The decision of the Organizing Committee fell on Thursday March 3, the day before the opening of the competitions. The 83 Russian and Belarusian athletes who were to participate have been declared persona non grata at the Paralympic Games in Beijing. “You are the victims of the actions of your governments,” said Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee. Beijing was opposed to this sanction, but the risk was great of seeing several countries boycott the events.
It seems a long time ago when Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed his Russian counterpart with a smile during the Olympics; and where the two autocrats proclaimed a “limitless” partnership between their two countries. Just one month after Beijing and Moscow signed a manifesto calling for “a new era in international relations” ending Western domination of the international order, much has changed and China – which advocates foreign policy respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity – is gradually distancing itself from its bellicose neighbour.
Evacuation of Chinese Nationals
“Ukraine and Russia must find a peaceful solution through negotiation,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Ukrainian counterpart in a telephone conversation on Tuesday, March 1, expressing “the deep regret” of China in the face of the conflict and its “support for a political solution”. His interlocutor, Dmytro Kouleba asked him to mediate to reach a ceasefire, according to the Chinese state channel CCTV. A costume that China, which calls for respect for Ukraine’s borders, seeks to endorse.
“We believe that China has a particularly important role to play in contributing to the negotiation of a real ceasefire, explains Laurent Bili, Ambassador of France in Beijing in an interview with the Chinese magazine Caixin this week. China cannot remain indifferent to a violation of the United Nations Charter”. Not to mention that it has forged important commercial ties with Ukraine, and has everything to lose from a European economic crisis.
Was China aware of the attack?
Some 6,000 Chinese nationals are stuck in Ukraine and half are being evacuated via specially chartered buses and trains under Ukrainian police protection. An unprecedented exfiltration operation since that carried out in Libya in 2011, which seems to signal that the communist regime has been taken aback.
“What seems to me worrying is that China was certainly not informed of the outbreak of this total war in Ukraine, believes Zhao Tong, researcher at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing. China has only two options: either it is continuing with its policy of alignment with Russia and its “strategic partnership”, or it is taking advantage of this crisis to initiate a rapprochement with the West and especially the United States, because what China wants above all is stability”. The choice is in the hands of one man, Xi Jinping. “Power is even more centralized in China than in Russia and it is he alone who will make the decision,” adds this expert.
“Xi Jinping is the only one to hold the keys to a settlement of the conflict, blows a Western diplomat. He is the only one to know what Vladimir Putin really told him on February 4 in Beijing”. China says it was unaware of Moscow’s intentions and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, contrary to an article in the New York Times. “This is false information” launched the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The images of the bombardments, the civilian victims and the refugees are beginning to have an effect on a Chinese public opinion that is often far removed from world affairs. “The Chinese realize that war is horrible, that it kills people. And, while the Russians are killing their Ukrainian brothers, they wonder: will we want to shoot our Taiwanese brothers?”, explains a Chinese journalist, who notes that censorship is more than ever on the lookout.
On social networks, the net police come to calm the ardor of both pro-Russians and pacifists in the image of a text criticizing Putinsigned by five renowned historians and quickly censored, and this poem by Yu Xiuhua entitled “I pray that a poem can stop a chariot”.
“China is on a crest line but sooner or later it will have to choose its camp” concludes Zhao Tong. The war definitely upsets geopolitical balances at full speed.