China faces a world that has woken up

The economic attack that democracies have launched on Russia must be particularly alarming for Beijing, which knows it could expect the same if it attempted to conquer Taiwan.

There should be a more immediate economic impact on China, too, as foreign companies reassess the risks of investing in a country that, like Russia, could suddenly turn itself into an international pariah.

If there's any good news for Beijing in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's the shifting of Western attention to the other side of the world. Yet the result could still turn out to be greater firepower arrayed against China.

What Russia is doing to Ukraine is what China threatens to do to Taiwan.

Vladimir Putin claims that Ukraine is inseparable from Russia, with no right to exist on its own. A great majority of the 44 million people of Ukraine disagree - and to hell with that, according to Putin, as he orders his armoured columns across the border.

Beijing has the same claim on Taiwan, where the great majority of 24 million inhabitants want nothing to do with China - and to hell with that, according to Xi Jinping, who holds out force as the ultimate solution if they don't change their minds.

Now Putin's invasion has made us more strongly resolved to stand up to dictatorial aggressors.

It's the lesson of Munich 1938, which most Westerners feel in their bones even if they've forgotten the historical details.

Last week, this column pointed out that the Chinese-Russian partnership announced a month ago looked so much like the 1939 pact between Germany and the Soviet Union - a deal that gave the Nazis cover to attack Poland, initiating World War II.

But the awakening experienced by people of the democratic world this week is like one that came earlier in 1939. That one followed an international conference in Munich in September 1938, prompted by Adolf Hitler's demand to swallow part of Czechoslovakia.

Appeasement-minded British prime minister Neville Chamberlain gave in to Hitler one more time to buy peace. Less than six months later, Hitler broke the deal and took the rest of Czechoslovakia - and major democracies finally learnt the lesson that aggressors must be resisted.

China has been getting away with so much - economic theft, foreign political manipulation, extending control over the South China Sea and relentlessly threatening Taiwan - because we half forgot the lesson.

Now Beijing will repeatedly run into stronger Western resistance. There's no opinion survey to prove this, but ask yourself: how do you feel this week about appeasing aggressors? Are the leaders of the US, Japan, Germany, Britain and France likely to feel any different?

If China is wise, it will back off for a while, then slowly ratchet up pressure again, though backing off would not come easily to a country that has become so habitually hostile. Anyway, Putin has probably changed Western attitudes for years into the future.

The hardening of democratic opinion will take many forms. One will be that most voices urging us to throw Taiwan to the wolves will go quiet. We've been hearing them here and there saying, for example, that Taiwan deserves no help because it's not officially an independent country, or that it's a faraway place about which we know nothing.

China has known that if it assaulted Taiwan it would lose a lot of trade. But it has probably been disturbed by the scale of the democracies' economic attack on Russia (and "attack" is the word; it expresses what's going on far better than mere "sanctions").

China has always aimed at maximising economic independence - partly to give itself freedom of military action, no doubt - and now that policy will seem all the more important.

Plenty of Australian companies have lately dialled back their exposure to the Chinese market, thanks to Beijing's economic punishment of us since 2020. Plenty of companies elsewhere have not, however.

MORE AGE OF THE DRAGON:

And plenty had not quit Russia, despite evidence that Putin could start a war that would wreck their investments. Foreigners' assets in Russia worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped out as collateral damage in the democracies' economic attack.

Only the most stupid companies will now fail to factor in the same risk in putting money into China.

Europeans are still importing Russian natural gas, because they made themselves dependent on it despite warnings that it was a weapon for Putin. Expect new Western efforts at removing dependence on anything important that's supplied from China.

Then there's the military balance. China could expect benefits from its partnership with Russia. Even without war, it would have increased pressure on the US armed forces by allowing the two cronies to face away from each other.

Now that Russia has shown willingness to start a major conflict, the need for Western firepower in Europe has surged.

But Europeans themselves will eventually supply that additional strength. The invasion is suddenly driving plans for increased military spending in countries that have been laziest in pushing their defence burden onto the US, notably Germany and Italy.

Those countries won't spend with the intention of letting the US turn its attention to the western Pacific, still less with the idea that they can send their own forces to this side of the world. But China must worry that the result will be a more comfortably well-armed democratic bloc that can eventually face it with greater military strength.

And a bit more bad news for Beijing: the US itself is now more likely to increase its already enormous defence budget.