China is studying sanctions on Russia to find out how it will respond if it attacks Taiwan, the report said

• China is studying the effects of Western sanctions on Russia to prepare for any attack on Taiwan.

• Its officials visited Russian anti-sanctions organizations, the Wall Street Journal reported.

• It also established an interagency group to provide reports on how to reduce the impact of sanctions.

China is closely monitoring the effects of Western sanctions on Russia to prepare for a possible attack on Taiwan, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The unnamed people told the newspaper that China is forming an interagency group months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its purpose was to provide general reports on how to reduce the impact of sanctions if the US and its allies impose similar measures. China if there is an armed conflict over Taiwan.

They also said that Chinese officials often go to Moscow to meet with the central bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finance and other institutions involved in the fight against sanctions.

One unnamed person familiar with China's communications about the sanctions said Beijing is “very interested in everything: from deterrence measures to all kinds of positive effects, such as incentives for domestic product development.”

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told the Journal that Russia acts as a “sandbox” for China in terms of how sanctions work and how it should handle them.

“They know that if there is an emergency in Taiwan, the tool kit that will be used for them will be the same,” he said.

The US and its allies have imposed many sanctions on Russia since the start of the war.

Russia has been able to mitigate some of the consequences by turning to intermediaries, exchanges, and trade with banned countries, including China, India, and Turkey.

However, Russia's economy has been hit hard by the ongoing conflict and Western sanctions imposed on it.

Russia's central bank raised its key interest rate to a record high of 21% in October to fight inflation, and last month the ruble fell to a two-year low against the dollar.

Russian companies and defense companies have recently scaled back their operations and struggled to turn a profit due to high interest rates and sanctions.

Alexander Libman, a professor of Russian and Eastern European politics at the Free University of Berlin, told BI that it is not surprising that China is trying to learn from what happened in Russia.

“China has been trying to understand how to avoid Russia's mistakes, at least since the fall of the USSR, which was carefully studied in Beijing,” he said.

Libman added that China has probably already learned that its economy can adapt to Western “nuclear” sanctions by trading with other countries, adapting production facilities to rapid and unpredictable changes in supply lines, and living without access to Western technology.

“Actually, the experience of the last three years has greatly reduced the fear of major powers in relation to Western sanctions, and this is very concerning,” he said, adding that economic cooperation between China and Russia would make any future Western sanctions against China less likely. effectively.

People close to China's decision-making process told the Journal that the presence of the research group does not indicate that the country is preparing for an attack on Taiwan, but rather the “worst case scenario” of armed conflict and its economic consequences.

However, some military and defense analysts officials have predicted that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely within the next few years.

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