On June 24, 2023, selfish forces descended on Moscow, and it’s good that more than just Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ruling class were watching with worry. There may have been some worried heads over in China as well.
Beijing has played a sort of balancing work throughout the conflict in Ukraine, supporting Putin as an ally and giving Russia an economic pillar while attempting to protect China from the possibility of any imbalance in its neighboring nation. A revolution in Russia would ruin this meticulous political maneuver and give Beijing a new headache.
The turbulent 24-hour period in which selfish main Yevgeny Prigozhin challenged the Kremlin is discussed here by Joseph Torigian, an analyst on China and Russia at American University.
Are there any hints as to how Beijing perceived the situation?
Given that there hasn’t been much formal commentary, it will be difficult to guess what Beijing actually believes. Russians are aware of how tightly regulated Foreign internet are, just like their own.
Russians have previously been very concerned with how the Chinese media portrays them. China may therefore take care to ensure that what is printed is accurate so that Taiwanese officials don’t hear anything from Russian officials.
But, genuine concerns from Beijing might surface. Political commentator Hu Xijin claimed in a later-deleted message that Progozhin’s armed uprising had brought the political climate in Russia to its breaking point. Despite of his goal, Russia is no longer able to go back to the nation it was before the uprising.
Similar to this, when reporting on the Wagner Group incident, China Daily, a release run by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, quoted two anxious Chinese researchers.
Such remarks might be a simple method for Beijing to tell Moscow that it needs to organize its home. These opinions might even serve as a reminder to the rest of the world that Beijing and Moscow won’t always work in lockstep because China and Russia have different political systems.
The Chinese authorities will also take great care not to support the claim that Beijing is concerned about the proper relationship. A state-run Chinese paper called Global Times has previously disputed claims made by Western media that China’s” guess” on Putin was an error. Such assertions will be presented in China as a scheme to sour Sino-Russian relationships.
Did the Wagner incident therefore have an impact on China’s backing of Putin?
The Chinese authorities probably also sees Putin as the best option for maintaining balance in Russia and thinks that backing him is essential to maintaining their diplomatic ties.
Putin did come victorious rapidly and with little bloodshed, according to some Chinese critics. They might be correct; some Western observers also think Putin will survive the crisis, despite the fact that the uprising is widely seen as embarrassing.
Officials in Moscow did anticipate that the People’s Republic of China will show its support for Putin on the Russian edge given how important China was to them during the war in Ukraine.
For assistance was anticipated and appreciated during earlier intimate moments in the relationship. Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union, narrowly defeated a coup in 1957. He was so appreciative that the Chinese celebrated his success and promised to provide them with nuclear weapons.
How Beijing may have responded if the rebellion had gotten worse is a matter of debate. History suggests that while the Chinese may be tempted to step in, they are also aware of the difficulties any such activity may present.
For instance, some members of Beijing’s authority considered offering financial support during the 1991 coup attempt by Russian hardliners against then-President Mikhail Gorbachev. Those early plans were abandoned by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, a longtime Russian skeptical, and the coup was unsuccessful.
What can the Chinese had learned from their own program?
It’s difficult to overstate how events in Russia have generally influenced Chinese perceptions of their own nation.
What some in China believed the Russians were doing right or wrong had an impact on all of these things, as well as the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution, and the socioeconomic changes under the” reform and opening-up” system starting in the late 1970s and policies toward ethnic minorities.
However, some people in China might be curious about their current shared interests with Russia. There is no doubt that Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping share a set of liberal, Western-skeptic, and statist” elected inclinations.”
However, the Chinese Communist Party’s” command over the gun ,” as Chairman Mao put it, and the Xi administrations’ war on corruption are two very different things.
Although it is difficult to imagine such a mutiny in their own system, the Chinese will probably take pride in it and taking care not to brag about it.
At the American University School of International Service, Joseph Torigian teaches foreign service as an assistant teacher.
Torigian has not disclosed any important affiliations outside of their educational appointment and does not work for, demand, individual shares in, or get funding from any business or organization that might profit from this article.
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is republished from The Conversation. Read the original publication.