China is Learning About Western Decision Making from the Ukraine War

Mick Ryan

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Wars are full of uncertainty.

Whether it is the uncertainty of what the enemy is doing on the other side of a hill, through to uncertainty about the motivations of political leaders in their decision-making, the ‘fog and friction of war’ is every bit of relevant in considering war in the 21st century as when Carl von Clausewitz wrote about this concept in the early 1800s.

However, sometimes there are things in war that we can be certain about. I would propose that one certainty of the Russo-Ukraine war is that China is watching it closely. In particular, it is learning to improve its strategic decision models (within the bounds of the CCP system) by watching U.S. and NATO decision-making and responses to the Ukraine war. Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and around Taiwan is also prompting Western debates which inform China’s strategic calculus.

I have explored the topic of Chinese learning from the Ukraine War in several previous articles. My first examination of China’s potential observations from the war in Ukraine was published back in April 2022. This was designed as short, initial exploration of what China might learn from the conflict. A year later, in February 2023, I undertook another exploration of how China might be using the war in Ukraine to wargame its own future operations. Finally, in September last year I published a piece here that proposed multiple areas where the Chinese leadership might be learning from the war in Ukraine.