Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government and Chinese patriots are certainly keeping a close eye on what’s going on in Russia, what’s been going on in Russia for the past 30 years and what preceded these events while the Soviet Union still existed from Sakhalin Island to Belarus, from Leningrad to Almaty. What lessons do they draw? Here they are:
① Never, ever and under no circumstances, believe what Western politicians promise. Western politicians promised the leaders of the Soviet Union that they would not accept countries bordering on the Soviet Union into NATO, and they have not kept that commitment.
② Never, ever and under no circumstances should you trust Western politicians to treat you as an equal, as a partner. Yes, these will be the promises, yes, this is how Western politicians will pretend to be during the flirtation period, during the seduction period of the country in question (in this case China), but the moment the country in question (China) is seduced, Western policy will change: the partner will gradually turn out to be the dominator.
③ Never, ever and under no circumstances should economic reforms proposed by the IMF or WB or similar institutions be adopted. Such reforms are calculated to turn the economy of the country receiving aid upside down and to subordinate that country to the global financiers.
④ Never, ever and under no circumstances should one be dragged into international projects because sooner or later they will serve to subordinate a member country to supranational organizations that serve the United States, the European Union or the financial international circles, but certainly not the member country.
⑤ Never, ever and under no circumstances should one rely on the international division of labor, that is, on the arrangement that some produce this and others produce that, or on the scheme that Russia is to be the supplier of raw materials, China – the global factory and the West – the brain of the world, the world’s manager. The state should be self-sufficient, at least when it comes to the most important branches of the economy or else the sanctions imposed by the West might ruin the country thus punished.
⑥ One must never, ever and under no circumstances believe that humanity is one big family living in a global village because even in such a village we have a village chief (the center of power) and a shaman (a priest, a propagandist), simple peasants and a miller (a rich man), but also a beggar, and a village idiot; even in this village there is a struggle over who will be the village chief and who will be the beggar, and certainly no one would want to play the role of the village idiot.
⑦ One must never, ever, and under no circumstances, believe that everyone will abide by established international laws and agreed-upon standards. As it turns out, such standards must be respected by some countries (and if those countries fail to comply, they are financially penalized or simply bombed), while other countries are allowed to ignore them.
⑧ Never, ever and under no circumstances should a country weaken its own armed forces: the military punishment of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yugoslavia should act as instructive examples of what it means to be weak.
⑨ Never, ever and under no circumstances should one give way in anything even by a step, not even by an inch because one (even very small) concession encourages the opponent to raise more and more claims. As long as the yielding party does not resist, the demands never end.
⑩ One must never, ever, and under no circumstances, believe that the other side cares about world peace, cooperation among nations and equality for all political actors in the international arena.
I don’t think the West will succeed with soft power to defeat China and bring it to such a collapse as the Soviet Union. The example of the Soviet Union and then Russia worked and still works on Beijing as a warning and as a bogeyman. Yes, China flirted with the West – joined the Western financial system and took over Western technology – but never did the Chinese Communist Party relinquish control over economic and political processes, never relied on Western centers of power and finance, and always looked out for its own interests and those of its own country. People in the USSR very easily forgot the European crusades against Russia and the USSR – Napoleon I’s 1812 Moscow expedition, the Crimean War of 1853-1856, the intervention of Western countries during the Civil War of 1917-1924, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 – and threw themselves into the arms of the West, imagining that the West had absolutely no intention of subjugating Russia. The Chinese people have not forgotten the humiliation they suffered during the two Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, when Western powers used military force and killed Chinese people just to get the Chinese authorities to let them – the Western powers – distribute drugs freely to the Chinese; in other words, to force the Chinese authorities to let the Chinese pay their own killers. History knows many atrocities, but this is one of those few particularly morally repulsive: to order someone at gun point to buy deadly poison!
Well, the Russians and Ukrainians don’t seem to have a high opinion of themselves, while the Chinese seem to have one. Unless… Unless it is a matter of chronology. Perhaps if the West had succeeded in such a soft way in the first place in bringing about the disintegration of the Middle Kingdom, then the collapse of the USSR would not have happened; then Soviet leaders would have learned from what happened to China and the 10 points listed above would have been introduced with the following words: Moscow, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet government and Soviet patriots are certainly keeping a close eye on what is happening in China, what has been happening in China for the past 30 years and what preceded these events while China still existed from Manchuria to Tibet and from Beijing to Urumqi. What lessons do they draw? Here they are.
