The weekend’s brief mutiny against Moscow by the Wagner mercenary group has stoked serious alarm in Beijing, becoming a cautionary tale for China as it bolsters its military muscle with an eye on self-ruled Taiwan.
The armed insurrection ended with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin effectively exiled to Belarus and his mercenaries halting a planned march on Moscow, but the upheaval — which put Russian President Vladimir Putin on the back foot — highlighted how wartime chaos can weaken powerful leaders.
Considering this, experts have played down the possibility of China’s leaders ordering an attack on democratic Taiwan in the near future.
“China is unlikely to engage in a high-cost, low-return war if it cannot be won quickly, particularly if it may turn into a protracted war of attrition, leading to political instability that endangers the regime,” said Li Nan, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
Many see Putin’s grip on power weakened after the revolt, and the Chinese leadership will be wary of a similar outcome in the event of a war with the U.S. over Taiwan, according to Li.
Currently, he added, China’s priority continues to remain economic development — something that requires a relatively stable and “benign” external environment.
While Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping address each other as “dear friends,” their countries are not formally allied. Still, they have maintained a close “no-limits” partnership that was declared just weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In practice, China has taken care to avoid offering assistance that may result in Western sanctions, and Putin has publicly acknowledged Beijing’s concerns over its actions in Ukraine.
China has nevertheless refused to condemn Russia nor has it called the war an invasion.
But it has called for peace negotiations and expressed concerns about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. Positioning itself as a peace mediator, Beijing presented a 12-point plan for ending the war in February, and dispatched a representative to Ukraine, Russia and a handful of European countries in May.
Since the start of the invasion in February 2022, Beijing has become Moscow’s most significant international partner. Russia is now dependent on China for its oil and gas sales, while bilateral trade between the two increased by 40.7% in this year’s first five months compared with the same period last year, according to the figures from China’s customs authority.
Beijing also sees Moscow as a vital partner that shares a similar worldview, with the two working to counter “American hegemony” and advocating for a multipolar world free of Western influence. This commonality has made the bond between the two nations even closer and more substantive.
Helping maintain a strong and integrated Russia, not a chaotic one with internal turmoil, serves Beijing's interests, said Lin Wen-cheng, a professor at Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University.
“Definitely, should Putin — Xi's best friend — be overthrown and a pro-West regime be established, it would be a nightmare to China,” Lin said.
Even if the short-lived but unprecedented challenge to Putin is over, Beijing will continue to watch closely for any spillover effects, he added.
On Sunday evening, after a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, Beijing described the rebellion as the “internal affairs” of Russia and voiced support for Moscow stabilizing its domestic situation.
Rudenko also met with his Chinese counterpart, Ma Zhaoxu, on Sunday, with Ma noting that mutual political trust and cooperation has steadily increased and that the “common interests” of the two sides should be safeguarded under the "complex and grim international situation,” according to the Chinese readout. It did not mention the mutiny.
Lin said Putin’s struggle with Prigozhin provides valuable lessons for Xi, the most important of which is that he must ensure he consolidates his power over the Chinese military.
In 2015, military reforms reduced the autonomy of the People's Liberation Army, delivering more control to the Chinese Communist Party and Xi than his predecessors. Xi is the chair of the Central Military Commission, which oversees the PLA, as well as commander-in-chief of the military's Joint Operations Command Center.
Unlike Russia, PLA members pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party rather than the Chinese nation. The reforms have also promoted Xi’s views and speeches on military issues, while also taking this one step further by requiring the PLA to be “absolutely loyal, honest and reliable” to Xi, further cementing his role as the most powerful in the military.
National University of Singapore’s Li also pointed out that China’s civilian leaders are highly isolated from the military. Xi is the only person in the Politburo Standing Committee — the country’s top decision-making body — who has institutionalized interactions with military leaders via the Central Military Commission.
Compared with Putin, the risk of a similar military-led revolt is less likely to happen to Xi, said John Lee, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank.
“Xi has less need to rely on unpredictable mercenaries the way Putin did with the Wagner Group,” he said, adding that Xi also has additional assurances in the form of military-trained and armed internal security forces such as the People’s Armed Police (PAP).
There is no analogue to the Wagner Group in China, as Chinese security firms operate very differently from the Russian mercenary group, according to Li.
Unlike the Wagner Group, which is heavily involved in the war in Ukraine on behalf of the Russian government, Chinese security firms are strictly restricted and not allowed to carry weapons domestically or overseas. Many employees are former PLA and PAP members, and are more engaged in training, surveillance and intelligence-gathering.
Despite the lower risks of rebellion, the possibility cannot be completely ruled out.
“If it is a long war with high costs, including high casualties and no hopes of winning, it is very likely that the Chinese communist regime will face a similar situation,” said Lin.
Indeed, a failure to deliver in a conflict — especially one that involves Beijing’s “core interests” such as Taiwan or the South China Sea — could spell doom for the Chinese leadership.
“A botched military mission will pose an existential threat to Xi,” said Lee. “This is unsurprising as in a system where power is centralized around one person; the decision to use force is generally made by an individual who bathes in glory when things go well and bears total blame when they do not.”
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