Recently, as Trump¡¯s attitude toward the conflict in Russia and the appearance of F-16 fighters over Ukraine swirled, there was more and more speculation about the course of the battle. A lot of people were discussing an extreme but had to think about the question: What should we do if Russia really defeated?

This kind of discussion is necessary, but if we only stay at the passive response level of "what to do", it will underestimate what we are doing. This is not so much to prepare an emergency plan for "Russia's defeat" as to say that this conflict is an extreme "stress test" from beginning to end.

And only by doing these three things can we deal with the worst possible outcomes.

Money bags and oil pipes.

The first thing to say is energy, in the past we may be more concerned about whether a certain energy pipeline, a certain trade line is smooth, but now, the mindset has completely changed.Our goal is to build a diversified, decentralized, "networked" circular economy system that can switch nodes at any time.

The core logic of the system is that even if a key node, such as Russia¡¯s energy supply, suddenly disrupts, or is kicked out of the financial system such as SWIFT, the entire network will still work properly.

We import more than 500 million tons of oil a year, a number behind which is a huge external dependence. Russia is one of the largest suppliers, with over 100 million tons this year, accounting for more than 15% of our total imports. Central Asia¡¯s natural gas pipelines also deliver 20% of our imported natural gas.

These are economic lifebloods, but they are not entirely solid. Kazakhstan has fine-tuned the price and quantity of natural gas exported to China by about 12%. This signal is very subtle. Once Russia's influence in Central Asia wanes, the struggle for control of these energy corridors may be on the table.

Therefore, eggs must never be put in one basket. Our strategy is "multi-source, multi-channel and multi-reserve". On the one hand, the proportion of oil imports from the Middle East has been increased to 40%. On the other hand, the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline and the expanding LNG receiving station (the annual processing capacity has increased to 80 million tons) provide another strategic channel.

Not to mention the strategic oil reserves we have built that can cover more than 90 days of demand, which is our bottom gas and buffer mat. With a domestic renewable energy installation capacity of 1.5 billion kilowatts, which accounts for an astonishing 50% of the total power generation, a complex and robust energy supply network is replacing several fragile "pipes".

Energy is blood and finance is the nerve hub. The West is pressuring entities with business relations with Russia with a vague definition of ¡°joint responsibility¡± and even discussing the inclusion of seven Chinese companies on the sanctions list.

The risk of being excluded from the SWIFT system, like the Damocles sword hanging on top of our heads, coupled with the potential shrinking of roughly 1.2 percent of the ruble foreign exchange reserves we hold, and the risk that Russian companies owe us about $18 billion in bad debt, pushes us to avoid the silk.

Our response is to speed up the construction of our own "financial ark"-RMB Cross-border Payment System (CIPS). This is not enough. We are actively promoting local currency settlement with resource countries like Turkmenistan and countries along the "the belt and road initiative". The long-term goal is to increase the proportion of RMB in energy settlement from the current 10% to 25%.

It's not just about money, it's about building a backup network independent of the US dollar system, ensuring that in the most extreme cases, our international trade will not be "unplugged".

The Great Wall is more than brick

With the economic immune system, how should the geographical security boundary be reshaped? The Sino-Russian border, which is more than 4,300 kilometers long, is more than just a dividing line on a map.

In peacetime, it was a busy trade channel, but once Russia's political situation was unstable, it could turn into a hotbed of crime and chaos. History's lessons were in sight, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when large numbers of "Belarusian" migrants flocked to the northeast, putting great pressure on social management at the time.

Today¡¯s risks are only more complicated: weapons, drug smuggling, and even extremist organizations that may use the chaos of the Far East to infiltrate.

Therefore, our security concept is undergoing a profound change, from the traditional linear thinking of "guarding the border" to a "multi-level and multi-directional" in-depth security layout.

The first was the ¡°intelligent hardening¡± of the border itself.In the past, we may have relied more on border, armed police, multi-level militia control, and human patrol models such as joint military exercises.

The "Smart Border" system has been deployed in place, which integrates high-definition infrared cameras and uninterrupted patrols by drones. What's even more powerful is that the new monitoring system integrates radar and satellite networks and uses AI for real-time analysis. It is said that the accuracy rate is as high as 95%.

This means that our line of defense, which has extended from the physical contact of the soldiers, to the information-covered ultrasound perception, can be detected and warned at first.

But it is not enough to raise the wall, but we must actively shape a stable external environment.Once Russia's influence leaves a vacuum in Central Asia, and the United States steadfastly advances in the "Indo-Pacific strategy" and creates more pressure around China, we must actively strike.

This kind of "attack" is not military expansion, but "interest binding". By deepening the security and anti-terrorism cooperation mechanism of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, we have expanded its member countries from 8 to 10, and strengthened our collective influence. At the same time, flagship projects of "the belt and road initiative" such as China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway firmly bind the economic lifeline with regional stability.

This is not to fill whose sphere of influence, but to make neighboring countries our stable partners by creating common prosperity.When our interests are deeply bound in stability and development, a broad and resilient strategic depth zone naturally forms.This is stronger than any physical defense line.

Skill to exercise yourself.

Both the economy and geography have stabilized, and the core is still its own "hard power".The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is like a cruel modern war form showcase, exposing a lot of problems and giving us a lot of lessons.

Russia's shortcomings in the fields of electronic warfare and drones show us the cruel truth of modern warfare. This also strengthens our determination: the core technology and national defense system must be completely independent and controllable.

In the past, we have introduced a lot of Russian military technology, such as the Su-35 fighter aircraft and the S-400 air defense system, but this path, in the end, has its limitations.

Therefore, our growing defense budget is focusing on independent research and development. The results of this investment are tangible. Hundreds of domestically produced J-20 stealth fighters have been mass-produced and integrate advanced AI navigation systems.

The strike accuracy of Dongfeng series missiles has been improved to an incredible centimeter level. More importantly, the localization rate of our military equipment has exceeded 80%, which means that our national defense industry system has got rid of its dependence on the outside world.

At the same time, we learned to vigorously develop underwater forces to ensure secondary nuclear strike capability, the number of new submarines has increased steadily, the total number has reached 80, ensuring the absolute reliability of strategic deterrence.

In addition to this, we clearly see that the ultimate form of competition between the great powers in the future may be technological blockade and system confrontation. Therefore, in these cutting-edge areas of quantum communication and hypersonic technology, we must accumulate our patents and advantages. Using new technologies such as big data, we can even shorten the development cycle of weapons to 3 years.

This, like the CIPS system in the financial sector, is the ¡°technical base¡± we prepare for extreme situations. They jointly ensure that no matter how the external environment changes, the two major systems of our country¡¯s economy and defense can rely on their own forces to operate independently.

conclusion

Looking back, the so-called ¡°preparing for Russian defeat¡± is actually just a partial assumption in this strategic game.

We are actually taking advantage of the tremendous turbulence of the external environment to complete a profound internal evolution ¨C to build a new national system with a high degree of resilience and strong autonomy, both economically, geologically and technologically.

This shift in strategic thinking from ¡°passive response¡± to ¡°actively shaping¡± stems from our awakening perception of the cruelty of the future game of great powers.

Its only source is its own hard nuclear power, and its sturdy structure that can stand in any storm.Think of it, in 1991, our economy was only 6% of the U.S. and today it is 75%.This is the ultimate bottom line of our ability to handle all uncertainty.