Officially, China is seeking some kind of peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine but in practice they are buying up Russia’s oil which helps keep the war effort going and also selling Russia non-lethal military equipment. Politico published a story today about a somewhat hidden side of the bromance between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

The pictures posted on the Chinese company’s website show a tall, Caucasian man with a crew cut and flattened nose inspecting body armor at its factory.

“This spring, one of our customers came to our company to confirm the style and quantity of bulletproof vests, and carefully tested the quality of our vests,” Shanghai H Win, a manufacturer of military-grade protective gear, proudly reported on its website in March. The customer “immediately directly confirmed the order quantity of bulletproof vests and subsequent purchase intention.”…

Evidence of this kind shows that China, despite Beijing’s calls for peace, is pushing right up to a red line in delivering enough nonlethal, but militarily useful, equipment to Russia to have a material impact on President Vladimir Putin’s 17-month-old war on Ukraine. The protective gear would be sufficient to equip many of the men mobilized by Russia since the invasion.

Russia has imported more than $100 million-worth of drones from China so far this year — 30 times more than Ukraine. And Chinese exports of ceramics, a component used in body armor, increased by 69 percent to Russia to more than $225 million, while dropping by 61 percent to Ukraine to a mere $5 million, Chinese and Ukrainian customs data show.

If this is a proxy war, China is on the other side. And that’s probably not helping them much. China’s economy hasn’t bounced back the way it was expected to and if the present is a mixed bag the future is looking even less promising thanks to a US led effort to cut China off from high tech equipment. Not only is the US refusing to sell high end chipmaking gear to China, we’ve convinced the Netherlands and Japan to join the effort. This report is from last month:

The Dutch government on Friday announced new restrictions on exports of some semiconductor equipment, boosting a U.S.-led drive to curb supplies of high-tech components to China but drawing an angry response from Beijing.

“We have taken this step in the interest of our national security” said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher, adding such equipment may have military applications.

Schreinemacher said a “very limited” number of companies and product models would be affected, and China was not named. But the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands described the move as an “abuse of export control measures” that violate trade rules.

This week, Japan joined in as well even though there is some discomfort about it.

From this week, Japan is restricting 23 types of equipment, ranging from machines that deposit films on silicon wafers to devices that etch out the microscopic circuits of chips that could have military uses.

But, while the U.S. referenced China 20 times in its October announcement targeting Chinese companies, Japan has chosen broad equipment controls not specifically aimed at its bigger neighbour.

“We feel an odd discomfort with how the U.S. is doing this. There’s no need to identify the country, all you need to do is control the item,” a Japanese industry ministry official told Reuters. Japan can’t sanction countries unless they are involved in a conflict, the source added.

The result is that the CCP has poured money into making China a tech leader but can’t being to do that without buying up western equipment needed to make the latest chips.

The ruling Communist Party has invested billions of dollars in building Chinese chip foundries but needs Western and Japanese technology to produce the most advanced chips. That threatens to delay Beijing’s efforts to develop tech industries.

So on the one hand China is doing pretty well right now being besties with Russia. They get cheap oil and lots of exports to make up for all the things Russia can no longer buy from Europe or the US. But on the other hand, Russia has little to offer besides oil and a customer base. As far as friendships go, the upside seems limited. It would be much better for China’s future to be friends with the west, something they are surely aware of right now. It’s why they keep up the pretense of neutrality and peace-seeking. They really can’t afford to burn those bridges with the west the way that Putin has.

Yesterday a professor at Johns Hopkins wrote an opinion piece arguing that China’s history is one of siding with whoever benefits them the most.

In 1969, China and the Soviet Union seemed on the brink of war.

They fought a deadly border clash in March of that year and another in August. The Kremlin dropped hints of a nuclear strike. Over the next few years, they exchanged barbs. Mao Zedong warned, “You piss on my head, and I shall retaliate!” The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev called Mao “treacherous.” An alliance that Moscow and Beijing previously billed as unbreakable quickly unraveled.

So Mao reached out to his avowed foe the United States. Mao, a scathing critic of what he called American imperialism, suddenly referred to President Richard Nixon as “the No. 1 good fellow in the world,” and by 1972, Nixon turned up in Beijing. It was a geopolitical earthquake that altered the course of history…

In 1975, Geng Biao, a senior Chinese foreign policy official, explained to other party leaders the rationale for the switch. It was not because “we have good feelings toward the United States,” he said, according to the minutes of a party meeting. “We are taking advantage of their conflict,” referring to the Soviets and the Americans. He added, “We can use them.”

The conflict between the US and Russia still exists, especially over the past year, and China is still taking advantage of it, but all things considered China seems to be on the wrong side of it this time. Looking at this purely as a matter of self-interest, now would be a great time for China to have second thoughts and suddenly warm up to the US and Europe. The near-coup last month showed that Putin is a shaky partner and China’s future probably depends on making nice with the west rather than arming an autocrat who is barely holding on to power.

The problem of course is pride. In order to change sides, Xi would have to swallow some of his own. And having already promised publicly that Taiwan would be reunified with the mainland by any means necessary, it’s hard to imagine Xi could give up on that now. China really seems locked into a losing hand. What it gains is a “junior partner” a vassal state dependent on it for the foreseeable future now that Putin won’t be selling oil or gas to Europe anytime soon.

Is China willing to settle for that or does it have other ambitions. Putin can’t remain in office forever. Whoever follows him will come to power in a country which is hugely dependent on China. You have to wonder what China will do with all of that power and influence? Maybe in years to come Russia will be to China what Belarus is to Russia now.