The facts set out by economist Robin Brooks in a recent series of tweets (click on the links to see the charts that come with them) should not be much of a surprise, but they illustrate how far dreams of any rapprochement with China are removed from reality.
On December 28, Brooks tweeted this:
Russia annexed Crimea in Feb. 2014. Chinese exports to Russia of arms and ammunition spiked in Nov. 2013, a leading signal for this annexation. The next spike of Chinese weapons exports to Russia came in Sep. 2021, another leading signal for Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.
On December 29, he tweeted that:
China’s exports of transportation equipment to Russia – that’s everything from railway cars to autos and trucks as well as aircraft and ships – have risen +800% since Russia invaded Ukraine. There is no bigger supplier to Russia’s war economy than China…
In an earlier tweet Brooks noted that:
China’s exports of machinery and electrical equipment to Russia spiked in Dec. 2021, i.e. just ahead of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. These exports just made an all-time high in Nov. 23, the latest data point available.
China’s exports to Russia started rising BEFORE the invasion of Ukraine. They were up sharply and above the historical norm in November 2021 and – of course – have continued rising massively since then. China has replaced the West as Russia’s biggest trading partner by far…
Chinese exports to Belarus (green) are up 324% since 2021. China’s exports to Kyrgyzstan (red) are up 232% in the same period. This isn’t rocket science. After all, it’s not like Central Asia suddenly started booming once Russia invaded Ukraine. These goods are going to Russia…
All this is yet more evidence (as if it were needed) that China is no friend of the West. Beijing knows what it is doing, and its strategy is working out very well. Russia has not only been reduced to the status of a quasi-client state but is also a useful instrument for applying pressure on the West. Pleas by the likes of Joe Biden for some kind of rapprochement do nothing other than send out a message of weakness and delusion. That will only encourage Beijing to accelerate along its current course, with consequences that no-one should want to see.
And, as for the idea pushed by John Kerry that the West and China can put aside their differences to concentrate on the climate “catastrophe”, well . . .
The Chinese regime has perfectly good scientists of its own and has clearly come to two conclusions. Firstly, that a changing climate does not represent an existential crisis, and secondly that Western fear of that crisis is an economic and geopolitical opportunity.
And while we are on the topic of selling arms to Russia, here’s Robin Brooks again:
The German word “Aufarbeitung” means to go back in history & learn the lessons. Too little of that going on in Europe. Here’s EU-27 exports of arms and ammunition to Russia. They were €39 bn in 2021 vs €24 bn in 2019. How did Europe miss that Russia was about to invade Ukraine?
German exports of weapons and ammunition to Russia started doing crazy things just ahead of the invasion of Ukraine. There’s no doubt – looking at this – of Russia’s true intentions. It was stockpiling weapons ahead of the invasion. Germany was delivering some of those weapons…
And then there’s this from Brooks:
Exports from Euro zone countries to Kazakhstan have doubled since Russia invaded Ukraine. This happened right after the invasion, even as Kazakh growth is steady around 4%, which is right where it’s always been. These goods are obviously heading to Russia and this needs to stop.
Indeed. If much of the world is indeed rearranging itself, however messily, into two large politically, economically, and strategically competing blocs, the EU will have to decide where it stands.