‘There exists a tacit understanding between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden to ensure that Vladimir Putin does not cross specified tension points, and in return the White House does not punish malign actions by the PRC in the Indo-Pacific.’
Mangalore: Analysts in an oceanside location collating and analysing data from key problem areas claim to have identified an important reason why NATO, specifically the United States, has in practical terms been indulgent towards the Indo-Pacific forays of Xi Jinping. Such lack of effective US counter-responses comes despite serial bouts of PRC expansionism affecting Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Myanmar, Japan and India. Their conclusion from a study of the data accessed by them is that “there exists a tacit understanding that malign actions by the PRC against countries in the Indo-Pacific (even those that are friends and allies of the US and the EU) will in practical terms remain unpunished by the US and its key European allies”. This is in exchange for a commitment by Beijing in the matter of “ensuring restraints” on Moscow that is considered to be of overwhelming importance to the (Europe-obsessed) Atlanticist alliance. The US under President Biden in practice continues to regard Europe and the Atlantic as the most important theatre of the 21st century, in the same way as the continent was viewed through most of the 20th century. The consequence of such a rear-view mirror policy perspective is that it is still Russia that to Biden and other Europeanist politicians, analysts and officials remains the Numero Uno Foe. In contrast, China is seen as a potential and at times actual accomplice in the anti-Russia moves of the western alliance. According to conclusions drawn from data studied, the Biden administration early into the 2022 Ukraine-Russia war reached an understanding with the Office of the General Secretary of the CCP that the latter would take on the task of restraining Russian reactions to Ukrainian provocations on and off the battlefield in exchange for the US and its NATO partners tacitly not acknowledging and dealing with the PRC as the principal 21st century threat to the established global order in the manner that the USSR was during 1948-91.
After more than nine months of collation and analysis, the conclusion drawn by the analysts working in the scenic oceanside location is that “there exists a tacit commitment by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not cross specified tension points in any retaliatory action taken against NATO” in its proxy war with Russia. Keeping the pressure cooker boiling, while not allowing the vessel to burst under such pressure, suits the strategy of what those active in the Leadership Compound in Beijing terms “Xi Jinping Thought”. The CCP General Secretary is intent on prolonging the war between Ukraine and Russia “to the point where the US and its partners in NATO no longer have the energy, confidence or public support to intervene directly in the CCP’s CMC’s planned cross-strait offensive” that is aimed at seizing control of Taiwan.
CCP COMFORTABLE WITH BILLIONAIRES
The CCP leadership views benignly the possible victory in the forthcoming Presidential elections in Taiwan of Terry Guo, the head of Foxconn. The well-regarded billionaire presides over a company that is among the most successful in the world. Guo is tipped to be selected as the party’s Presidential candidate by KMT Chairman Eric Chu. The KMT chief is a brilliant politician who has not hidden his dislike of Terry Guo’s rival for the KMT Presidential nomination, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi, although the mayor is by far the more favoured candidate within the KMT cadre.
Known and liked within the CCP leadership, the personable and hard-working Terry Guo may get substantial electoral tailwind from the fact that he has a record of dealing as a businessman with the other side of the Taiwan Straits. There is, however, a difference in dealing with the CCP as the head of Foxconn and as the President of Taiwan, a nation under a rising threat of takeover from the other side of the straits. Analysts say that the assessment within relevant CCP think tanks is that it would be possible for Xi to leverage the immense and highly profitable linkages that Foxconn has with the PRC to induce policy measures from Guo that would significantly expand PRC influence in Taiwan. The objective is to “soften up internal resistance” (to PRC control creep) to a level that would amount to a “takeover by stealth” by 2027. The view in Beijing is that Guo, given Foxconn’s interests in the PRC, will scrap the pro-West policy of the present President, Tsai Ing-wen. Together with her party the DPP, Tsai has sought to anchor Taiwan to the US, a stance that is anathema within the CCP. Within a few years of softening up inner resistance in Taiwan through what he anticipates will shortly be a responsive administration in Taipei, Xi Jinping believes that “it would be possible to have a temporarily undeclared “Anschluss” between the PRC and Taiwan before his present 5-year term ends. He regards such an outcome as possible “once the US and its NATO partners become weary of conflict and economic war through years battling the flames of conflict in Ukraine”. In the same way as President Putin believes that carving out a secure Russia-controlled zone in East Ukraine is essential for his political fortunes, General Secretary Xi believes that only the de facto (and subsequently de jure) absorption of Taiwan would legitimize his own adoption last year of the Mao Zedong model of Leader for Life of the CCP and therefore the PRC.
Xi is intent on prolonging the Russia-Ukraine standoff until such time as NATO gets exhausted enough to look the other way when the PRC goes forward with a takeover by stealth rather than kinetically. This would be , followed by the creation of a fait accompli by making Taiwan the next Hong Kong, where rights put on paper would be expansive in the beginning but finally made non-existent. In such a task, as took place by 2020 in Hong Kong, reliance will be placed by the CCP leadership on the Taiwanese elite, especially those who have profited from dealings with China. The aim is to ensure that compliant HNIs gradually but surely take control of the levers of authority in the island nation, as they did from the start in Hong Kong. The issue facing Xi is how to prolong the war in Ukraine while ensuring that it does not spin out of control. According to the analysts studying data relating to the situation, the CCP leadership regards with favour a “non-aggression” agreement with the US across the Indo-Pacific in exchange for reining in the Kremlin’s responses to destructive actions by NATO-backed Ukraine. The irregular and commando forces that have been trained by the US since 2012 are undergoing refresher exercises to enable them conduct covert operations on the lines of a partisan force.
XI SEEKS A PROLONGED STALEMATE
The CCP General Secretary (through the influence he wields over President Putin) is expected to ensure that the response of the Kremlin to provocative actions by Ukrainian and proto-Ukrainian groups would be “subcritical”. In other words, that any Russian retaliation would not reach a level that makes possible a wider war that brings NATO directly into the gunsights of the Kremlin or to a successful conclusion of the Ukraine war by Russia. A prolonged and steadily draining stalemate on the Ukrainian battlefield is what the CCP leadership is aiming at. Keeping President Putin on a subcritical leash is the task handed over to CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. Western confidence in the latter’s ability to fulfill his part of the bargain is what has led to the planning and execution of what would otherwise be considered reckless attacks by Ukraine and its allies, such as the drone attack within the precincts of the Kremlin. According to the data studied, this was carried out by a newly-recruited “anti-Putin group operating in the vicinity of Moscow”. Several similar attacks within Russia in the recent past have made it obvious that such “partisan” groups are active even within Moscow. The conflict has begun seeping into the boundaries of Russia in an asymmetric form through “identification and empowerment of those disaffected by the system” presided over by President Putin. While a prolongation of the conflict is sought by the CCP leadership, a speedy conclusion that leaves Russia in unchallenged control of around 23% of Eastern and Southern Ukraine is vital to President Putin, but this would involve actions going beyond the limits privately suggested by Xi. Such a situation is what analysts claim represents a Concordat between the PRC and the US. This implicit US-PRC understanding ensures that the growing Chinese influence over Russian policy gets used to damp down the Kremlin’s responses to the multiple “death by a thousand cuts” feints against Russia of NATO proxies. These are being increasingly inflicted not just by trained Ukrainian special forces but increasingly by Russian citizens who have been located, trained and persuaded to join the partisan groups that are being formed across the European part of the Russian Federation.
KEEPING CONFLICT AT SUB-CRITICAL LEVEL
Analysts claim that Xi’s private refrain to Putin is to show restraint are designed to prolong the Ukraine war while at the same time allowing NATO to remain confident that the conflict remains at a subcritical level (i.e. a level that does not involve its direct involvement or a Russian victory) . Xi has also been accelerating the currency war on the US dollar, including by making sure that 90% of the global crypto ecosystem has come under the control of a PRC-based platform that was the beneficiary of the collapse of the US-based FTX crypto platform. The digital RMB has been gathering steam, together with the fact that the gold sticks of the Chinese central bank are double that available in the US Federal Reserve. Since 2013, when the US began confiscating financial assets and levying sanctions on an expanding list of targets, “Chissia” (China and Russia) has been working on making their interconnected system sanctions-proof. Not fast enough though, given that more than USD 300 billion of Russian foreign currency reserves have in effect been confiscated by the member states of NATO. As a consequence of the Russia sanctions, the shift of the PRC from USD and Euro reserves in particular has accelerated, and a similar trend is visible in other trading nations, including Saudi Arabia.
The manner in which the US has joined hands with the UK, Switzerland and the EU in imposing sanctions on Russia are resulting in a meltdown of confidence by other countries in their currencies and reliability. The US and parts of Europe are now faced with a string of bank failures that have further reduced global confidence in the western financial system and in western currencies in general. Such is the outcome that CCP General Secretary Xi believes assists CCP moves to replace the US and its exchange and commodity markets and currencies with Chinese substitutes as the heart of the global trading system. India is a worry for the CCP leadership core, for the country is big enough to provide an alternative to the PRC in almost every particular. The CCP leadership is looking at the moves for reform and stabilisation that are being made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and are wary that such moves would succeed in their transformative intent.
CHINA INFLUENCING RUSSIA’S SOUTH ASIA POLICY
The conclusion of analysts studying data relating to the manner in which NATO led by US President Joe Biden has been seeking through the Ukraine conflict to humiliate the Russian Federation and its leader is that NATO’s serial disregard of Putin’s red lines is the consequence of the implicit assurance given by the PRC Office of the General Secretary to the White House that China would privately work on President Putin to observe tight limits on the reactions of Xi’s “no limits” partner. Analysts point out that several incidents show Xi to be the decisive voice in the framing of much of policy by President Putin. They go so far as to claim that Sergey Lavrov meeting Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for a tete-a-tete in Goa is an example of a “command performance orchestrated by Beijing”. Being a shrewd diplomat, Lavrov must surely be aware of the impact on Indian public opinion (which is still broadly friendly to Russia) of his unusual prioritising a bilateral meeting with a Foreign Minister who abandoned all limits of courtesy in abuse of India and its elected leaders. Another example cited is the way in which the Russian side has been rejecting moves by officials sent from Delhi and Mumbai that would enable India to pay for at least a portion of its oil imports from Russia in rupees. Tracking of data indicates that the CCP, wary of the Indian rupee emerging as a global currency, has “advised” Moscow to insist that the Indian side use Chinese RMB rather than Indian rupees in trade with Russia. Xi Jinping is committed to reducing the influence of the US dollar on global trade, and has talked about a BRICS exchange mechanism, but his effort is to replace the US dollar with the Renminbi, alone rather than creating a BRICS basket of exchangeable currencies that would strengthen potential global currencies such as the Indian rupee, especially from gaining ground as alternatives to the RMB in matters of trade. Efforts by the Government of India to promote the rupee as a global unit of exchange are being met with covert countermeasures in Beijing, and analysts say that Chinese pressure has been the X-factor in the refusal of Moscow to countenance any shift towards the rupee as a means of settlement of India’s growing volume of imports from the Russian Federation.
A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN
What is clear amidst the “fog of war” is that the CCP has benefited enormously from western diversion of attention from the PRC excesses to those of the Russian Federation, and from Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific targets of the CCP to an all-consuming focus on Ukraine. CCP General Secretary Xi’s dual track policy is to ensure that Putin be sent the financial and logistical support he needs to continue the Ukraine war while simultaneously being held back from ensuring a conclusive end to the conflict. A stalemate involving neither victory for Russia nor for the US suits Xi Jinping. This is resulting in a continuation of a stalemate on the battlefield in Ukraine, a conflict in which China remains kinetically uninvolved, and which has shifted US-EU attention away from checkmating Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific to exhausting Russia in Ukraine.