Post #4956

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ Another perspective on the matter comes from Ryan Haas, a senior fellow at Brookings. In a post on X, he wrote: “In viewing Trump’s efforts to gain control of Greenland, Beijing appears to be following Napoleon’s maxim: ‘Never interrupt your adversary when he’s making a mistake.’” Because although China pledges allegiance to the international rules-based order, Xi has long talked of the world undergoing “great changes unseen in a century”, echoing Carney’s sentiment of global “rupture”. Seiwert says: “Beijing could use Carney’s language rhetorically to suggest a shared diagnosis of US-centric instability, even if there is no convergence on values, interests or outcomes.” Rather than kowtow to the southern neighbour, Carney is trying to lessen his country’s dependence on the US. In Beijing, he agreed to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%, diverting from an alignment with Washington that had left one of China’s key exports in effect blocked from the North American market. Ukraine may be particularly high on the agenda for Petteri Orpo, Finland’s prime minister, who lands in Beijing on Sunday. “China’s support for Russia has definitely strained relations with the Nordic states and Finland is no exception,” says Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. But Andersson notes that Finland’s China relations have typically been more stable than those of Sweden and Norway, and this visit is likely to bolster those ties. In the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries wrestled with the fact that many were dependent on Russia for key commodities such as fossil fuels. There were calls to avoid falling into a similar situation with China, the world’s most important supplier of clean energy technology. Even back in 2020, the chair of the UK’s joint intelligence committee, Simon Gass, said: “China represents a risk on a pretty wide scale.” Such concerns may be fading into the rearview mirror as middle powers seek to cling on to a world of multilateralism in the face of a wrecking ball swung by the country that was once its greatest defender. China insists Trump’s behaviour is nothing to celebrate. But the outcome may nevertheless strengthen Beijing’s position on the world stage. #trump#beijing#china#russia#xi#carney 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸