The war in Ukraine is far from over, but in Chinese political circles there is a consensus taking shape that one country must emerge victorious from all the destruction: China.
After an initial mixed reaction to the Russian invasion, China laid the groundwork for a strategy to protect itself from the worst economic and diplomatic consequences it could face and to benefit from possible geopolitical shifts once the smoke has cleared.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has avoided criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, but has also sought to distance China from the massacre. His government has criticized international sanctions imposed on Russia but, at least so far, has hinted that Chinese companies can respect them, to protect Chinese economic interests in the West.
Last week Xi approached European leaders with hesitant offers of assistance in negotiating a deal, but at the same time other Chinese leaders have amplified Russian disinformation campaigns to discredit the United States and NATO. Officials in Washington said that after the invasion, Russia asked China for economic and military help, a claim that a Chinese official on Monday called disinformation.
The Chinese leadership has ultimately decided that it needs to try to distance itself from what it sees as a struggle between two frayed powers and be seen as a pillar of stability in an increasingly turbulent world.
“This means that as long as we do not make terminal strategic mistakes, China’s modernization will not be interrupted, and on the contrary, China will be even more capable and willing to play a more important role in building a new international order,” he wrote. in a widely circulated article Zheng Yongniang, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen and who has served as an adviser to Chinese leaders.
The basis of Chinese strategy is the conviction that the US is weakened by reckless adventures in other countries, including, in Beijing’s view, having incited Putin to conflict in Ukraine.
In this view, which in recent days has been echoed in public statements and quasi-official analyses, the Russian invasion has drawn US power and attention towards Europe, making it likely that President Joe Biden, like his recent predecessors, will try, but fail to focus more attention on China and the greater Asia-Pacific region.
“All the difficulties, all the juggling and all the constraints that we’re talking about are short-term things,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Simpson Center think tank in Washington, which has studied Beijing’s actions in the development phase. preparation for war. “In the long term, Russia will become the pariah of the international community and will have no one to turn to but China.”
The path that China must take from now on is far from certain. Excessive rapprochement with Russia would risk entrenching hostility from Europe and elsewhere to China. This is a possibility that worries the Xi government, despite its optimistic speech.
On Monday, Biden’s top national security adviser, meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Rome, warned that the United States has “deep fears” about Beijing’s growing alignment with Russia.
If Germany, France and other allies bolster their defenses as they promised, the US could end up having enough slack to shift more of its military resources to fighting China. Biden has vowed to mobilize an “alliance of democracies” and US military leaders say they will not let Ukraine distract them from China.
“We also feel a lot of anxiety because the war between Russia and Ukraine will force Europe closer to the US, and then China will be dragged deeper into a dilemma,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. US allies in the Pacific, including Japan and Australia, “will also adopt a stronger military posture. All this seems to China to be unfriendly.”
China’s initial setbacks after the Russian invasion also raised fears about Xi’s ability to guide the country through the aftershocks of the war.
Xi has warned Chinese leaders that the world is entering an era of turmoil “the likes of which have not been seen in a century.” But these leaders seemed ill-prepared for Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
Until the day of the invasion, they shrugged off warnings that Russia was about to start a war, instead accusing the US of raising tensions. Since then they have struggled to reconcile solidarity with Putin’s security grievances with their own declared respect for the principle of national sovereignty, including that of Ukraine.
In a video conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Xi lamented that “the flames of war have been reignited” in Europe. But its own diplomats have fanned the flames of Russian disinformation, accusing the US of developing biological weapons in Ukraine.
“This is not good for China’s international reputation,” commented Bobo Lo, an expert on Sino-Russian relations at the French Institute of International Relations. “It’s not just China’s reputation in the West; I think it also affects China’s reputation in the non-West, because essentially Beijing is associating itself with an imperialist power.”
China could also face adverse economic consequences from the war and from Western efforts to punish Russia by restricting trade and cutting off access to its financial institutions. Chinese officials have denounced such measures, and while the US and its allies have shown remarkable unity in enforcing them, other countries share Beijing’s reticence about using powerful economic tools as weapons.
In any case, the Chinese economy is big enough to absorb blows that would paralyze other countries. It’s even possible that Chinese companies will end up benefiting from Russia’s urgent need for trade, as happened when Moscow was sanctioned for the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Arguing that the era of American hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a historical anomaly, both Xi and Putin have embraced geopolitical doctrines that predict their countries will regain their great-power status.
Just as Putin claims the US threatens Russia on its western border, Xi sees US support for Taiwan, the autonomous democratic island Beijing claims as part of China, as a similar threat off its territory.
As it looks to Beijing for support to resist Western sanctions, Russia will become increasingly dependent on China for its diplomatic and economic survival, analysts say, while also serving as China’s strategic geopolitical ballast.
“The old order is rapidly disintegrating, and authoritarian leadership politics are on the rise again among the world’s great powers,” wrote Zheng of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen. “Countries are full of ambition, like tigers facing their prey, looking for every possible opportunity amid the ruins of the old order.”
Translation by Clara Allain
