the new world negotiator? Headline trend over the last couple months anyway.
For negotiating with Russia? It makes sense, they’re an actual ally of Russia’s that they rely on. We can waggle our finger at them all we’d like, & they could do the same to us, but that doesn’t mean much. If China has something to say on the matter, however, their words would carry more weight.
Also, as others have pointed out, Beijing has been making lots of moves to become a key negotiator in places where America (or the west at-large) have failed (or are otherwise unable) to step in.
I mean, the US can’t exactly be relied upon to fill that role over the next however many years of temper tantrums, graft and whatever else (nuking hurricanes?)
Why wouldn’t they be? China has been a major player in international politics for a long time.
China is basically winning geopolitics and they know that all they need is to keep things as is.
IDK, Syria has been a huge setback for the CCP. Also, there is a growing wave of Chinese divestment among businesses everywhere, and the CCP is losing influence in Canada and Europe. There is a growing will to break their addiction to cheap Chinese manufacturing. Canada in particular hates the CCP, for the illegal police stations and for the kidnapping and ransom of the Michaels.
Surveys in most countries around the world rank the CCP pretty poorly in terms of public perception. (See for example https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/09/more-people-view-the-us-positively-than-china-across-35-surveyed-countries/ ) If this is the CCP winning, I do wonder what losing would look like.
Machiavelli wrote about this. People don’t need to love you for your power to be secure, and in fact, it’s far preferable to be respected because people fear you than to be respected because people love you.
Yeah, but Machiavelli lived in a rough neighbourhood, though.
