Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (Dec 2022)
Postscript – Today’s Ukraine, Tomorrow’s Taiwan: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, China’s Revanchism, and the Chinese Communist Party-State’s Quest to Remake the World in Its Own Image
Abstract
This special focus issue, Under the Shadow of Vladimir Putin’s Irredentist War: How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Impacts China’s Global and Regional Relations, represents the final issue of the eighth volume of Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (December 2022). The first section of this journal issue, Putin’s War in Ukraine: Where China Stands, looks at how the Chinese Communist Party-State positions the country it currently rules with an iron fist amidst the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine, the reasons for its stance, its domestic and foreign policy considerations and its action’s paramount rationale – for the perpetuation of its brutal, repressive and dictatorial stranglehold over political power in China. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches a full year, it is becoming clearer through the Putin administration’s rhetoric that the essential reason for its war against Ukraine is the fact that the increasingly repressive authoritarian Putin regime is finding irredentist nationalism with nostalgic claim on Soviet lost lands, especially within the Kievan Rus’ heartland, is impressively useful in rallying support from Russian voter-citizens, and the post-Orange Revolution Ukraine drifting away from Russian influence towards the liberal democratic Europe of the European Union (EU) is posing a grave threat to the authoritarian Putin regime’s increasingly repressive stranglehold on Russian political power, in stark parallel to the East Asian scene where a vibrantly liberal democratic Taiwan has become an increasingly pain-in-the-neck contrast in the eyes of the brutal, repressive Chinese Communist Party (CCP)1 dictatorship of mainland China. Definitely becoming the mortal worries of the repressive Putin regime of post-Communist Russia and the brutal Communist Party dictatorship of mainland China is the fact that behind both Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (which bears a striking similarity to the now legendary People’s Power revolution of the Philippines that overthrew the Ferdinand Marcos regime) and the amazing transition to liberal democracy in Taiwan during the later part of the Chiang Ching-kuo administration (and looking north, South Korea’s transition away from military dictatorship towards the end of the Chun Doo-hwan presidency), the shadow of the United States of America and her European allies’ influence and support were clearly evident – and as the CCP regime had observed, it was also clear the U.S. and her European allies were equally behind Hong Kong’s civil disobedience from the Umbrella Movement to the anti-extradition-to-China protests where many protestors were receiving not only moral and material support but even tactical trainings from American and European civil rights groups. This is the main factor behind Communist China’s current strong support for the Putin presidency. Clearly this is a mainly tactical alliance of two repressive regimes supporting each other’s survival against the threat from the liberal democratic world, as the historical territorial grievances are supposed to have go against this alliance if the CCP regime were to stay true to its relentless brainwashing of its subject people with ultra-nationalism anchored on the “Hundred Years of National Humiliation”. This convoluted stance of the CCP is the subject of discussion of the three papers that begin this journal issue’s first section, Putin’s War in Ukraine: Where China Stands .....
