Is China Shifting Its Game Plan?
This may be the most important consequence of the Israel-Iran war.
Today, I want to write about two indications that China may be making a major geopolitical shift. It’s too early to know how big or substantive these changes are, but they warrant attention as a possible escalation in global tensions.
As I have written before, China’s patient, long-game strategy has been to out-compete the US economically, and to wait for the US empire to bankrupt itself. Numerous historians have documented how empires typically fall soon after they reach the point where everything the empire spends on defence is borrowed. (The United States has funded its entire defence budget with borrowed money since 2019.)
While the US has been making enemies with sanctions and tariffs, China has focused on cultivating friendships based on trade, investment, and transport links. The BRICS+ trading alliance has been central to those efforts.
China has been loathe to establish military alliances. Even their ‘partnership’ with Russia has clear limits. China has only a few military bases outside of China. They haven’t pushed weapons sales. China has kept this low military profile primarily to avoid antagonizing the US.
The best outcome in any military conflict is that your side loses less blood and treasure than the other side. And, there is always a chance that any military conflict might escalate to nuclear war. It is possible to outright win an economic war, however, which is why it has been China’s preferred geopolitical strategy, until now.
Unprovoked attacks by America and America’s proxy Israel on Chinese ally Iran seem to have created a major shift in China. I think China finally understands that if the US supports its allies militarily, and China does not, nations which would otherwise ally themselves solidly with China will be reluctant to do so.
A few weeks ago, China was shipping military supplies to Iran in Boeing 747 transports in secret. This week they are quietly allowing Chinese anti-aircraft missiles to be photographed being set up in Iran, after initially denying those missile deliveries were taking place. Iran is buying 24 J10C fighter jets from China, with more sales expected in the future, paid for with Iranian oil. I see both steps as designed to make it clear to all of China’s economic and political allies that China will not abandon its allies if those allies are attacked by America, or by an American proxy.
Until now, China has been relatively restrained in trying to sell Chinese weapons. I think China has now realized that nations which buy their military hardware from the United States are reluctant to oppose the US politically or militarily.
Pakistan is one of the few countries to outfit itself with Chinese anti-aircraft systems and fighter jets, both of which Pakistan used to good effect in recent skirmishes with India. Not that long ago, the US helped overthrow the government of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan because he was insufficiently pro-American. Chinese weapons systems have now tied Pakistan to China instead.
This week China announced that it is now open to selling jet fighters to any ‘friendly’ nation. For China, this could have a slew of advantages. Nations with Chinese military hardware will be beholden to China the same way countries with American military hardware are tied to the United States. Then there’s the billions of dollars in potential weapons sales. Building fighter jets and anti-craft systems for multiple “friendly” nations means an expanded military manufacturing base in China can be supported.
Finally, if the US and China were to go to war over Taiwan - as US military planners have predicted - how much better it would be it be for China if BRICS+ partners Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam all had Chinese-made jets and air defence systems with which China could seamlessly interface.
I think the attacks on Iran have made China realized that if the US actively supports its proxies militarily, and China does not, China’s sphere of influence will always remain limited.
I have seen numerous stories this week about Chinese President Xi being sidelined by the Chinese military. Xi has always wanted to stay friends with the West. The Chinese military is convinced that is no longer possible.
If China announces new overseas military bases in coming months, holds military exercises with multiple BRICS+ members, and/or announces massive new weapons sales, it will confirm that China has now decided to go toe-to-toe with the US as a global superpower.
This does not mean China will abandon economic war as a strategy. If America were to follow through on its threat of secondary sanctions against any nation that buys Russian products, we could easily see China pushing the BRICS+ bloc to make a unified and reciprocal tariff response. An attack on the dollar is also possible, particularly if circumstance push Japan to dump its US Treasury holdings. The shifts we’re seeing this week do not change the fact that economic war remains China’s preferred option.
I suspect we will see multiple stories in coming weeks in American mainstream media about how China is becoming ‘more aggressive,’ when, in fact, China will only be belatedly and reluctantly copying what the US has been doing for decades. I would ask readers to post links to such stories in the comments section below as they come out. These stories will undoubtedly be used to justify the US spending even more money it doesn’t have on defence and weapons systems.
PS: This week, I have been reading Healing Wounds, Diane Carlson Evans powerful first-person account of being a front-line nurse during the Vietnam War. She describes eloquently the horrors of that unnecessary war, and the ghastly casualties - not just the 58,000 servicemen and women who died, often in excruciating pain, and the half-million American soldiers who returned home damaged in body and spirit, but the thousands Vietnamese children horribly burned by American napalm. I think it should be required reading for every American.
Donald Trump, America’s alleged ‘peacemaker’ President, clearly see bombs as a negotiating tool. The chances of America stumbling into a replay of the Vietman War - with Russia, in the Middle East, or with China - are very real. If you don’t want that to happen, now is the time to speak up.
I am waiting for the day that American policymakers know how to cooperate with everyone because, with our current strength, that is still possible. To continue with the alternative will only bring catastrophe.
As the aggressor country (originally made up of a people’s looking for something better than what they had, and people who wanted more) can you see how those bent on strategy and defence, of that which is “theirs” have been quick to label “others” as the aggressors, fearful, as they are of losing it. This thread runs to the very foundations of what “white America” is?
Empire is as empire does.