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Comment by redwood | Hacker News Reader

The only way to stop China from shipping bulk electronic components for these weapons over a multi-thousand-mile land border with Russia is for the West to wake up and start contemplating leveraging its power over China in the form of buying from other providers.. it's not enough to just buy from a neighbor that ships the goods from China and puts a package on them. It's also not enough to feel no pain and be unwilling to pay more because no one can bulk flood markets like China can.

The question is does the West have any guts here? Seeing Germany's chancellor pandering there this week suggests not

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China is indeed not a card that the west can play easily. In order to get China to stop buying Russian gas and selling weapons tech, we would need to deeply sanction China, which is only possible if the west is willing to take on really serious economic pain. And that’s not worth it for a non-NATO state.

>China is indeed not a card that the west can play easily.

The west cannot play this at all, especially right now.

The EU population (no matter how much our politicians saw "we can do this!") is already financially under strain from the high inflation, high energy bills, stagnant wages, high living costs and high interest rates, hence the shift to the anti-establishment right wing politicians all over the EU.

The last thing they would want right now is another war with China.

Squeeze China and soon you’ll see shiny new toys fill holes in Russia’s capabilities.

This is a failure to understand the situation—China’s restraint so far. And that for the West such actions come with consequences now.

China’s (again, rather limited) involvement will not decrease. There is much the West can do to increase it.

I think it's a mistake to assume China can freely flout how much it's assisting Russia's war machine without facing severe consequences particularly from European trade partners.

I think it's a mistake to assume the West can freely flout how much it's fuelling the war machine without facing consequences. Sooner or later.

As Chinese FM Wang expressed today: The rest of the world is not fooled by the West’s rhetoric. They see the hypocrisy and the warmongering, they understand the true intent.

And again. Unlike the West, China continues to show much restraint. Less than it used to, true. But they have quite a bit of room left to escalate. The West has not. Not where it doesn’t get painful and dangerous.

Which is probably where we’re going. So be it.

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