The scene takes place in June 2019, in Dushanbe (Tajikistan). A few minutes before a regional summit on security, Vladimir Putin leads Xi Jinping on a terrace overlooking a shady garden. He hands her a glass of champagne and offers her a case of Russian ice cream, which his Chinese counterpart loves. “I came to see you before, to wish you a happy birthday!” Says the head of the Kremlin, with a first communion smile that contrasts with his usual impassive mask. And to add: “I am delighted to have a friend like you.”
If there was a moment in his career when Vladimir Putin was sincere, it was this one. Today, this closeness with “dear Xi”, which has grown steadily stronger in recent years – the two leaders have met 38 times since they have been in power – has never seemed so precious. Strangled by Western sanctions after his brutal and senseless attack on Ukraine, the Russian president is at an impasse. His country could find itself bankrupt in a few weeks. And on the military front, the situation is hardly more favourable: heavy losses, troops progressing much more slowly than expected. To the point that the Russian dictator would have asked, according to leaks from the American administration in the Anglo-Saxon press, military and financial aid to its powerful neighbour.
Joe Biden threatens Beijing
If the information is confirmed and the Chinese president accepts, the conflict – and the world – will swing into another dimension. US President Joe Biden, who fears nothing so much as a confrontation with this duo of authoritarian regimes, has already warned Xi Jinping: there will be “implications and consequences, if China were to provide material aid to Russia “. Clearly, China would expose itself to economic sanctions. Suffice to say that the friendship of the former “small strike” of the streets of Leningrad becomes very cumbersome for the “red prince”, son of a former high communist dignitary.
The world’s second largest economy is faced with difficult choices. Can she associate herself – as she tacitly does by not condemning the attack on Ukraine – with a leader accused by Washington of being a “war criminal”? How to continue to relay Russian propaganda, when it has always defended the sacrosanct principle of territorial sovereignty? And how far can his support go? “This is a crucial moment for Sino-American relations, but also for China’s foreign policy,” notes Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Beijing needs Moscow in its competition with the United States
Beijing reaffirmed it recently: Moscow is its “most strategic” partner, even if their relationship has not always been idyllic. After the break in Sino-Russian relations in 1961, under Mao and Khrushchev, a slow thaw began in the late 1980s. The rapprochement accelerated after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. At the Olympics Beijing on February 4, 2022, 20 days before the start of the war, the two autocratic regimes proclaimed their “unlimited” friendship and their rejection of a world order dominated by the United States. A matter of concern for Washington, this rapprochement has resulted in recent years in extensive military cooperation.
Because China sees far. She has set herself the goal of becoming the leader of the planet in 2049 – the date of the centenary of the creation of the People’s Republic. And “it needs Russia in its long-term competition with the United States, which has identified it as their main adversary”, opines Alexander Korolev, specialist in international relations at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. Would he like it, Xi Jinping, who personally staged his link with Putin, can hardly question it without appearing to contradict himself.
Within the Chinese elite, a few voices, quickly censored, were raised to warn the regime: accompanying Vladimir Putin in his mad enterprise makes the country take disproportionate risks. “China cannot be tied to Putin and must cut itself off from him as quickly as possible… Being in the same boat as Putin will have an impact on China if he loses power,” wrote Hu Wei, an eminent scholar from Shanghai affiliated with the Chinese State Council, on March 5.
But his opinion is unlikely to be taken into consideration. Beijing has no interest in aligning itself with the American position. “China knows that its support for the West will not improve its relationship with Washington, so long is the list of grievances against it, whether it is the repression of the Uighurs, the control of Hong Kong or of the militarization of the China Sea,” said Alexander Gabuev, a researcher at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
And basically, what interest would Xi have in dropping his “friend Vladimir”? Born eight months apart, the two men are “political twins”. “Vladimir Putin witnessed the collapse of the USSR (1991) and the loss of prestige of the KGB, while Xi Jinping experienced the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the end of the privileges of his caste. Both experienced a fall”, recalls the historian François Godement, adviser for Asia at the Institut Montaigne. And what does it matter if the first no longer claims communism, when the second swears only by “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, both have the same dream: to repair the “humiliations” of the past and reconnect with the glory of empires elders, even if it means rewriting history and eliminating any critical voice.
“Our characters are similar”
Struck by the same syndrome of the besieged citadel, these autocrats have a similar reading of the world. “They share a very strong resentment towards NATO, the United States and their allies; and they have the common goal of shaping a new world order, where the latter would be marginalized as a military power, but also as democracies,” said Alice Ekman, head of Asia at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. “China has the same perception as Russia of NATO: it has always seen it as a hegemonic and expansionist military alliance, which seeks to destabilize countries that do not share its political system”, abounds Zhao Tong, researcher at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Beijing. In solidarity with Putin’s security concerns in Europe, it also condemns, in a similar logic, the Aukus military alliance (between the United States, Australia and Great Britain) in Asia Pacific.
“Our characters are similar,” said the Russian president in 2014. The two leaders admire and influence each other. Putin was impressed by the digital dictatorship put in place by his neighbour. “He was inspired a lot by Xi to control Russian society, explains David Shullmann, a former American intelligence officer, now a researcher at the Atlantic Council. Moscow has thus integrated elements of the ‘Great Electronic Wall’, this huge system of surveillance and censorship of the Internet put in place by China. For his part, Xi Jinping sees in Putin “a strong man who gets what he wants, defends the authoritarian system, has restored Russia to greatness, and knows how to stand up to the United States”, points out Steve Tsang, professor at the SOAS China Institute, London. As for the methods of Chinese influence, “which have hardened considerably in recent years”, they “more and more resemble those employed by Moscow”, notes a report by the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School, published in October 2021.
All this complicates the Chinese position vis-à-vis Ukraine. “Beijing has a vested interest in ensuring that Russia does not crumble under the pressure of Western sanctions, as it fears such a defeat will encourage Western countries to take similar, if not stronger, action against China.” , analyzes Zhao Tong. Not to mention that a collapse of Russia, in addition to leaving Beijing isolated against Washington, would force China to support Russia economically at arm’s length.
But tensions between Beijing and Washington may have peaked, but China still has a keen sense of its interests. And it measures the risk that it would have to expose itself to American reprisals, while its economy slows down sharply and the barrel of oil flies away. “The Chinese authorities will probably not go so far as to openly violate the sanctions: this would put them in danger, as they are linked to the global financial system dominated by the American dollar”, advance David Shullmann.
“An unfailing friendship with Moscow, as long as China does not have to pay a high price”
In addition, “Beijing is very keen on preserving its economic relations with the West, adds Zhao Tong. It knows that it must preserve its access to Western technologies and markets to maintain its growth at a sustained pace. This is why it must walk a very narrow path, between maintaining its geopolitical partnership with Russia and that of its economic relations with the West”.
As often, the communist giant will therefore probably try to play the tightrope walker and navigate in “grey waters”. In short, to avoid choosing. “He will do everything possible to help Putin, provided it does not trigger retaliatory measures. Such is the limit of the ‘rock-solid’ friendship between Beijing and Moscow: flawless, as long as China does not does not have to pay a high price for it”, summarizes Steve Tsang. Beijing could therefore comply with certain Western sanctions, while trying to maintain parts of its economic and commercial relations with Russia.
Thus, China, which during the Olympic Games signed a new hydrocarbon supply contract with Moscow, should not go back. “In the medium or long term, Beijing does not plan to reduce its imports of Russian hydrocarbons. This will not allow Russia to compensate for the drop in exports to Europe, if this occurs in the long term, but will mitigate any the same applies to the effect of sanctions”, prognosticates Alice Ekman.
“The Red Emperor” Xi Jinping should be all the more cautious as he enters a period with very high political stakes. “This year is the most important since he came to power ten years ago, insists Bonnie Glaser. third term – unheard of since the end of the Mao era. In this sensitive context, “a conflictual relationship with the United States is not in its interest. Xi Jinping could be criticized for not having managed this relationship well”, continues this expert.
In other words, Beijing does not want to have its agenda dictated by “friend” Putin. Because for the Chinese, the time for direct confrontation with the Americans has not yet come. “Two phenomena are in the process of consolidating and can recall, to a certain extent, aspects of the Cold War: the growing bipolarization of the world, and the ideological rivalry which characterizes it”, observes Alice Ekman.
If the Biden administration proclaims the need to defend the free world, Xi Jinping’s China is also very clear. “She has publicly displayed her ambition to promote her political system and to compete with the ideology of ‘capitalist’ countries”, recalls the researcher.
Regularly, the Chinese media gargles about the so-called “decline of the West”, its values, its way of life. Not since Mao Zedong has Chinese diplomacy been so aggressive. The “hidden purpose of America’s false propaganda” is to “divert the world’s attention from the dirty role played by the United States in the crisis by pushing for the reckless and relentless expansion of NATO, which which led to the current conflict”, hammered, on March 21, People’s Daily, organ of the CCP. Beijing and Washington are not close to making peace either.