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As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, shortly after having announced its “friendship without limits” with China, experts worried that Xi Jinping might risk anything to help achieve a victory for Putin. More than two years into the war, however, with Russia now a global pariah under severe sanctions and Ukrainian troops now holding parts of Russia, China has so far refrained from officially providing any direct lethal support to the Russian war effort.
Nonetheless, China supplies about $300 million in “dual use” items exported to Russia each month, or items that can be used both for commercial and military purposes, including some necessary components for tanks and drones.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Leon Aron dives into the history of China, Russia and Marxism to help Americans understand why he says Xi’s China will never pivot away from Putin’s Russia or towards the West, regardless of what happens in Ukraine.
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The following is an excerpt from the above video:
China is Russia’s lifeline. It supplies almost all key components of the Russian war machine, among them microelectronics for missiles, tanks and aircraft, machine tools for ammunition production, and nitrocellulose, a critical explosive ingredient for artillery shells.
Just as important, China pays at least half of Russia’s war expenditures. The war is estimated to cost the Kremlin between $340 and $375 million a day. At $197 million per day, China’s payments for Russia’s oil, LNG and natural gas covered between 58% and 52% of that amount.
At long last, the West is waking up to the situation. This past June, the G7 leaders were reported labeling China the savior of Putin’s Russia. Three weeks later, in Washington, the NATO Summit declaration called Beijing the decisive enabler of the war against Ukraine.
And yet the West is still dreaming of enlisting China to restrain Russia, or even to end the war with one phone call, in the words of the Finnish President Alexander Stubb. But there’s a problem with this plan. Xi Jinping’s assist to Russia goes beyond obvious tactical considerations. It is bound up with passionately held ideological convictions. The name is Marxism.
