The locations of these operations include Beijing, Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as Hong Kong. Of course, Beijing has a history of using its potent armed forces and muscular coercive apparatus within China’s borders to repress vigorously peaceful protesters, political dissidents and disaffected ethnic minority peoples. Whereas Russia has more than 20 military installations beyond its borders, to date, China has only one official military base on foreign soil - in Djibouti (established in 2017) - and a handful of other facilities it does not formally acknowledge. China’s largest deployments of troops overseas in the post-Cold War era have been on U.N. But China, unlike Russia, has refrained from massive interventions, invasions or occupations of other countries since it invaded Vietnam in 1979. Around its periphery, China has engaged in provocations, confrontations and even violent clashes. Moscow has also actively supported armed groups and militias in some of these same countries and others.Īlthough China has also been active and assertive in the use of its armed forces beyond its borders in recent years, Beijing has eschewed large-scale combat operations. Russia under Putin has repeatedly dispatched its armed forces for combat missions overseas to a range of countries, including Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, as well as conducted major military interventions against other states, most recently Kazakhstan (albeit at the invitation of that country’s president). Xi Jinping’s China is not Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Taiwan is not Ukraine. Beyond some broad-brush parallels - the most obvious parallel being that both Ukraine and Taiwan are peace-loving democracies that are the objects of belligerent irredentism on the part of more militarily powerful and threatening neighboring autocracies - there are also significant differences. One popular contemporary analogy is between Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Ukraine and China’s approach to Taiwan. Taiwanese helicopters fly the country’s flag through the capital Taipei. Almost inevitably people look to draw analogies-both historical and contemporary ones. Observers have grappled with the meaning of the act of aggression and scrambled to ponder the wider implications of the war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - the most consequential military conflict Europe has witnessed since the Second World War - has riveted the attention of the world.
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