Five days after reiterating its opposition to American pretensions in the Pacific, China took another step in the geopolitical ballet of Cold War 2.0 with a call from leader Xi Jinping to his closest ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“China wants to continue to support Russia on issues around its core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security,” Xi told Putin. In English: Beijing remains on Moscow’s side in the Ukrainian War, although this has not been fully reported by the state media of the two countries.
Not that it was necessary. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Chinese have sought a position of some distance, fearing the effects of Western sanctions on their business – China is a major Russian trading partner, and companies can be punished for this, although the trade flow only increased after the war.
Xi refused to condemn the February 24 invasion, both in speeches and in votes at the United Nations. He was threatened by Biden not to help Putin. Gradually, he has become a vocal critic of sanctions, at the same time he anodynely defends a peaceful solution to the crisis — who doesn’t?
This Wednesday (15), he said this again to Putin, in the only passage that was highlighted by most of the Western media. For Xi, according to state-run CCTV, Moscow and Kiev must find a “responsible way” to end hostilities. How the Russian sees it, ending the conquest of Lugansk on the basis of brute force, is another matter.
The Chinese, aware of Europe’s growing fatigue with the war, sided with their ally. Twenty days before the start of the conflict, Xi and Putin forged a historic friendship agreement, deepening a multifaceted relationship – which, if not a military alliance aimed at World War III as many fear, has defense aspects.
More importantly, Ukraine serves as a practical experiment for Xi’s intentions in its strategic periphery, the absorption of Taiwan ahead. The island, which Beijing considers its own and rebellious, lives in fear of invasion by the communist dictatorship, and the Joe Biden administration has reinforced a pledge of military support to Taipei if that happens.
This possibility has always been the main deterrent to Chinese military action, which many consider inevitable in the medium term. Beijing has been testing Taiwan’s air defense more intensively with incursions and has carried out exercises as an explicit warning to the US, especially after Biden visited Japan and South Korea with warmongering speech, including maneuvers with the Russians.
On the other hand, by examining the Western reaction to the attack on Kiev, Xi was able to recalculate whether to venture into Taiwan — although political and economic realities are very different in Europe and Asia.
Indeed, the Xi-Putin conversation takes place five days after the first meeting of the Chinese and US defense chiefs, on the sidelines of a conference by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. In it, Wei Fenghe and Lloyd Austin reaffirmed their differences, especially over Taiwan. The meeting, according to reports, was tense.
Since Cold War 2.0 was launched by the US in 2017 as a response to Xi’s increased assertiveness since taking power in 2012, Chinese and Americans have been at odds on every possible field of dispute.
But the conflict ended up getting hot first with the old protagonist of the first edition of the dispute, Moscow, which forced the US to deviate from its top priority in Asia — but not by much, such as forming a league of anti-government allies. Beijing and military agreements in the region prove it.
The Russians, for their part, kept their cool when commenting on the state of relations with the Americans on Wednesday. “Communication is essential, and in the future we will still have to communicate,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov. “The US is not going anywhere, Europe is not going anywhere,” he said.
