China's Probe: The Test Flare Before the Fire

Blinken’s Playbook in Reverse: China’s Calculated Leak

It was a test flare.

A probe.

A calculated leak to measure the West’s response.

According to an exclusive report published by the South China Morning Post,
“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.”

The South China Morning Post isn’t a direct mouthpiece like People’s Daily or Global Times, but it plays a deliberate soft power role. In 2016, it was acquired by Alibaba Group—the tech empire founded by Jack Ma. And you already know what happened to Jack Ma. There should be no illusions about where SCMP stands within the Chinese media ecosystem.

Based in Hong Kong, SCMP serves as a window into Beijing’s strategic thinking, particularly in gray-zone diplomacy. Its reporters have far better access to Chinese officials than most foreign outlets, which allows it to break exclusive stories—but that access comes with a price: it must maintain the trust of Beijing.

Which is why this “exclusive” can’t be seen as an accident.

This was a test probe.

A message from Beijing: We do not want Russia to lose.

And the implied threat is clear—If you don’t push back, we may move from not wanting them to lose... to not letting them lose.

China has floated this line before. It has explored ways to insert itself into the war—quietly, peripherally. And every time, it was former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken who saw it coming and shut it down.

In early 2023, Blinken launched a relentless media offensive. He sounded the alarm on U.S. intelligence that China was preparing to send lethal weapons to Russia.

“We've been concerned from day one about that possibility,” he told CBS. Asked what China might send, Blinken replied, “There's a whole gamut of things that fit in that category—everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.”

“We've been concerned from day one about that possibility," Blinken told CBS.
When pressed on the type of weapons China might provide, he said:
“There's a whole gamut of things that fit in that category—everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.”

But the media blitz was only half the strategy. The other half was the warning behind closed doors.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2023, Blinken confronted China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and made it clear: If China supplied lethal aid to Russia, U.S.–China relations would be seriously damaged. It wasn’t a polite message—it was a threat.

And as Blinken amplified that warning publicly across Europe and the United States, the pressure escalated. Key heads of state began calling Beijing directly. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with President Xi Jinping. According to Scholz, he urged Xi to use China’s influence to pressure Russia into ending the war.

We can, of course, read between the lines.

The U.S. and Europe worked in concert to deter China from boosting Putin’s war effort. It was a diplomatic masterstroke—and one that deserves full credit at the table of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

From that moment to now, China has been operating on the edges.

It blocks drone components bound for Ukraine, but lets them flow to Russia. It buys Russian oil in bulk. It turns a blind eye while North Korea ships artillery shells into the war zone. The list is long. But there’s one red line China hasn’t crossed—not yet.

It still hasn’t supplied weapons directly to Russia.

And the reason is simple: uncertainty.

Beijing doesn’t know how forcefully the United States and the European Union would respond. Which is why the recent leak to South China Morning Post matters so much. There was no strategic need for China to publicly state that it “does not want to see Russia lose the war”—unless they were testing the waters.

This is Blinken’s playbook in reverse.

That leak is the clearest evidence that China is nervous about the direction of the war and wants to assess whether it can gradually ramp up support without provoking a coordinated Western backlash.

I would like to see current Secretary of State Marco Rubio continue in Blinken’s footsteps. But so far, I haven’t seen signs of that.

Which leaves just one man with both the positioning and the will to keep China in check: French President Emmanuel Macron.

He made a bold move last month during his visit to Singapore. In a not-so-subtle message to Beijing, Macron reminded them that it was he who had previously blocked U.S. efforts to expand NATO into the Asia-Pacific. And he may no longer choose to hold that line.

Should we be worried?

Not yet.

As Blinken warned from day one, this threat was always present. But so far, it has been contained through sharp, coordinated diplomacy. And more importantly, it proves that China does not have a free hand in this conflict. If Beijing believed it could back Russia openly without consequences, it would have done so already.

China’s exposure to Western trade is enormous. Any significant move to arm Russia would come with a cost it likely cannot absorb alone. That’s why the only effective deterrent is a coordinated response—or a coordinated threat—issued jointly by the United States and Europe.

The next two quarters will be critical.

Putin is expected to exhaust his financial reserves during this period and begin cutting wartime spending to match dwindling revenues. And while much of the West fears Chinese weapons, that’s not the likeliest risk. China will not send arms if it knows the blowback will be swift and severe. Instead, it will operate at the edges—dual-use components, technology transfers, oil purchases, and diplomatic cover.

But that won’t be enough to rescue Putin’s army.

The real danger would come if China decides to inject $100 billion in direct financial support—a loan, a line of credit, or disguised energy deals. That wouldn’t fix Russia’s structural weakness, but it would buy Putin time, and that’s the most valuable currency in a war of attrition.

Still, Europe has no reason to panic—only to act.

What it must do is exactly what it's already doing: build Ukraine’s defense industry, increase combat power, and invest in long-term military production. But it must also rally behind Macron’s position and deliver a clear message to Beijing: trade with Europe will suffer—severely—if China crosses the line into direct support for Putin’s war machine. And more importantly, start talking about NATO reaching Asia Pacific.

And Washington must do its part. A public warning from the United States—backed by Europe—must make the cost of escalation crystal clear.

This can be stopped.

It doesn’t require threats of war or economic collapse—just a strong, united diplomatic posture. Because if China had already made the decision to bankroll the war, it wouldn’t be leaking talking points to South China Morning Post. It wouldn’t be floating trial balloons. It would already be acting.

Right now, they’re uncertain. They want to know if they can push further without consequences.

The West needs to respond with one voice: No. Not a chance.

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