A year after declaring a “no-limits” partnership with Russia, China is now seeking to convince the world it’s a neutral actor that can help end the war in Ukraine. It won’t be easy.
(Bloomberg) — A year after declaring a “no-limits” partnership with Russia, China is now seeking to convince the world it’s a neutral actor that can help end the war in Ukraine. It won’t be easy.
Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi is set to visit Moscow in the coming days after floating a fresh peace proposal to end the conflict triggered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Beijing’s effort has been disparaged by the US, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken accusing China of privately weighing whether to give Russia weapons even while saying “they haven’t crossed that line yet.”
The verbal sparring by Blinken and Wang, who failed to agree on much last weekend during a meeting at a security forum in Germany, shows that problems between the world’s biggest economies go much deeper than the balloon spat that roiled relations this month. The war in Ukraine is now becoming a pivotal issue for both sides to shape global narratives, particularly as war fatigue starts to grip parts of the world.
“I do not doubt Beijing’s desire for there to be peace, but at the same time the proposal seems incredible,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who co-wrote a book on China’s foreign policy. “For it to be credible, China would have to be seen as an independent broker. Yet China has clearly chosen a side in this conflict.”
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has yet to talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since the invasion despite speaking with Putin some four times in that span. Beijing has also repeatedly defended some of Russia’s reasons for going to war — most prominently to resist the expansion of NATO — while insisting it doesn’t support the invasion itself.
Over the months, however, the costs have increased for Beijing. Beyond the near-term damage to the global economy, China is also increasingly seen in the US and Europe as a strategic competitor that must be deterred from its own ambitions to take control of Taiwan — a prospect that makes Beijing more vulnerable to multilateral export controls, investment restrictions and other measures that could thwart its long-term growth prospects.
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While China hasn’t released details of the peace plan, Wang said the proposal would include calls for territorial integrity to be respected, the protection of nuclear facilities and opposing the use of biochemical weapons. It was immediately met with some skepticism on the ground, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying a Russian troop withdrawal of Ukraine must be a condition of any peace deal.
“A just peace cannot mean that the aggressor gets rewarded,” she said.
European officials familiar with the plan, who asked not to be identified, said it is expected to include calls for a cease-fire and for a halt to arms deliveries to Ukraine. They said the US and its allies think Putin may make similar points during a speech on Tuesday in Moscow, and potentially offer a draft United Nations resolution on the Feb. 24 one-year mark to compete with one backed by Ukraine supporters demanding that Russia withdraw troops and end hostilities.
Little Prospect
Although China’s plan appears to have little chance of succeeding, US allies are concerned the proposal could resonate with countries in the Global South and potentially attract votes at the UN, the people said. Many countries outside the US and Europe have declined to join the sanctions against Russia and called for talks and a possible cease-fire. At the same time, past efforts to mediate have foundered.
At the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials urged friendly nations to speed up the delivery of weapons and ammunition, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on others to be quicker in delivering tanks. Dwindling ammunition supplies are a concern, with Ukrainian and Russian forces burning through tens of thousands of artillery shells each day.
For China, the peace proposal helps paint Xi as a global statesman while also shaping the outcome toward one that helps Beijing. Some Chinese participants at the conference were surprised at how the US and its allies were lumping China and Russia together, and they underscored the need to counter that narrative.
While China has provided diplomatic support to Putin ever since the invasion, recently Chinese diplomats have sought to create some distance with Moscow. In a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in early January, new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said ties were based on “Three Nos”: no alliance, no confrontation and no targeting of any third party.
Wang, who is ranked higher than Qin in China’s system of government, also used that language during remarks at the Munich forum. Even as Wang accused the US of “finger-pointing and even coercion” regarding China’s ties with Russia, he also emphasized that the two countries weren’t allies and weren’t looking to team up against anyone.
No Alliance
The emphasis on no alliance shows Beijing is tweaking its Russian policies and has been overlooked in the US and Europe, according to Henry Huiyao Wang, founder of the Center for China and Globalization, a policy research group in Beijing.
Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel who is now a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, said the “no-limit friendship” is merely “rhetoric” and shouldn’t be taken literally.
“The West has been very alarmed about this ‘no limit friendship’ description,” said Zhou, who attended the Munich meeting. “I’m really surprised why they’re so sensitive about it,” he adding, saying it was natural for Beijing to develop good relations with neighboring countries.
This year’s Munich Security Conference report concluded that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine shows that democracies must defend themselves against autocratic revisionists, with China being singled out in almost every chapter.
At a public panel, Yao Yunzhu, a retired major general of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, pushed back at that characterization. When answering a question about concerns over nuclear weapon transparency in autocratic countries, she rejected the framing.
“It should not be the ‘democratic nuclear weapons versus autocratic nuclear weapons,’” she said. “Instead it should be ‘nuclear weapons versus us human beings.’”
–With assistance from Colum Murphy, Rebecca Choong Wilkins, Arne Delfs and Alberto Nardelli.
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