Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine indicates the emergence of a new Russia-China alliance — an “authoritarian bloc” that seeks to challenge the US-led democratic world order.
The invasion has sparked intense local debate, with many concerned that China might follow suit and invade Taiwan.
Chinese nationalists and pro-Beijing Taiwanese have been hammering away at their keyboards in an attempt to shape the narrative around the Russian invasion.
Many posts and comments repeat similar themes, such as: “I would not go to war for any politician,” and reveal their origins. The warped logic of such posts could only have come from inside an authoritarian regime.
There have been numerous “hot takes” on the war in Ukraine circulating on Taiwanese discussion forums, including Professional Technology Temple, the nation’s most popular online bulletin board, and Dcard, an online forum popular among young people.
Typical examples include: “High ranking [Ukrainian] officials will certainly flee like rats from a sinking ship — I wouldn’t fight on their behalf” and: “If China invades [Taiwan], I would definitely run up the white flag.”
In the short term, such posts trend online, but they are not only highly suspicious — most Taiwanese Internet users would suspect that they have been fabricated by Chinese bot farms — but comments such as: “I wouldn’t go to war for any politician” also clearly betray a Chinese, rather than a Taiwanese, thought process.
Chinese society is still structured around an authoritarian, imperial model. Everyone and everything is subservient to the “emperor.” For example, a video circulated online during China’s Himalayan border conflict with India last year showed Chinese recruits crying because they think they are being sent to the front line as “cannon fodder.”
Under China’s imperial system of government — rather than the nation belonging to the people — its people are the property of the emperor, which in today’s China means the Chinese Communist Party. Under this model, the sentiment: “I wouldn’t go to war for any politician,” or being reduced to tears at the prospect of possibly dying for one’s country, is to be expected.
In democratic societies, the inverse is true. The nation belongs to the people, who give their political representatives a temporary mandate to rule by means of an electoral vote. This is a far cry from China, where everything belongs to the one-party state.
The whole world is aware that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected safe passage out of Ukraine offered to him by Washington, remained in the capital and, if necessary, would fight alongside his compatriots in Kyiv’s volunteer battalions. The same is true of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian lawmakers and many ordinary Ukrainians.
From the top down, Ukrainians are bravely resisting the enemy. They are fighting to protect their democratic freedoms, for it is like oxygen to them. It is the most basic of human instincts to want to protect family, friends and native soil.
This sense of attachment to community, to one’s compatriots, is something that most Chinese, trapped inside an unreformed imperial system, will never understand.
Pan Kuan was a participant in the 2014 Sunflower movement.
Translated by Edward Jones
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