I’m not quite getting the point here?
An isolated fortress economy Russia could possibly make enough consumer good to supply their own demand long term? Quite possibly as an economy in a dumpster does not produce much demand and little demand means less production means further into the dumpster for the economy. Russia has a strong automotive industry. If no one can afford to buy the cars and they cannot export then it declines.
Yes, that’s my take. And, ergo, they wouldn’t be reliant on China.
That is not correct. Russia is both a major importer and exporter.
Can you give an example of any country that has made autarky work? North Korea is trying to do it and their economy is a basket case.
The definition of “work” and for how long can be problematic.
Japan was an autarky from 1635 to 1859.
China in the Ming Dynasty from 1368 to 1644 was increasingly isolated by regulation.
The Incan Empire could be argued as being generally isolationist.
Britain in the era of Imperial preferences?
They are self sufficient. They can feed themselves, they are major agriculture producers now. They can provide most of the goods and services that modern life needs.
Thats before their access to China for imported goods. Sure the West can sanction Chinese companies who do business in China, but the Chinese deal with that like they have with Iran, having Companies who specialize in trade with one country.
So, no Apple or Samsung products which is a bummer. But Sputnik2050, which is Russian made and offers 90% of what Apple nd Samsung provide. And gets some reasonable export. No Huawei. But EratzHuawei. Which is a totally different Company, which co-incidentally use Huawei hardware, employs lot of ex-Huawei executives and workers. Don’t get your knickers in a twist US Commerce Dept, they are not us, stealing our tech, we even sued them, Court dates in 7 years.
North Korea is still a Communist nation. More importantly, the government there views the general public as a slave force to be used and mistreated as far as desired. I don’t think they have any sense that the economy should be anything other than a basket case. Those in government are free to party and live it up, surrounded by slaves, and that’s the right sort of economics for their taste.
At least at the moment, Russia is a capitalist nation that is largely free, with a professional, college educated government. The top level of that system is corrupt and mildly psychopathic but so far they’ve always saved the worst parts of those inclinations for foreign policy. Moscow is a beautiful city, they’ve been upgrading their other cities one by one as international sports events have been broadcast from their territory. The people have seen their quality of life go from Soviet terror to, effectively, being no different from life like somewhere in Italy or Greece. Protestors are arrested and serve a fairly short term in jail - the Pussy Riot girls had some run ins with the police but weren’t drawn and quartered in the city square. So long as you keep your head down, and vote as you’re supposed to, you’re basically living in a free land.
We’ll have to see if Putin changes his approach after the war but, if he keeps to the path that he was on, he’ll just declare that they’re finally on the path to being fully self-sufficient and start working on his next plan to Take Over the World, while reordering the Russian workforce for their new status.
Good examples of what happens when a country tries autarky. All of these countries fell behind economically and ended up having problems with other countries which had not tried autarky. Japan suffered the least because it realized its mistake at the last minute and launched an aggressive campaign in the opposite direction.
Autarky doesn’t work. It especially doesn’t work in the modern world. If a country tries to run an economy separate from the rest of the world, its economy goes into decline. And when a national economy goes into decline, the country’s military strength goes into decline. Pretty soon, other countries see that economic and military weakness and target that country.
If Russia tries autarky, it will experience the same outcome that Ming China experienced.
One thing that I’ve seen lately that I haven’t seen mentioned in any of these threads is, there seems to be a lot of people on Chinese social media who are cheering on the Russians and saying a lot of pretty disparaging things about the Ukrainians. I haven’t seen a lot of this in the media or here, but I guess there is a segment of Chinese on their social media who really seem to want Russia to kick Ukraine’s asses and look forward to a Russian victory. Of course, there are always all sorts of idiots on social media, but what is funny about this is, afaik, none of these types of comments are being censored.
That’s…unusual…if people are saying something that the government disagrees with. Has anyone else seen anything about this?
Hmm, the New York Times is reporting that the western intelligence think the Chinese were told about the invasion plans and asked Putin to wait until after the Olympics.
The article is behind a paywall here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukraine-china.html
But The Guardian has printed a part of it:
A Western intelligence report said senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, according to senior Biden administration officials and a European official.
The report indicates that senior Chinese officials had some level of knowledge about Russia’s war plans or intentions before the invasion started last week. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met with President Xi Jinping of China in Beijing on Feb. 4 before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Moscow and Beijing issued a 5,000-word statement at the time declaring that their partnership had “no limits,” denouncing NATO enlargement and asserting that they would establish a new global order with true “democracy.”
The intelligence on the exchange between the Chinese and Russian officials was classified. It was collected by a Western intelligence service and considered credible by officials reviewing it. Senior officials in the United States and allied governments passed it around as they discussed when Mr. Putin might attack Ukraine.
However, different intelligence services had varying interpretations, and it is not clear how widely the information was shared.
Not really. Now, they certainly are a totalitarian/authoritarian state.
After this war is over, I think Russia is going to become China’s mineral colony. Beijing will really have them over a barrel. It will be a huge fire sale for copper, coal, iron, oil, titanium, palladium, everything.
I mean, if you want to get technical, I don’t know that any country has ever been Communist.
Yeah, but North Korea has officially changed their governing philosophy from communism to “Juche” (self-reliance).
North Korea is still a one-party state controlled by the WPK. I suppose you could make the case (same as with every communist state) that it’s actually a socialist state (centralized, command economy, majority of businesses are state-owned, etc), and I know a lot of folks make this case (same with China and Cuba today).
It’s fairly obvious that China was in close contact with Russia over this whole thing. I mean, unless you think it’s a coincidence that only a few weeks before the invasion China and Russia penned a series of agreements to up China’s importation of gas, oil, and coal as well as wheat…something they hadn’t imported from Russia since, IIRC, the 80’s. These were pretty clearly aimed at mitigating potential western sanctions in the event of an invasion. So, it should come as no surprise that China asked Russia (or, more specifically, Xi asked Putin at their meeting during the Olympics) to hold off on his invasion until after the Olympics were over…and Putin went along with that, especially considering all that Russia could potentially get out of Chinese assistance once the invasion started.
I think China, like everyone else, has been surprised by the success of the Ukrainians and the lack of quick and utter victory by Russia. The bit about social media I posted above kind of shows this. A lot of netizens on China’s social media platforms were all gung-ho about the Russian invasion, even saying some pretty nasty stuff about getting Ukrainian slave brides and the like. The fact that this stuff was allowed to run rampant for days kind of shows that the government at least tacitly agreed with it. Then you have the fact that Chinese citizens in Ukraine were told by the government to simply and proudly display the flag of China and they would be fine…an implication that Russia was going to be in control and would make it a priority to safeguard Chinese nationals. Also, on Chinese social media, a lot of posts supporting Ukraine were being censored heavily in the early days. A lot of this has since been walked back. The government told their people in Ukraine to keep a low profile and definitely not display the flag of China (I saw a video of a Chinese national saying they were having to tell folks they were Japanese because of some of the blowback from Ukrainians over some of the more distasteful social media posts). Now some of the worst stuff on China’s social media in support of Russia is being censored as well as the pro-Ukrainian stuff. It’s clear that China is rethinking its position on all of this stuff and perhaps is even starting to realize that supporting Russia might not be their best course, at least if secondary sanctions start to be imposed.
FWIW interviews with experts that I heard at the beginning of the build were predicting the week after the Olympics were over. This was not a surprise. Don’t push into China’s spotlight, end of planned maneuvers with Belorussian forces, before ground gots moe soggy.
Here is my theory:
China is smart and patient. At least a lot smarter and more patient than America and Russia, who they see as rivals. And China seems less ideologically driven (at least…ideology beyond "what’s good for China). As much as they want to reacquire Taiwan, there is no immediate reason to do so and doing so doesn’t really further China’s interests in spreading power and influence, primarily through economic means.
China’s Belt and Road plan would potentially create huge economic opportunities by linking China to Eastern Europe though all those little former Soviet states south of Russia. I could see Russia feeling threatened by that based on location and the USA threatened based on principal.
So I believe China is content to let Russia and the West face off, wasting money and resources in another Cold War while China continues to invest their resources in infrastructure.
They will acquire Taiwan if and when they feel the West is in no position to do anything about it.
This is largely correct, and while China and Russia are important trading and strategic partners in a realpolitik sense, they have a long cultural animosity and conflicting national and supernational agendas. In the case of China, their objective with the Belt and Road Initiative is to become the dominant hegemony in the South and Central Asia Region with a reach all the way across South-Central Europe and Africa, specifically for access to natural resources. Despite all of the military posturing, their plans for Taiwan have long been to isolate it economically and geographically until they force it into deeper concessions culminating in a political recapitulation rather than by military force. There have been some indications that this policy has been accelerated under Xi Jinping but they’re probably rethinking any direct intervention based upon the nearly unified global response to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and impose sanction (although whether nations would be willing and able to sanction China in the same way is another question).
China, of course, will be quite happy to use sanctions on Russia to both negotiate cheap oil, gas, and coal, and to gain concessions on territory on the disputed Inner Mongolian border with Far Eastern Federal District and mineral rights in Central Asia, particularly gold, aluminum, and uranium. In essence, it will try to turn Russia into a client state that can only deal with China for both export revenues and manufactured goods, and there is really little the US and EU can do about this as long as they impose sanctions, which argues for using this situation to aggressively pursue both true energy independence (develop energy supplies and systems that are renewable and sustainable) as well as reestablishing a robust manufacturing base including basic construction and fabrication materials as well as semiconductors and other rare earth components, finished goods, et cetera, even if this means taking a transitory hit in price inflation.
Stranger
China hasn’t invaded anyone recently. A standard degree of support for Taiwan is in order but the USA has already been doing that.