En February 2022, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, declared that their friendship was ” without limits “. A few weeks later, in the absence of any provocation, Putin attacked Ukraine, relying strategically and in a coordinated way on information manipulation and interference. After a year of war, the resistance offered by Ukraine is a struggle for survival. Russia’s main strategic objective is, as Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar explained, the complete destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.
Ukraine’s struggle is, at the same time, an existential struggle for democracy, against authoritarianism. Xi Jinping gave tacit support to Vladimir Putin in his attempts to discredit democracy. State-controlled Chinese media propagated conspiratorial theories in favor of the Kremlin and served as an intermediary for sanctioned Russian media, as evidenced by the first report on information manipulation and foreign interference in Europe, published by the European External Action Service.
At the same time, Xi Jinping has intensified political and military pressure on Taiwan, a democratically elected government which can boast of a robust civil society and a free media. To date, he has not ruled out resorting to force to carry out the “reunification” with Taiwan, which it considers essential to the “regeneration” from China. Under continuous pressure for decades, Taiwan knows full well what it is like to live under threat from an aggressive neighbor. Ukraine too experienced increasing pressure from its neighbour, until in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea, it became its aggressor.
misleading message
Despite decades of authoritarian pressure, neither Taiwan nor Ukraine has backed down. Taiwan has worked hard to strengthen its democratic resilience, investing in an entire system of societal and governmental defenses against manipulation of information and interference, while Ukraine struggles to preserve its democracy, backed by a coalition of Western allies. Ukraine is closer to the European Union (EU) today than ever before.
The convergence of Russia and China in the information environment threatens democracy around the world. Putin and Xi Jinping have doubled down on this misleading message that democracy is in decline, using a combination of surveillance, disinformation and coercion. Nothing frightens Xi Jinping more than a democratic Taiwan integrated as a full partner in networks of international democratic cooperation.
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