I'm saying china makes better decisions; i don't think it would start a war with a snowballs chance of winning convincingly. Second, China is not motivated (apart from taiwan) to invade. Russia is because it's fragile, scared of nato, and generally more expansive. China just doesn't have those urges. If I was China I'd be sick and tired of babysitting Russia with handouts because its in over its head.
Russia as far as I know was told by its own Ukraine was 1 week doable - clearly wrong. I think but have no argument to underpin the claim China is smarter in that the decision makers are not told what they want to hear in foreign wars.
This doesn’t really make sense. Everyone thought Russia would mop up Ukraine in a week. Turns out it was wrong because Russian military was weaker than they thought, Ukraine response was strong, etc. but this is just a hindsight 20/20 thing. Any country could make such a mistake.
And you say fragile, scared, etc. Countries, especially large countries, don’t operate like that. They had security concerns, which they publicly warned about for months, and then they attacked.
Russia as far as I know was told by its own Ukraine was 1 week doable - clearly wrong. I think but have no argument to underpin the claim China is smarter in that the decision makers are not told what they want to hear in foreign wars.