SvennoJ said:
You can print money and Russia can build their own stuff. |
Printing money is literally pointless in this context. Ask Germany after ww2, people were burning cash just to start fires. China alone cannot sustain Russia, and if they tried, they'd be hurt economically by it both in the short and long run.
Also, it took decades for China to adjust to the global market. And that was when their population was a LOT less. If they were to tie themselves to the sinking stone that is Putin then the sanctions they get wouldn't take decades to impact their economy, but rather weeks and months. Decades of slowly getting where they are on the global stage would be (not entirely, but significantly) undone within weeks/months, and they have a MUCH larger population to provide for now than they did half a century ago.
We will see how far loyalty to authoritarian, scary governments lasts when 100 million+ in Russia and 1 billion+ in China are living in increasingly worse economics situations all because of their governments stupidity. The larger a rebellion grows, the less likely you as an individual will have to fear by joining it.
If China is smart, they will let Putin take this fall and act like they had nothing to do with it, retract from their Taiwan threat, and live to fight another day after a couple decades of everyone pacifying before attempting to do it again. If they are dumb, they will support Russia, and their own uncontrollably large population will rise against them.