Scarcely more than a week ago, Chinese social media and the country’s internet were ablaze with quick takes from both prominent commentators and ordinary folks praising Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armed bid to subdue Ukraine, as well as with fervent celebrations of what many in China saw as a toothless reaction from the West.
The responses from Chinese voices like these, more emotional and nationalistic than lucid and analytical, saw in Putin’s defiance of the United States and Europe more evidence of the unstoppable rise of authoritarian states like their own, and of the longed-for decline of the West.
Although commentary on Taiwan is one of the most carefully censored subjects on the Chinese internet, many were also quick to see in the Western rollout of what at first seemed like tentative and piecemeal sanctions—as opposed to an immediate quarantining of the Russian economy or direct Western military involvement—proof that when the moment comes for Beijing to assert the control over Taiwan it has long claimed is its right, China has little to fear from the self-proclaimed democratic world.