Day: March 2, 2022

As hundreds of Chinese nationals tried to get evacuated from Ukraine on the seventh day of the Russian invasion, one Chinese national living in Odessa who turned citizen journalist when the war started said he won’t be leaving any time soon.

Artificial intelligence expert Wang Jixian started posted his first-hand accounts of the war, including seeing a friend shot by invading Russian troops, and parents trying to hold back tanks with their bare hands.

But his outspoken videos cursing out Russian troops were out of step with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s official stance on the Russian invasion, and have been deleted or blocked from social media platforms in China by government censors.

He has also been the target of online abuse from Little Pinks, an online army of troll-commentators who enforce the CCP line on China’s tightly controlled internet.

“I’m not really thinking about Ukraine, but that my company is here, and my investment is here,” Wang told RFA, when asked about the accusations that he had “betrayed China,” and is “a lackey of the United States.”

“Don’t come and burn down my house and kill my neighbors,” Wang said. “There’s little girl who lives near me … and an uncle who walks the dog downstairs and buys groceries every day. They don’t deserve to die.”

“Before the war, people worked in hair salons and restaurants, and then they went out of their way [to defend themselves]. That’s what I saw,” he said.

He said he won’t be leaving.  “I don’t want to die. I want to live, but the tanks are coming.”

‘I think he’s a hero’

Wang said he hadn’t previously held a particularly good opinion of president Volodymyr Zelensky or his government, whom he later praises in his videos.

“Before this war started, I was very annoyed by Zelensky, and … there were a lot of things I was dissatisfied with,” he said. “But when the troops and the tanks were here, in the cities, I saw a president who said ‘I’m your president and I’m here for you.'”

“I think he’s a hero, and so do my neighbors.”

Wang said many Chinese nationals are having trouble leaving, even if they want to.

“I’ll tell you what evacuation is like,” he said. “We got a message from the embassy telling us what time to assemble in Kyiv, but this morning, a friend of mine was at the Azov camp, which had just been bombed: the bridge has been bombed, the ground bombed and the highway broken up, and he didn’t have a car, so how was he supposed to get there?”

“I also have a buddy in Kharkov, but he would be able to get out of there if you gave him a tank,” Wang said.

Wang’s claims were backed up by messages posted in recent days to a WeChat group of more than 250 Chinese nationals stranded in Ukraine, all of whom are trying to find a way to leave.

Wang said he plans to hang on in Odessa and keep filming the war, despite the death threats coming from his own compatriots.

“I’m staying here on this battlefield, with a visible, tangible enemy,” Wang said. “On that other battlefield, I can’t see where my enemies are, they are all people I don’t know, and they want to kill me, or settle accounts with me afterwards?”

“I’m surrounded by tanks right now, so how would I be afraid of them?”

Russia’s Chinese mouthpiece

Renmin University journalism graduate Lu Nan, who recently signed a letter condemning the Russian invasion, said Chinese state media have been using a lot of content from Russian media reports.

“For example, footage of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers working together to protect the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” Lu said. “Official [Chinese] media have pretty much become the mouthpiece of the Russian media.”

He said the CCP’s shadowy “public opinion management” operations were encouraging pro-Russian comments on social media, creating a general expectation that Russia will win the war.
 
“They only allow one voice to exist, so all of the comments are supportive of Putin, and least on the surface, which is a result of [the CCP’s] taking sides,” Lu said. “No dissenting voices are allowed to appear.”

Journalist Zhang Feng said Wang’s videos have been blocked in China because the CCP doesn’t want its people to see the true situation on the ground.

“A lot of websites have been deleting [posts] on this topic and they are dampening [reports and commentary] on social media, purely to make sure that Chinese people can’t see how Ukraine is fighting and winning, for example, civilians beating back tanks.”

“That kind of thing would have a huge impact in China, and they want to avoid popularizing those values,” Zheng said.

Repeated calls to the Chinese embassy in Kyiv and to the consulate general in Odessa went unconnected on Tuesday.

Bankrolling Russia

The Cyberspace Administration of China, which is in charge of controlling online content in China, hadn’t responded to a request for comment by the time of writing.

Current affairs commentator Si Ling said China had likely been taken aback by the resistance to the Russian invasion, and could be reappraising its economic ties with the two nations.

“China was likely hoping that … Russia will sell Ukraine’s important strategic resources to China at a lower price,” Si told RFA. “Ukraine is very concerned about China … because the Chinese government has consistently refused to condemn the Russian invasion.”

He said that now looks unlikely.

“The idea that Ukraine can be quickly annexed by Russia has now been completely shattered,” Si said. “It may be difficult to achieve good trade cooperation between China and Ukraine in future, and it’s very unlikely that Ukraine will sell so much grain to China … or at quite such mutually beneficial prices.”

Joseph Cheng, former politics professor at Hong Kong’s City University, said Beijing could also start bankrolling Russia.

“China claims to have US$3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and I believe there will be no problem with lending to Russia,” Cheng said, adding that the last oil and gas supply contract came amid international sanctions after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

“Russia lowered its asking price under the international situation, so I believe China will also look for similar opportunities this time around,” Cheng said.

China is a major buyer of Ukrainian corn, barley and sunflower oil, with Ukrainian imports accounting for nearly 30 percent of total corn imports in 2021, according to Chinese customs figures.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The crisis in Ukraine has exposed how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – once again – is divided as it fails to confront a pressing security challenge head on and through a forceful and unified voice.

Already riddled with divisions over Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, the damming of the Mekong, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and the 2021 coup d’êtat in Myanmar, ASEAN, through its toothless response to the Russian invasion, yet again is proving inept in collectively addressing a security issue with potential implications for Southeast Asia.

One would think that with the exception of Myanmar, whose junta totally relies on Moscow for arms and diplomatic support, that Southeast Asian condemnation of Russia would not be so fraught.

At the member-state level, the responses to Ukraine have ranged from Myanmar’s unabashed endorsement of the invasion to more tepid ones from other ASEAN states, and to remarkably forceful ones issued by the city-state of Singapore.

The response from Myanmar was beyond the pale, with the ruling generals stating that “Russia’s invasion is an appropriate measure to preserve its sovereignty.”

In failing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most Southeast Asian states are acting in a way that ignores their long-term security interests – and, for the most part, out of sheer diplomatic timidity.

The stakes

Southeast Asia is comprised of small and medium-sized states who rely on international law, the doctrine of sovereign equality and the principles on the United Nations that forbid the use of force to alter borders or interfere in the domestic politics of another sovereign state.

Russia’s actions and justification for war have set a very dangerous precedent. That’s pretty cut and dry.

And yet, the ASEAN states have largely equivocated, each for its own reason.

Singapore has been far ahead of the rest of its partners in the bloc. It immediately condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The Lion City has since announced a swath of sanctions, including banking, SWIFT correspondence, the freeze on high-tech exports and travel bans. It remains to be seen if Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds will follow the lead of Norway and divest themselves of Russian assets.

Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has made clear what’s really at stake in the crisis on the other side of the globe.

“We cannot accept one country attacking another without justification, arguing that its independence was the result of ‘historical errors and crazy decisions’ … Unless we as a country stand up for principles that are the very foundations for the independence and sovereignty of smaller nations, our own right to exist and prosper as a nation may similarly be called into question,” he said.

Brunei and the Philippines belatedly condemned the attack. Indonesia has done so in its own way without assigning blame to Russia, and making clear that it would not impose any sanctions on Moscow.

A joint statement put out by the ASEAN foreign ministers on Feb. 28 made no mention of Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, let alone its targeting of civilians and effort to capture Ukraine’s main cities.

The statement called on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint,” ignoring that one side was fighting for its very existence as a sovereign state.

This was an exercise in diplomatic cowardice.

As with the coup in Myanmar, many governments in Southeast Asia expected the invasion of Ukraine to be over in a blink, too fast for them to be forced to make a stand.

But that hasn’t happened.

President Vladimir Putin planned a blitzkrieg attack, the quick encirclement of cities and an immediate Ukrainian government surrender. The Russians never expected the Ukrainians to put up such stiff resistance or the international community to be galvanized in norm-shattering ways.

While the Ukrainians have fared relatively well in the opening days of the war, the Russians have been changing their tactics: they are moving more deliberately and their supply lines are tighter. They’re aware that the losses suffered thus far are unsustainable.

More importantly, Russian forces and mercenaries are now targeting residential areas and other non-military targets in a much more systematic way, including government buildings, hospitals, and communications centers, according to news reports.

Air power, which Moscow barely resorted to in the early days of the invasion, is being used more and more as the Russians deplete their supply of precision-guided munitions. The Russians are now using gravity bombs, cluster munitions and thermobaric bombs, greatly increasing the likelihood of civilian casualties.

Putin has no shortage of men and equipment that he will throw at Ukraine to install a neutralized vassal state. Body bags returning home do not particularly affect him.

This is going to be a long drawn-out conflict.

China’s response

Of course, all of this has a bearing on China.

Beijing continues to back Moscow, despite some apparent misgivings as the war threatens to be a bloody affair, and one that is roiling international energy markets.

Beijing agrees that Ukraine is a sovereign state, but it also agrees that the European country has limited sovereignty because of choices it has made and Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.”

Beijing has clearly betrayed its oft-stated commitment to the inviolability of state sovereignty, something that all countries in Southeast Asia should note. Through speaking out of both sides of its mouth and through its actions, China has thoroughly embraced Russia’s doctrine of limited sovereignty.

China also blames the war on Washington and Brussels with their “Cold War mentality.” 

It has promised to maintain normal trade with Russia and will not support international sanctions on Moscow. With Russia being forced out of the SWIFT financial network, Russia will become more dependent on the Chinese-run alternative, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, though it will force Russia to rapidly increase the amount of Chinese yuan that it uses in trade.

The liberal international order

The countries in Southeast Asia, meanwhile, must be prepared for a conflict in Ukraine that will last years. They need to understand that Russia is willing to raze entire cities so President Vladimir Putin does not have to humiliatingly seek a negotiated settlement.

States have to be sober in their assessment that, having entered this conflict with maximalist aims, there is no off-ramp for Putin, who is far more likely to escalate the conflict than accept defeat.

Which is why Southeast Asia’s equivocation is so baffling.

The international response to Russia’s illegal invasion should remind everyone why President Vladimir Putin hated and feared the liberal international order so much, and reinforce why it is in the interest of Southeast Asian states to begin to act in ways that support their long-term security.  

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.