> Remind me again why China supports Russian aggression in the Ukraine?
China is bordering Russia. If you think that somehow doesn't change the type of relationship both parties are forced to have you don't understand geopolitics.
The United States has extremely weak neighbors and huge oceans separating us from threats. Obviously our situation is very different.
Yet those "weak" neighbors feel just fine criticizing the US and entering disputes[0][1], to which we don't respond by just invading them, clearly.
China can defend itself just fine, is the general assertion they make, so what are they worried about exactly? If Finland can speak out against Russia, why can't China?
This bypasses my central point, which is they're clearly continuing to support Russia and not act in any way to diminish their ability to stop being an aggressor, despite this press release, the reality is clear: they don't care about the Ukraine or applying pressure to Russia to resolve this
> China is bordering Russia. If you think that somehow doesn't change the type of relationship both parties are forced to have you don't understand geopolitics.
Can you explain what you are thinking? One implication is that China is supporting Russia because they are afraid of a Russian military actin, but is that what you mean?
Basically it means you should be friendly to your neighbors.
To use a crude analogy - if you're in a apartment complex you would probably be nicer to your neighbor than if they lived in another building, and not literally next to you, right?
Russia, China and India are the three neighbors living in a triplex. Meanwhile the United States is in a mansion surrounded by a moat a mile away.
If one of your neighbors was beating up and stealing from another of your neighbors, are your really saying you’d cosy up to them? By this logic you’d expect Finland to be Russia’s best friend.
I am critical of the Chinese system of government, but I’d never think of them as cowards.
>By this logic you’d expect Finland to be Russia’s best friend
"Finlandization is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. [...] The Finnish political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen once explained Finlandization as "the art of bowing to the East without mooning the West"." [0]
The Soviet Union's collapse allowed Finland to spread its wings a bit more broadly, but it's worth pointing out that yes, Finland was cozying up to the Soviet Union like mad, in order to best survive their physical proximity. The logic does seem to check out, at least while the bogeyman of the USSR still shambled around.
Is China cozying up to Russia? By what metric, and for reference, using the same metric, how much is the United States, and other countries "cozying" up?
Xi expressed China's unconditional support for Russia, and then Xi's foreign minister later came back and said that the unconditional support was actually conditional. So they are actually playing the whole conflict from both sides, which is much more of a traditional Chinese position.
Kind of like how (some) Republicans support Russia indirectly by criticizing the Ukraine war expenses from the USA's behalf, yet continuing to vote for the arms deals.
China is bordering Russia. If you think that somehow doesn't change the type of relationship both parties are forced to have you don't understand geopolitics.
The United States has extremely weak neighbors and huge oceans separating us from threats. Obviously our situation is very different.