Beijing abstained Friday night from a UN Security Council vote on a resolution condemning Ukraine’s invasion and calling on Russia to withdraw. That is a stroke of luck at this time. China, which is increasingly cooperating with Russia, could also have used its veto. But as with Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, China declined to do so.
China and Russia had just issued a joint statement on February 4, when Putin was present as guest of honor at the Olympics, stating that the friendship between the two countries knows “no borders” and that especially the strong ideological kinship between the two leaders was apparent. In it, China also stated that it was against any further expansion of NATO. The alliance with Russia is proving less solid and unconditional than it has recently appeared.
However, China does not support sanctions against Russia either, which is of greater practical importance to Russia. While the West imposes sanctions, China just keeps trade lines with Russia open. It is precisely the large Chinese development banks that can therefore play an important role in providing Russia with money if the payment traffic of Russian banks is restricted by the West. Chinese development banks, established to invest in economically disadvantaged countries, do virtually no business with the US or the West. As a result, unlike other Chinese banks, they are virtually insensitive to possible Western boycotts.
Being superior together
Xi believes that China and Russia together can create a new world order, one based on new international etiquette and a centrally controlled state system superior to Western democracy. That is what drives joint military exercises and the way they turn against the United States together.
But precisely in order to make this possible in the longer term, it is wise for Xi not to put the US and the EU on an extra cue against China just yet. The Sino-Russian plans are not yet advanced enough for that. Xi needs time.
Putin now puts Xi in a difficult position. An important official cornerstone of Chinese policy has long been respecting the sovereignty of states, because China is always afraid that other countries will violate China’s sovereignty. So what is China to do with this blatant violation of that principle?
For the time being, China is coming up with a complicated construction that spares the cabbage and the goat. Yes, China maintains the inviolability of sovereign states, but in the case of Ukraine, it is not a truly sovereign state. Or, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua told his Russian counterpart on Thursday: China recognizes the complex and special historical context of the affairs surrounding Ukraine, and understands Russia’s legitimate security concerns.
In Chinese eyes, the US, not Russia, are the aggressors. After all, it is the US that has initiated NATO’s eastward expansion, and of course that threatens Russia. “Did they also think about what the consequences could be if you push a large country against the wall?” asked a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself this week.
China has consistently stressed the need to address Russia’s legitimate security concerns. When Xi and Putin met on Friday, Xi reiterated that Russia and Ukraine must find a diplomatic way out of the conflict. It is unclear whether China would actively act as a mediator.
The Chinese censor prescribes that media should not report positively about the West and not negatively about Russia
And now Taiwan?
Meanwhile, there is speculation both inside and outside China that this could be a time for China to take Taiwan. This is because the attention has been diverted, and because China would clearly see that the West cannot come up with more than sanctions.
On the Chinese Internet, a picture the round of a pig being slaughtered in a farm yard. “Ukraine,” the animal reads. Another pig, who looks anxiously over a wall at the scene, reads “Taiwan”. The equation becomes by a government spokesperson rejected. “Taiwan is not Ukraine”.
Also read: Follow the latest developments around the conflict in Ukraine in the live blog
Meanwhile, the official Chinese state media remains relatively quiet around Ukraine. The Chinese censor prescribes that media should not report positively about the West and not negatively about Russia. Nor should there be any talk of war or invasion: the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs avoided the question of what the Russian actions should be called. The news about Ukraine was never the opening of the news on Chinese television.
There was, however, the hashtag ‘I can’t concentrate on my work’ on Chinese social media. In the hashtag, the sentence was only written slightly differently, namely with the first character of the Chinese name for Ukraine. That’s basically what it said: because of Ukraine, I can’t concentrate on my work. According to the site Whatsonweibowhich keeps track of what is written on the microblogging site Weibo, the news of the raid on social media is closely followed.