The Chinese government has just made its warning to the world to stop provoking China, adding that without Chinese security there cannot be world security. China said this in its Global Security Initiative Concept Paper which was released on February 21st, 2023. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, speaking on the Global Security Initiative, explained: “It has been a year since the Ukraine crisis has escalated in an all-round way, and the situation has attracted international attention. The Chinese side is deeply concerned about the escalating conflict and potential for developments to spiral out of control”. Explaining China’s position, the Global Times writes:

China will continue to promote peace talks, provide Chinese wisdom for a comprehensive solution to the Ukraine issue, and work with the international community to promote dialogue and consultation to address the concerns of all parties to seek common security, Qin said. At the same time, we urge relevant countries to immediately stop adding fuel to the fire, stop blaming China and stop provoking the situation by using references like “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.”

During the speech, Qin also noted that China’s development cannot be separated from a stable international environment. Similarly, without China’s security, there will be no global security.

Qin Gang explained further: “The external suppression and containment of China has been continuously escalated and intensified, posing a serious threat to China’s sovereignty and security”.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi accused the US of enticing problems in Asia:

“The US, as a major country, is supposed to work for a political settlement of the crisis instead of fanning the flames or profiteering from the situation.”

Requests like these should not be ignored. Remember what happened just the month before the outbreak of war in 2022. Russia told the Americans in January of 2022 that the condition for peace would be a promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. The US rejected this request and Russia invaded Ukraine the next month. As we read in ABC News:

But NATO unanimously rebuffed Moscow’s core demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in Eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War. Russia and the United States held talks on Monday in Geneva where Moscow pressed those demands and which the U.S. rejected as impossible.

And if there is war in Asia again, the US will use Japan as its proxy against the Chinese. The US would want the war to continue as long as possible with the hopes of weakening China. This is why the US continues to back Ukraine. As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” The point of the US’s support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan was to weaken the Soviet Union. The West wants to prolong this war as long as possible, to drain Russia. This is why when Zelensky was possibly getting close to peace in May of 2022, Boris Johnson travelled to Ukraine and pushed Zelensky to back out. The anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported: “The Russian side… was actually ready for the Zelenskyy-Putin meeting. But two things happened, after which a member of the Ukrainian delegation, Mykhailo Podoliak, had to openly admit that it was ‘not the time’ for the meeting of the presidents.” The same report reads:

According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.

The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.

Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to “press him.”

Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end”.

The same reasoning will be used in the case of a Chinese war with Japan, and that is a prolonged conflict with the goal of weakening China. We should not ignore China’s warning. One thing that we can learn from the current war in Ukraine, is that with enough provocation, war can definitely break out.