I'm honestly in awe at how China managed to maintain the perception of "neutral" to Europeans, despite Xi meeting with Putin twice a year to reaffirm the two country' unlimited partnership, how China and Russian defence ministers meet multiple times a year to talk about deep military cooperation, how Chinese drones are directly responsible for the destruction of 90% of all western vehicles and armour, and how China is the biggest contributor to collective west getting economically crushed.
There is enough for historians and psychologists to analyze for an entire department to be made.
It’s called soft power of course!
Jokes aside, you think for one second the collective west would play such hilarious mental gymnastics if China was weak militarily? If China was as rich as it is today, but only had its military from 1990, the west would be demanding China enact more stringent sanctions against Russia compared to themselves, or they would literally invade.
There is only one universal truth to geopolitics, hard power trumps all other considerations. With enough hard power, the other side will do the soft power work for you to find a way to explain to their own populous why they don’t want to start shit with you, and their populous will gladly eat it up knowing it’s bullshit. Because you will curbstomp their ass if they tried, and no one wants to be curbstomped.
After all, no deception can ever be as effective as self deception.