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War in Ukraine tests China’s ‘limitless’ bond with Russia

War in Ukraine tests China’s ‘limitless’ bond with Russia

 


NO LIMITS?  Chinese President Xi Jinping applauds during the opening session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Saturday March 5, 2022. PHOTO AFP

NO LIMITS? Chinese President Xi Jinping applauds during the opening session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Saturday March 5, 2022. PHOTO AFP

(UPDATE) Beijing, China: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin toasted a ‘boundless’ friendship during a warm meeting in February, but just a month later that bond is being tested by war in Ukraine.

With international outrage and mounting sanctions on Russia, Beijing is scrambling to avoid being tainted by an association with Moscow while maintaining their increasingly close ties.

Once bitter Cold War rivals, China and Russia have grown closer than ever since Xi Jinping took power nearly a decade ago, driven by their shared desire to confront American power.

But China appears to have been caught off guard by the Russian military offensive, fierce Ukrainian resistance and the scale of the resulting international anti-Kremlin backlash.

Beijing, which has long called for respect for territorial integrity in border disputes with its own neighbors, has been forced into rhetorical contortions about Ukraine so as not to antagonize Russia.

While maintaining lip service to national sovereignty, China has insisted that Moscow’s security concerns over Ukraine and the broader expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) directed by the United States are valid.

He declined to condemn Moscow, with Chinese government spokesmen chastising foreign journalists at press conferences for calling the assault on Ukraine an “invasion”.

Bewildered Beijing

At the same time, censors on China’s tightly controlled internet struggled to shape national public discourse, initially allowing loud posts that tracked down Beijing’s anti-American rhetoric, before pivoting to weed out obscene posts objectifying people. women fleeing Ukraine as well as anti-war sentiment.

“You could see the confusion in the first statements,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

If the situation is not resolved, Beijing risks being branded as Putin’s facilitator, potentially alienating Western trading partners and endangering the precarious balance of ties China has cultivated in recent years with Russia and the United States. Ukraine.

The situation has effectively paralyzed China, according to Richard Ghiasy, an expert at the Center for Strategic Studies in The Hague.

“Security interests almost always trump economic interests” in China’s calculus and that will not fundamentally change to a more pro-Ukraine stance, he told Agence France-Presse.

Russia is “a giant, nuclear-armed, resource-rich neighbor” that China will not risk agitating, Ghiasy said.

Beijing’s plight is compounded by the plight of its 6,000 Ukrainian citizens, who are now being gradually evacuated by road and rail to neighboring countries along with other displaced people.

People rest in a reception center for refugees at the Ukrainian-Polish border crossing in Korczowa, March 5, 2022. PHOTO AFP

People rest in a reception center for refugees at the Ukrainian-Polish border crossing in Korczowa, March 5, 2022. PHOTO AFP

More than a dozen governments have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine by mid-February, but China has refrained from doing the same.

Least bad result

Instead, he urged his citizens to ‘stay calm’ and stay at home even as Russian troops moved across Ukrainian soil and were forced to call off a proposed airlift after Ukraine shut down. its airspace to civilian aircraft.

In a hint of how Beijing has misinterpreted the situation, its embassy in Ukraine first urged its citizens to display China’s distinctive red flag on their cars as a protective measure, quickly retracting the advice after some complained. signaled the subsequent hostility of the local population.

The “political stance that the Chinese government has taken has made things difficult for Chinese citizens there,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a China research fellow at the Bangalore-based Takshashila Institution.

“If we see Chinese casualties in Ukraine, then the pro-Russian neutrality of the Chinese government that we see today will become more difficult to maintain,” Kewalramani added.

With little leeway, China is adopting the role of mediator.

Xi urged Putin in a call last week to resolve the crisis by forming a “sustainable European security mechanism through negotiations” and China’s foreign minister told his Ukrainian counterpart that Beijing “regrets” the conflict and hopes that the two parties can find a diplomatic solution.

But any mediating role taken on by China would be tantamount to using its influence to get Putin to change, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

“It’s external neutrality, but in reality always on the side of Russia,” Tsang said.

A negotiated solution is now the least bad scenario for China, analysts say.

The worst-case scenario, Tsang said, would be for tougher sanctions on Russia or a failure of his military goals in Ukraine to result in an uprising that ousts Putin from power, potentially leading to a pro-Western government in Moscow.

“I doubt Xi wants to see the war in Ukraine escalate further,” Tsang said.

“But he would like to see Putin be able to get what he wants without causing too much collateral damage…for China and its ties with the rest of the world.”

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