Summary
China has sent officials to Russia to study the effects of Western sanctions, aiming to prepare for potential sanctions if it invades Taiwan.
Beijing’s task force, created after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, analyzes sanctions’ impacts and strategies like reserve diversification and de-dollarization.
Concerns over $3.7 trillion in Chinese overseas assets are driving these efforts.
The growing ties between China and Russia include Chinese companies aiding Russia’s war efforts.
Let me summarize: it’ll cost you everything, and gain you little more than what could be achieved with the slightest bit of reasonable diplomacy with your close kin in Taiwan.
Look, i even saved you an expensive trip, and you can do something less depressing than hang around in wartime Russia during their economic collapse.
If any major superpowers are looking for consulting work I charge very reasonable rates.
It’s funny to think we can sanction China in any sort of way similar to Russia. We didn’t have almost anything say Made in Russia on it but fossil fuels and rocket engines when we sanctioned Russia. I’m supporting local production as much as I can and yet the vast majority of things I use in my daily life say Made in PRC. Those things need replacement and often no one is making them locally. Can we change that? Absolutely. Is it going to be fast enough to avoid a cataclysmic economic event that will trigger a reversal of sanctions, I don’t think so. I don’t think China is deterred by sanctions nearly as much as they are by the threat of armed conflict.
But yes, it’s likely much more productive to go the diplomatic/subversive/interfering route.
With Biden ramping up the trade war and a second Trump presidency on the horizon, it would have been dumb not to study how to prepare for sanctions.
Spoiler: If sanctions do anything at all, they hurt the population trapped under state control but not the people who control the state.
Mainstream western political theories holds the power of nations arises from their economy. What threat would Putin be were Russia incapable of producing weapons and supplying soldiers?
Sanctions therefore seek to diminish the power of Russia, counting on its economy being sufficiently interconnected with and dependant on that of the West.
In this context, sanctions hurting the common people is ultimately the point, because they’re literally trying to make Russia poorer, and therefore the poorest will be hurt most. Sanctions targeting the ruling class (such as seizure of assets like yachts) are at best symbolic.
I disagree with the “at best symbolic”
IF they’re done rigorously, they CAN create some serious hurt for the oligarchs in question, it seems…
The problem is that they’re usually done haphazardly…
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