China is closely following the war between Ukraine and Russia, but it is sitting on the fence, so to speak. China does not intend to condemn its partner Russia, but it also does not want to burn its bridges to the west, writes Asian correspondent Kirsi Crowley.
BEIJING Ukraine called on China yesterday to persuade Russia to end the war.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba called his Chinese counterpart Wang Yille and asked this to use his country’s good relations with Russia to end the war.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said China is ready to help find a diplomatic solution. But is China’s help what Ukraine would like?
China has said it opposes it interference in the internal affairs of another state, and has refused to call Russia’s actions an attack.
China sees war as a broader security issue than Ukraine alone. In China, there are probably more proposals for Ukraine than for Russia.
To understand this, it is worth looking at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Then the presidents of Russia and China Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met and reported on historically close relationships. The countries vowed that their friendship knew no borders and no cooperation in prohibited areas.
Xi opposed the military alliance’s NATO enlargement, and Putin assured Russia of support for China’s Taiwan policy.
The Olympic torch was barely extinguished when Russian troops attacked Ukraine.
China has not slipped from the joint statement, even though Russian weapons have crushed Ukrainian homes.
China clearly supports Russia’s demands that NATO enlargement and the growth of U.S. influence must be halted. China sees the whole war in Ukraine against this background.
When Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear forces on special alert, the Chinese Foreign Ministry commented, urging both sides to exercise restraint. Sanctions imposed by Western countries, on the other hand, are illegal in China’s view and do not solve problems, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying responded at a press conference.
One of China’s most repeated phrases is that Russia’s security concerns need to be listened to.
When the Chinese Foreign Ministry was told at a press conference the answer to why China still does not call Russia to act as an attack, the spokesman was attacked.
– Ask the United States. It lit a fire and grew flames. How does it turn it off? asked Hua Chunying.
It is still unclear whether Putin told X in advance about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China accused the United States of inciting war hysteria when the United States predicted Russia would invade Ukraine. Nor did China withdraw its citizens from Ukraine before the violence began.
Maybe China didn’t know about the attack or it thought the change of power was as rapid as in Afghanistan when U.S. troops left Kabul. At that time, the Chinese embassy remained in the country despite the chaos.
Only after the start of the Russian invasion did the Chinese embassy begin to evacuate six thousand of its citizens from Ukraine by bus and train.
– Beijing probably failed to objectively assess the Russian leader and his ambition, writes Akita.
He also wonders whether Xi Jinping’s inner circle dares to bring bad news to China’s strong leader because of this dominance.
President Xi Jinping is expected to continue led by the country for the third term. The extension is due to be confirmed at a party meeting later this year.
He would Mao Zedongin after the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in power for more than two seasons.
Before the war in Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s leadership in China has shown great success. The nation has prospered, the economy has grown and the Olympics were a success despite a diplomatic boycott and a coronavirus pandemic.
The failure of the crisis in Ukraine will not fit the picture then.
At a meeting between Xin and Putin, China and Russia signed major energy agreements and discussed Russia’s access to an increasingly Chinese payment system, in which foreign payments are passed on instead of the U.S. dollar in Chinese currency. China removed barriers to trade in wheat imports from Russia.
All these measures will make it easier for Russia when Western sanctions hit its economy.
But China’s trade relations with Europe and the United States are many times greater in monetary value than Russia, so China will have to rebalance its relations with the parties to avoid sanctions itself.
What was noteworthy in Putin’s and Xi’s statement was a strong ideological stance in favor of a new world order. China and Russia also saw their own systems as democracies and demanded that Western countries not be able to define what democracy means.
China has not rejected Ukraine’s request for peace between Russia and Ukraine. As a mediator, it would also have its own interests.
Even if China does not accept Putin’s bloody war, it will be difficult to distance itself from its close partner. At least it does not want to give the impression that it is supporting Ukraine’s efforts towards NATO and the EU.