> China isn't sending a "small number"; casualties alone have supposedly reached into the hundreds
I think the word "supposedly" is important here – I don't think we have any hard data on how many Chinese volunteers there are serving with Russia.
And I'd question how big a military contribution these Chinese volunteers are making. Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in this war, even a thousand Chinese volunteers would be less than 1%.
> Make no mistake: if China wanted to shut this down it could.
Even if the Chinese government is willing to "turn a blind eye" to this going on at a low volume, that doesn't mean they'd let it grow to a significantly higher volume.
It also isn't clear whether this is a deliberate initiative from the very top, or something that has grown organically bottom-up and the people at the top have decided to let it be for now rather than crack down on it.
I think the word "supposedly" is important here – I don't think we have any hard data on how many Chinese volunteers there are serving with Russia.
And I'd question how big a military contribution these Chinese volunteers are making. Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in this war, even a thousand Chinese volunteers would be less than 1%.
> Make no mistake: if China wanted to shut this down it could.
Even if the Chinese government is willing to "turn a blind eye" to this going on at a low volume, that doesn't mean they'd let it grow to a significantly higher volume.
It also isn't clear whether this is a deliberate initiative from the very top, or something that has grown organically bottom-up and the people at the top have decided to let it be for now rather than crack down on it.