The Daily Populous Friday July 4th, 2025 day edition
Authored by scmp.com and submitted by Clarinetaphoner

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing did not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it feared the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign ministry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.

However, Wang is said to have rejected the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting that if it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago.

During a marathon four-hour debate on a wide range of geopolitical and commercial grievances, Wang was said to have given Kallas – the former Estonian prime minister who only late last year took up her role as the bloc’s de facto foreign affairs chief – several “history lessons and lectures”.

A soldier of Ukraine’s 30th Separate Mechanised Brigade prepares to fires a rocket launcher toward Russian positions at the front line in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Thursday. Photo: AP

Some EU officials felt he was giving her a lesson in realpolitik, part of which focused on Beijing’s belief that Washington would soon turn its full attention eastward, two officials said.

Adeptobserver1 on July 4th, 2025 at 02:05 UTC »

What is a Russian loss? Historian Victor David Hanson, a conservative with near daily YouTube commentaries, made an interesting and perhaps valid point on the Ukraine war about 10 days ago, paraphrasing:

> When the war in Ukraine began in February 2022, Russia already held Crimea, which it had annexed in 2014, and major parts of the Donbas region, specifically Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia held 42,000 square kilometers. Since the start of the war, Russia has gained an additional 119,000 square kilometers, bringing the total occupied territory to almost 27% of Ukraine.

> A lot of this increase has come in the past year. If Putin ends the war now, he has to explain to Russian elites and the general populace what was won at the cost an estimated 1 million Russian casualties. If the additional 119,000 square kilometers that Russia has taken an adequate achievement?

Hanson argues that Russia has to achieve significantly more, either in terms of land taken or Ukrainian concessions such as not joining NATO, in order for Russia to feel that the war was not a botched enterprise.

ttown2011 on July 3rd, 2025 at 23:10 UTC »

This isn’t new information

While China doesn’t need Russia as much as Russia needs China… China still needs Russia

Clarinetaphoner on July 3rd, 2025 at 20:47 UTC »

Chinese FM Wang Yi told EU leaders, including the bloc's top diplomat, that the PRC cannot afford a Russian loss in Ukraine because it would mean, in Beijing's view, that the US would thereafter turn its full attention to strategic competition with China.

SCMP scooped the minister's remarks and noted that they surprised multiple EU attendees, who long expected that the PRC wants the US to remain embroiled in the Ukraine War but had not heard Chinese officials say as much publicly or even privately.

Speaking personally as a US-based political scientist, this news will come as no surprise to the Trump Administration. In fact, IMO they could and perhaps will use this article as fodder to cite when they consider limiting additional military support to Kyiv.