Ukraine’s War Exposed Flaws in Chinese Government Thinking
(Financial Times, July 5, 2023)
China’s aim is France, Premier Li Qiang visits France on June 22 (Photo: Xinhua/Aflo)
We instinctively understand others through projection.
It’s about assuming that the other person thinks and feels the same way you do. Countries often make the same mistakes in foreign policy.
At the heart of China-Europe relations over the last two years is a perception gap.
China’s foreign policy elite did not expect Europeans to support Ukraine this far.
Underestimating European aid to Ukraine
Most experts in China’s international relations have assumed that realism, which emphasizes economic interests and national power rather than values and political culture, would not put Ukrainians into much of a fight.
If the Ukrainians unexpectedly went to war, European countries would surely be unwilling to bear the costs or end Russia’s dependence on energy.
As a result, China’s elite also underestimated the damage that the “boundless” friendship between President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin would do to China’s diplomatic relations.
The elite have since come to appreciate the depth of European support for Ukraine.
But this time it is explained in the “return of ideology” in Europe.
“The current spread of ‘re-ideology’ is more serious than during the Cold War,” wrote Jiang Feng, party committee secretary at the Shanghai University of Foreign Studies (SISU) last year. It pointed out.
He argued that the war in Ukraine had become “a showdown at all costs” and that “Germany would rather cut off one of its arms than not to face it.”
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2023-07-10 21:00:00
