A former Western intelligence official told Reuters that around 200 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Two current US officials, speaking anonymously, confirm that there are more than a hundred.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number at 155. His forces recently captured two.
Reuters reports that the United States government believes that these soldiers are mercenaries and apparently have no “direct link” with the Chinese government. Whether this point of view is correct or not, Washington and other governments should impose serious costs on China to allow its nationals to participate in the battle against Ukraine.
As part of an initial question, the Chinese regime actually sends soldiers to this Eastern European country. Reuters reports that “Chinese military officers, with Beijing’s approval, turned near Russia’s front lines to learn from war lessons and tactics.” The former Western intelligence official declared to the service of news that these officers “were absolutely there under approval”.
“The Communist Party wants to directly experience the battlefield in Ukraine to inform its popular liberation army for its future wars,” said Richard Fisher from Washington, DC, International Center for Evaluation and Strategy based on the DC region at the end of last week. “For the APL, the Ukrainian battlefield offers the most livid and brutal evolution of the revolutionary battle and research between unmanned weapons and the defenses of electronic warfare at the origin of them.”
“If the APL can seize and develop the lessons of the battlefield of Ukraine, it can considerably increase its chances of a quick victory in Blitzkrieg in Taiwan,” said Fisher.
It is also likely that Chinese officers are more than observing and reporting to China. They can also give advice to their Russian counterparts. China, after all, has argued Russia’s war effort from the start.
China almost certainly shed light on the invasion with its joint declaration of 5,300 words published by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing on February 4, 2022, only 20 days before the Russian attack. Putin could have invaded earlier, but he obviously reached Chinese wishes and waited after the end of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games to hit the former Soviet Republic.
China supported Putin war almost at all levels. For example, Beijing bought Russian oil sanctioned by the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, opened its financial and banking systems to the institutions of Russia under sanction, provided military and diplomatic and propaganda support and sold both double-use articles and, according to some sources,.
Given the support of Beijing in Moscow and Pyongyang, it is unlikely that North Korea was able to join the war on the side of Russia without the approval of China.
Regarding mercenaries, Beijing probably knew and approved their participation in the war.
“It is unlikely that these soldiers would have been authorized to go to Russia without the whole consent of the XI regime,” said Charles Burton of the Think Tank.
“XI manages an almost total surveillance state and pays particular attention to the interactions of its nationals with close partners such as Russia,” said Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat stationed in Beijing. “A few hundred Chinese men of military age leave the country to fight in a foreign war is certainly something Beijing knows.”
There are, for example, that there are agents of the Ministry of State Security Agents in terms of visa requests for Russia.
The presence of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine recalls the “volunteers of the Chinese people” who went to fight the United Nations troops in North Korea from 1950.
“The sending of China to a small initial cohort to join the Russians conforms to the Chinese communist strategy to initially create a plausible denial, then a plating of legitimacy for a progressive accumulation of people on the front line,” explains Burton. “It will be almost certainly accompanied by the gradual introduction of sophisticated Chinese offensive weapons,” he added.
Burton is also concerned about the fact that Russia, liable to China due to support in Ukraine, will not be able to say no when China demands that Moscow sends forces to help it invade Taiwan or another neighbor.
Chinese and Russian soldiers regularly hold joint exercises in East Asia. Therefore, the Pentagon should assume that these two powers, as well as North Korea, will fight together during the next war.
China therefore probably sees a great advantage in Chinese troops, even if mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine.
The United States and other countries have imposed almost no cost on China for its extended support for the Russian war effort. We must not be surprised, therefore, that Beijing now thinks that it can, with impunity, send soldiers to fight in Europe.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Detrere America” and “The coming collapse of China”.
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