Image is of Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, delivering a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2023.
China has put forward a quite general peace proposal, which I imagine is both for Ukraine and also meant to be a general guide for solving conflicts in the future, with 12 points. Unfortunately it has no lobsters, nor dragons of chaos.
These 12 points are, as follows: respect the sovereignty of all countries and all countries are equal; abandon Cold War mentalities; cease hostilities; resume peace talks; resolve humanitarian crises; protect civilians and POWs; keep nuclear power plants safe (what a jab!); reduce strategic risks (that is, nuclear war); facilitate grain exports; stop unilateral sanctions; keep industrial and supply chains stable - the economy is not a weapon; and promote post-conflict reconstruction.
TeleSUR goes into more depth on each point for those interested.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
February 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 28th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 1st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 3rd's update is here in the comments.
March 4th's update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
American anti-war rally on March 18th by left groups!
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
Imo only Taiwan can be the flashpoint for a proxy war. China seems to have enough influence over the rest of its periphery to prevent the US from forcing them to act militarily.
The real question is what US action would force China's hand? Japan and Korea are already occupied by the US, so it's hard to imagine some escalation there being a red line for China. More importantly, as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, the West is quite hesitant about getting involved too directly in an armed conflict with a state with nuclear weapons. So it has to be a proxy war in Taiwan.
Eventhough China has said it wants reunification by a set time frame, I'm sceptical they want to invade or blockade Taiwan anytime soon. Especially an amphibious assault would just be too costly and high-risk without a clear gain. Eventhough Taiwan is just 'one small island province', it would truly be a monumental task involving huge amounts of bodies and resources.
As time goes on and the rest of the world catches up on nanotechnology, Taiwan wil become of decreasing strategic importance. It's better for China to wait. Especially if/when the outcome of the Ukraine war is decided and Russia has annexed parts of Ukraine. Inshallah, the West will have learned the lesson that sometimes there's just nothing they can do to ultimately change the outcome in their favor.
This is how I see the war with China ending before it begins.
Using Taiwan to fight a proxy war against China will be much harder for the US to pull successfully off than the current proxy war in Ukraine. Unlike Ukraine that has large land borders and excellent rail and road connections to US vassal states, Taiwan is an island that can easily be blockaded by the Chinese navy, making resupplying the Taipei regime much harder, if not impossible. The smaller area of Taiwan also makes it easier for China to do a blitzkrieg move and reconquer enough of Taiwan to render the separatist government unviable before US aid can arrive. Also, the relative manpower available to each side is skewed much heavier against the US than is the case in Ukraine.
I don't see how the US can fight this war without getting actively involved with American ships and planes attacking Chinese ones.
Taiwn's geography, surrounded by sea, mountainous with few suitable locations for amphious landing operations, makes a successful blitzkrieg invasion very unlikely. It just doesn't seem worth it if you could just blockade the island and not lose thousands of lives storming the island.
Ofcourse you're right that it is also much harder for US aid to actually get there and that they would have to get involved directly to keep it up. But at the same time, I don't see a better option at this point for the US to provoke China, which they will want to do regardless.
Because Taiwan's geography is very challenging China is unlikely to actually invade before it is sure it will meet little resistance. Because the US and China are still too reliant on eachother, both sides are still waiting to gain further advantage over the other in terms of securing vital technologies and production chains. By that time, Taiwan will necessarily have lost strategic importance in the world market.
A proxy war in Taiwan doesn't necessarily have to look like the one in Ukraine. The goal for the US wouldn't have to be to exhaust China's military capability as it tries to conquer Taiwan. The US will try to cross Chinese redlines over Taiwan to provoke them into military action, which the US will then try to use to cut China off from the rest of the world.