Little did wannabe warlord and catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin understand his short-lived mutiny would end in his demise, forsaking a legacy—and admirers—far past Russia’s borders, significantly in China, the place Prigozhin has change into a cult determine on carefully monitored social media.
Prigozhin’s following amongst prime navy bloggers on Weibo, one of many largest social media platforms in China, mirrors that in Russia. From Moscow to Beijing, Prigozhin is seen because the embodiment of a extra vigorous and real patriotism, a person who prioritized the motherland’s pursuits over his personal life. He’s celebrated as a person of the individuals, regardless of the wealth he generated from the Wagner Group’s operations.
Little did wannabe warlord and catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin understand his short-lived mutiny would end in his demise, forsaking a legacy—and admirers—far past Russia’s borders, significantly in China, the place Prigozhin has change into a cult determine on carefully monitored social media.
Prigozhin’s following amongst prime navy bloggers on Weibo, one of many largest social media platforms in China, mirrors that in Russia. From Moscow to Beijing, Prigozhin is seen because the embodiment of a extra vigorous and real patriotism, a person who prioritized the motherland’s pursuits over his personal life. He’s celebrated as a person of the individuals, regardless of the wealth he generated from the Wagner Group’s operations.
His blunt criticism of Russia’s prime navy leaders bolstered his picture as a truth-teller keen to threat his life. This resonated in China, the place a purge of prime navy officers within the Individuals’s Liberation Military is underway because of accusations of corruption and of betraying the beliefs of the Chinese language Communist Social gathering (CCP).
Amid rising rigidity between Beijing and Washington, many Chinese language navy bloggers suspect U.S. involvement in Prigozhin’s loss of life, regardless of there being no proof of this. A ballot on Weibo, restricted to 1,000 respondents, confirmed a majority asserting that the USA orchestrated Prigozhin’s airplane crash to incite civil warfare in Russia. A smaller variety of voters pointed the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin, stating that permitting Prigozhin to stroll away unpunished might set a harmful precedent.
Affection for the Wagner Group is seen by the CCP as a double-edged sword in on-line Chinese language debate. On the one hand, it illustrates the necessity for empowered Chinese language non-public safety firms that defend Chinese language residents and infrastructure overseas. However, it raises the specter of closely armed safety professionals pursuing a home political agenda.
China’s main safety pundits—lecturers, former navy officers, and beginner bloggers—are enamored by the Wagner Group’s bravado and perspective of getting issues accomplished it doesn’t matter what. They argue that the present Chinese language method to the safety of Chinese language pursuits abroad is passive and advocate for extra assertive, Wagner-style ways. The setbacks in counterterrorism operations in Mozambique and the latest slaughter of Wagner operators by Malian Tuareg rebels have largely gone unnoticed. Some bloggers, with a number of million followers every, see Wagner because the mannequin for Chinese language non-public safety firms defending Belt and Highway tasks and infrastructure throughout the globe in high-risk areas.
From Asia to Africa, Chinese language abroad staff are going through rising threats, with kidnappings and deaths turning into extra frequent. In March 2023, 9 Chinese language nationals have been killed when gunmen attacked a mine within the Central African Republic. Only a 12 months later, in March 2024, 5 Chinese language engineers have been killed in a suicide bombing in Pakistan, and one other such assault occurred this month, main Beijing to name for extra safety. Furthermore, Chinese language safety bloggers’ reward of Prigozhin and his mercenaries as liberators who have been a simpler combating drive than the Russian navy in Ukraine quantities to a veiled stab at prime managers of China’s military-industrial complicated, who have been fired for accepting bribes and producing low-quality navy gear.
Due to this fact, it seems probably that China’s strict social media filtering permits such commentary deliberately, because it aligns with the federal government’s agenda. Nevertheless, the boundaries of acceptable on-line discourse can shift all of a sudden, posing a threat for bloggers if Beijing’s stance on Wagner or the navy modifications abruptly.
Registered by Weibo with their government-issued IDs and legally liable for the blogs, the pundits and analysts mirror one strand of presidency pondering. China’s Nice Firewall retains references to Wagner centered on Ukraine, however the group’s actions in Africa and the Center East are additionally talked about.
On-line Chinese language dialogue frames Wagner’s African operations as assist for decolonization and the countering of the West’s neocolonial method and affect on the continent—mainly copy-pasting Russian rhetoric. One commentator, blaming France for turmoil in Mali, took the West to process by asserting that Wagner combats “terrorism and separatism and embodies humanism.” One other microblogger urged that China can be higher off having a Blackwater equal relatively than a Wagner Group one as a result of “popularity is extra necessary than the rest” and Chinese language nationals wouldn’t be allowed to perpetrate the sorts of atrocities attributed to the Russian group.
From a Western perspective, this case could seem perplexing as a result of Blackwater, following the Nisour Sq. bloodbath in Iraq, had a notoriously horrible popularity. Nevertheless, in China, Erik Prince, the founding father of Blackwater, partnered with the state-owned monetary large CITIC to determine the safety firm Frontier Providers Group in Hong Kong. Consequently, the widespread international outrage and discussions surrounding Blackwater workers’ killing of Iraqi civilians by no means reached the broader Chinese language public.
The web discussions spotlight the fork within the street wherein China has to find out the long run trajectory of its non-public safety firms. Influential navy bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers see Wagner as a mannequin for the Chinese language navy and personal safety business. They argue that Beijing should develop extra assertive firms able to defending abroad Chinese language nationals and investments. On the identical time, there’s concern that personal safety personnel might change into an armed, uncontrollable drive once they return from abroad service.
This dichotomy between ambition and concern is mirrored within the portrayal of Prigozhin as a cult determine in on-line debates. A nuanced studying reveals Chinese language netizens’ issues about and pursuits within the Russia-Ukraine warfare, highlighting a number of peculiarities. Notably, Prigozhin is seen in China extra as a profitable CEO than as a wannabe warlord or navy strategist, as is usually the case elsewhere.
The Chinese language public tends to choose a businesslike method to the militarization of safety features. In China, rising from humble beginnings to change into a billionaire, regardless of the CCP’s name for moderation, is usually considered as an indication of tactical acumen and shrewdness. Not like in Russia—the place bloggers deal with debating Prigozhin’s navy methods—in China, Prigozhin’s enterprise success stays a key attraction for his followers.
Supporters of the Wagner mannequin nonetheless perpetuate the group’s aura of invincibility. One blogger recalled Wagner rescuing Chinese language miners within the Central African Republic in July 2023 on the request of the Chinese language Embassy. The group discovered the miners in a forest and “supplied them with meals, shelter, and safety safety” earlier than escorting them to the capital. Chinese language public opinion largely matches the view that’s prevalent within the swath of land stretching from the Central African Republic to Niger, inundated by Russian propaganda and disinformation that makes no point out of mass slaughters and gender-based violence, and perceives Wagner mercenaries as liberators relatively than oppressors.
In life, Prigozhin served Putin by holding the navy’s prime brass in examine. In loss of life, the Prigozhin fantasy in Russia is a helpful catalyst that directs anger on the navy as an alternative of the president and conjures up future Wagner recruits. In China, even amongst Wagner’s largest boosters, Putin’s description of Prigozhin as a “proficient individual” who “made severe errors in life” stays a warning for Chinese language non-public safety entrepreneurs to not cross the celebration’s purple line.
Years in the past, an analogous debate erupted on Weibo, calling for reforms in China’s non-public safety sector, impressed by the rise of Blackwater. These reforms by no means took form—and they’re unlikely to materialize now as envisioned by Wagner followers. Even with Wagner’s perceived success, the CCP guards its monopoly on drive tightly, with the Maoist precept that the celebration should management the gun nonetheless firmly in place.
The parable of Prigozhin, even inside China’s strict narrative management, serves a twin objective: It fuels ambitions for a stronger, tightly regulated Chinese language non-public safety sector whereas additionally performing as a cautionary story concerning the risks of contractors turning on their very own leaders.
