Will Russia’s struggle in Ukraine help Taiwan — or hurt it? | Russia-Ukraine war

In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing and Moscow doubled down on their close relationship.

While Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have a long history of working together, they publicly cemented their ties with a “no-limits” partnership just weeks before the war began.

The timing of the meeting and the subsequent invasion, after the Beijing Winter Olympics had concluded, led many observers to wonder whether Xi knew the war was coming. They also wondered, as Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, whether Taiwan was next.

Superficially at least, Ukraine and Taiwan appear to have much in common. Both are democracies whose territories have historically been claimed by much larger and better-armed neighbours. Beijing has long pledged to “reunify” with Taiwan by force or by peace by 2049, the year the Chinese Communist Party has set for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, 100 years after their victory in the country’s Civil War.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait rose further last August as Nancy Pelosi, then the United States House of Representatives speaker, became the highest-ranking US official to visit Taipei in 25 years. China responded with a series of war exercises around Taiwan and ramped up its rhetoric. In 2022, Beijing sent a record 1,737 flights into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone, which includes the airspace around Taiwan and the coast of China, according to data compiled by Gerald C Brown and Ben Lewis, independent defence analysts who track such incursions. This was more than the combined numbers for the previous four years.

Now, on the eve of the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s struggles to make advances in the war have once again given rise to questions about what lessons China may have learned from its close ally. Will China conclude that it might be better to attack Taiwan before it is better prepared to defend itself? Or has Putin’s war shown the perils of rushing into such a conflict?

The short answer: Predicting China’s behaviour is a challenge because its decision-making is opaque to much of the outside world. Instead, China…