by Guido Santevecchi
And now a Chinese contingent is making its way to Russia to direct major maneuvers from Moscow between August 30 and September 5
Xi Jinping is back on the scene, once again on the front page of the Chinese press after a two-week retreat in Beidaihe, the Yellow Sea city where the communist leadership meets every year in early August to refine the fall political strategy. A working holiday in absolute secrecy, with no picture of the powerful in China.
But this time we have certainty: From Beidaihe, Xi has been very busy with war games: First, he gave orders for the week of major military maneuvers off Taiwan, including the launching of four ballistic missiles in the Sea of Japan. To make Tokyo understand that in the event of war not even their shores would be safe. This summer, the People’s Liberation Army must have had tens of thousands of their military licenses revoked to meet the demands of the party state (which, Mao Zedong said, commands the rifle).
With the Taiwanese operation (provisionally) concluded, Chinese ships and planes have concentrated in the Yellow Sea, where they will maneuver until tomorrow; other units relentlessly battered the South China Sea, dotted with a dozen artificial islands fortified by Beijing’s military genius, which in the event of a conflict would serve to keep the enemy (predictably American) under the cross-threat of air and missile forces.
Last Sunday, Red Star fighters and bombers took part in joint exercises in Thailand to improve mutual trust between the two air forces. And now a Chinese contingent is making its way to Russia to direct major maneuvers from Moscow between August 30 and September 5. The motivation follows the same peaceful formula: Deepen practical and friendly cooperation with the armies of participating nations, says the Beijing Defense Ministry. And he ensures that the Chinese presence is not linked to the current international and regional situation.
As if to say that Xi Jinping is not sending the People’s Liberation Army to Russia to join Vladimir Putin in threatening Ukraine with some kind of axis of evil. In fact, as early as 2018, Chinese soldiers had seen each other at the Vostok maneuvers (east in Russian) conducted by the Russian army. a fact that last February, on the eve of the attack on Kyiv, Xi promised Putin full cooperation and that the Pentagon is always on high alert to stop the Chinese from sending war supplies to Russian friends.
Vostok 2022 will also send detachments from India, Belarus, Mongolia and Tajikistan and it’s going big: 13 polygons have been identified in eastern Russia, where the war games will take place: the forces of New Delhi and Beijing deploy towards the Himalayas -to face aggressively border; and India is part of the Quad, the informal organization that includes the United States, Japan and Australia in an alliance of democracies with common security interests (to counter Chinese expansionism). War games and political games, then, where each country is willing to play different roles in the same grand game of power. Another example: the United States and Indonesia just wrapped up a two-week naval exercise, ablaze, just as Indonesian President Joko Widodo was en route from Xi to Beijing. The Garuda Shield maneuvers were joined for the first time by Japan, Australia and Singapore.
Washington and Beijing are stepping up their Asian theater exercises to form a strategic deterrent and lure the largest number of Indo-Pacific nations into their camp, explains Huynh Tam Sang, a professor of international relations at the University of Vietnam.
Kim Jong-un continues to play on his own: North Korea fired two cruise missiles yesterday after a two-month hiatus, perhaps because of the pandemic which, according to what his sister just revealed, has also infected Kim. According to rumors circulating in Moscow, the Marshal of Pyongyang may send a few dozen soldiers to Ukraine to show his support for the Russians and study a war being fought with American-supplied weapons.
August 18, 2022 (change August 18, 2022 | 09:31)
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