The US declared war against Russia’s publicly financed media earlier this month after it claimed that they’re functioning as clandestine arms of that country’s intelligence services and then promised that it’ll apply the utmost pressure upon all members of the international community to ban them too. Few could have foreseen that China, which is one of Russia’s main strategic partners, would follow suit by having TikTok delete RT and Sputnik’s accounts but that’s exactly what just happened over the weekend.
Sputnik reacted with fury by describing this as a “globalist attack” against Russia, accusing TikTok of being “co-opted” by the US’ “deep state”, and even sharing a meme on X of their brand shooting TikTok’s, thus expressing how upset Russia is at being backstabbed by China in the global information war. It’s one thing for Western platforms like Meta to ban Russia’s flagship international media and another entirely for a strategic partner like China to do the same, which is absolutely unacceptable.
Russia’s response will likely remain limited to speaking through Sputnik since the complex interdependencies between them are too important for it to risk ruining their relations by escalating this dispute, however, but its diplomats might still give China’s a tongue lashing behind closed doors. TikTok also just argued in court last week that the US Government’s proposed ban of their app would have a “staggering” impact on free speech, yet then it hypocritically deleted RT and Sputnik’s accounts.
This social media platform plays a powerful role in shaping popular discourse, but Russia’s top publicly financed international media companies are now unable to win hearts and minds through these means after what just happened, which represents a major blow to their country’s soft power strategy. Even worse, it raises larger questions about China’s overall reliability in the face of American pressure, which a growing number in Russia have begun asking after several unexpected developments this year.
A Chinese energy company agreed to comply with US sanctions against Russia’s Artic LNG 2 project and then a bunch of Chinese banks prohibited payments to and from Russia. Interspersed between these two was Russia and China failing to resolve their pricing dispute over the Power of Siberia II pipeline during Putin’s visit. What he and Xi had previously declared to be their “no-limits partnership” very clearly has some real limits to it, and they’re increasingly influenced by American pressure.
China’s direct complex interdependencies with the US account for these scandalous policies, and considering that China and Russia also have such interdependencies between them, it can therefore be said that Russia has indirect complex interdependencies with the US that lean heavily in the US’ favor. This was explained more here and here when analyzing the resumption of Russian-IMF relations, but the relevance to TikTok deleting RT and Sputnik’s accounts is that China isn’t as sovereign as some thought.
Interestingly, despite India being in a similarly direct relationship of complex interdependence with the US as China is and even having close military ties with the US too, India refused to comply with US pressure upon it to ban RT and Sputnik’s national hubs. Reports also suggest that their financial ties have expanded to the point where clandestine channels have now been created for facilitating the export of dual-use technologies to Russia behind the US’ back in order to avoid secondary sanctions.
India’s policies stand in stark contrast to China’s, whose flagship social media platform TikTok just deleted RT and Sputnik’s accounts while its banks are too scared of secondary sanctions to continue business as usual with Russia, thus upending popular expectations. The Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Alt-Media Community (AMC) have hyped up China’s systemic rivalry with the US, each in advance of their own ideological agenda, but it turns out that ties between those two aren’t as terrible as many thought.
Their direct complex interdependencies have been weaponized by the US to coerce China into distancing itself from Russia, both publicly with respect to what TikTok just did as well as behind the scenes with regard to its banks’ voluntarily compliance with American sanctions. China isn’t willing to bear the costs that the US would impose upon it for defiantly standing in solidarity with Russia like India has done, the latter of which correctly wagered that it’s too important to the US to be punished like China would be.
The US is still pressuring India on domestic and regional issues as correspondingly explained here and here, however, so there was never any guarantee that the US wouldn’t punish India like it would punish China. India therefore took a calculated risk that China is too fearful to consider, which speaks volumes about their real sovereignty when it comes to defying American pressure to distance themselves from Russia upon threats to weaponize their complex interdependencies to that end.
The MSM might exaggerate the trouble that TikTok’s deletion of RT and Sputnik’s accounts caused for the Sino–Russo Entente while the AMC might predictably ignore or downplay this, each in advance of their own ideological agenda once again, so observers shouldn’t take their reporting about this at face value. The fact is that this represents a disturbing pattern of behavior from China which proves that it’s much more amenable to American pressure than either of those two media camps have made it seem.
China and the US are still systemic rivals, but the complex interdependencies between them have successfully been weaponized by the US to harm Russia, which isn’t the case with India. Even though India isn’t a systemic rival of the US like China is, it’s displayed much more sovereignty when it comes to its ties with Russia than China has, which should give observers a lot to think about. The honest among them will reconsider what they took for granted about China, while the dishonest won’t dare to do so.
