Visiting relatives and friends and connecting with each other is an inevitable process for us to live in the world. The same is true for the international community, as are mutual visits and high-level meetings between politicians from various countries. But coincidentally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just started a three-day visit to China on April 26, and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would visit China in May. So the question is, why did the two "big brothers" who once dominated the world "liaison" with China at such a close point in time? This may have something to do with the increasingly important role that China is currently playing in the world.
It is reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his plan to visit China in May on April 25, the day before Blinken's visit to China, which is somewhat in tat-for-tat with the United States. At the same time, this is also Putin's first foreign visit in the new six-year term after winning the presidential election, and he chose to go to China for his first foreign trip, which shows that Russia attaches great importance to China. Obviously, at a time when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, provoked by the United States and participated by Russia, is intensifying, China has become a bridge for the United States and Russia to communicate with each other and ease contradictions. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, which is also a great responsibility entrusted to us by the times after China's peaceful rise.
1. The US Secretary of State's visit to China clearly asked China not to aid Russia, but behind the scenes, he was "desperate" on military aid to Ukraine.
The United States is an "extremely contradictory" country, they obviously have the strongest military in the world, and they bully weaker countries than them at every turn, but they still complain every day that their national security is under "serious threat", and like a patient with deep delusional persecution syndrome, they always say that they have no "sense of security". During the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union were vying for hegemony, the United States spread the so-called "red terror" in the international community all day long, and regarded the emerging socialist countries as "red ghosts" that threatened the Western capitalist order. But even though they had completely brought down the Soviet economy in 1991 through the Star Wars program, triggering drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Americans were still not satisfied, on the one hand, they accelerated the absorption of the former Soviet republics into NATO, and on the other hand, they reapplied the methods originally used to confront the Soviet Union to Russia.
Seeing this, we cannot help but lament the "ruthlessness and unscrupulous means" of the United States in dealing with its competitors. Before, they said that the socialist system frightened the West, and that the "Great Ivan" made the West "sleep badly," but as a result, even though Russia had evolved from a socialist country to a capitalist state, and Ukraine took the initiative to destroy the Soviet nuclear weapons left over from the country in order to join the West, the United States and the West did not keep their promises and accept them. To this day, they are still considering how to use China's influence to suppress our "officially designated strategic partner." With such a painful experience, can China still believe US Secretary of State Blinken's words and take the initiative to alienate our dear "Davaris"? The answer, of course, is no.
Dividing the enemy and dividing and conquering it has always been a common trick used by the United States in dealing with other countries. In this regard, the successful "Westernization" of Ukraine, a former member of the former Soviet republics, by the United States is the best embodiment of its effective implementation of the "divide and rule strategy." It's just that what everyone didn't expect was that Ukraine, which is also a Slav, would start a full-scale war with Russian compatriots in order to join NATO. With U.S. President Joe Biden signing a new batch of $61 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 24 this year, Washington obviously has a "desperate" intention to aid Ukraine and resist Russia.
To this end, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also announced on the 26th that the United States had temporarily added $6 billion worth of military aid to Kyiv, intending to make the Ukrainian army a quick victory. In the new batch of aid, the U.S. military will also provide Ukraine with more advanced NATO-standard weapons, including shoulder-fired short-range Stinger surface-to-air missiles, advanced and expensive Patriot air defense systems, the "Hippocampus" High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System System, ATACMS). In addition, the United States also promised to provide the Ukrainian army with more M1 Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, as well as 155mm ammunition for M777 howitzers. What is even more surprising is that the United States and the West also announced the news that the pit vipers and F-16 jet fighters they provided for the Ukrainian army are about to be put into the battlefield, which has put a lot of pressure on the Russian side.
2. The United States has warned China about the sale of "potential military weapons" to Russia, but it has provided $8 billion in direct military assistance to Taiwan.
Opportunities contain challenges, and crises breed turnarounds, which is a cliché we say in the game of international politics. The "relay" visit to China by the United States and Russia is both an opportunity and a crisis for China. It is said that this is an opportunity because at the present stage the contradictions between the United States and Russia have almost reached the intensity of the period when the United States and the Soviet Union were vying for hegemony, and the pattern between the East and the West is developing in the direction of the "new Cold War" promoted by the United States. If we can grasp the direction of the wind, balance between the two "big brothers", and maintain a strategic balance between China and Russia and between China and the United States, we can avoid more serious suppression by the United States, and we can also maintain the long-standing "back-to-back revolutionary friendship" between China and Russia.
Of course, if this matter is not handled well, it is very likely that we will return to the crisis situation in which we are forced to "bring down US imperialism and Soviet revisionism" again. No matter what the outcome is, this is a major test for the Chinese people of the times, and an important link that we must go through from a big country to a strong country. Even if we know very well that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who "has nothing to do", did not hesitate to make a special trip to Beijing to "catch up" with the Chinese leader "in the midst of his busy schedule", his motive is not pure. But now that the United States and Russia are in this situation, it is really difficult to break the situation without China's intervention and mediation.
In fact, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his visit to China, Blinken held separate meetings and talks with high-level Chinese officials, and the tone of Blinken's speech was not as expected, and almost none of them deviated from the main line of "using China to resist Russia". During the dialogue, he also made clear to the Chinese side the "grave concern" that Chinese companies are providing Russia with dual-use materials, including machine tools and microelectronics, to enhance Russia's military capabilities and strengthen Russia's "aggression" against Ukraine.
Economic globalization and political pluralism are the general trend of social progress, which will inevitably bring about a political and economic pattern in which all countries in the world are interdependent and cooperate with each other. As close friends, deepening cooperation between China and Russia in the economy, trade and industrial chain is an inevitable trend of social development, and it is inevitable that there will be some "civilian products with military potential". For example, our Chinese DJI drone, which was originally designed as a remote-controlled toy that supports aerial photography functions, does not fall within the scope of China's interference as for what Russia imports and uses to do with it. But if we ban the sale of kitchen knives to Russia just because "kitchen knives pose a risk of killing" and "pesticides are toxic to Russian farmers", then how can we do business in the international market?
The current accusations made by the United States against China clearly carry the "bandit logic" of these examples. If Blinken has the strength to say such things, it is better to set an example and ban domestic guns, and then prohibit US arms dealers from selling weapons to foreign countries, so as to truly maintain world peace. Although the Biden administration has unashamedly criticized China's sale of "potential military weapons" to Russia, it passed an aid package for Ukraine in April, including $13 billion for Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan. So, have the Americans discussed with China on the issue of challenging China's political bottom line in the Taiwan Strait and openly supporting Taiwan independence forces? Of course they don't, but they can righteously warn China not to give Russia any form of aid. What is this not a "double standard"? What is it that is not an act of hegemonism and power politics?
With Russian President Putin's imminent visit to China, what role will China play between the United States and Russia? Unlike Japan and South Korea, China is not one of those countries that can only "hug the thighs of the Americans" and "form cliques and factions" around the world, still less are we "little brothers who work for the Western powers" and obey their orders. China's independent and self-reliant national development policy and international foreign policy of non-alignment and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries have determined that China's relations with the United States and Russia are reciprocal and non-aligned, and naturally China will not succumb to so-called hegemonism and power politics, allowing the strategic cooperative partnership between China and Russia to be infringed upon in the slightest. China will serve as a bridge of communication to normalize relations between the United States and Russia, rather than a "political tool" to favor U.S. interests and help it suppress Russia.
In fact, the Russian Foreign Ministry has long stressed that China and Russia "are not allies, but they are better than alliances." Zakharova also made it clear that "in terms of quality, bilateral cooperation between Russia and China goes beyond the monolithic central collective of the Cold War era." Our mutual cooperation is not directed against third countries, this is the meaning of Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation, which is not affected by external conditions. Hearing this, everyone must have guessed what Zakharova's words mean by "not being affected by external conditions"! And facts have also proven that Blinken's warning to China and the US pressure on China are unlikely to change the existing partnership between China and Russia. It is precisely because of the United States' strategy of sowing discord and "dividing and conquering" China and Russia that the relations between China and Russia have become closer and closer. As long as US hegemonism does not die, the Sino-Russian partnership will last forever.