China rarely sees a winner Emerging from the Ukraine War: China

The war in Ukraine is far from over, but a consensus is forming in China’s policy circles that one country stands to win the chaos: China.

After a Confused initial reaction In the face of Russian aggression, China laid the groundwork for a strategy to insulate itself from the worst economic and diplomatic consequences it could face, and benefit from geographical changes. politics when the smoke disappears.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has avoided criticizing Russian President V. Putin, but he has also tried to keep China away from the carnage. His government has voiced its rejection of international sanctions imposed on Russia but at least so far has hinted that Chinese companies may comply with the measures to protect economic interests. of China in the West.

Mr. Xi contacted European leaders last week with vague offers of assistance in negotiating a settlement, even as other Chinese officials amplify Russian disinformation campaigns means discrediting the United States and NATO. Officials in Washington claimed, without providing evidence, that after the invasion of Russia request China for economic and military support, which a Chinese official denounced on Monday as disinformation.

Ultimately, China’s leadership has calculated that it must strive to rise above what it sees as a struggle between two tired powers and seen as a pillar of stability in an increasingly turbulent world.

“This means that as long as we don’t make the ultimate strategic mistakes, China’s modernization will not be cut short, and conversely, China will have great capacity and willpower. further to play a more important role in building a new international order,” said Zheng Yongnian, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, who has advised senior officials, wrote after the invasion in a widely circulated articles.

At the heart of China’s strategy is the belief that the United States is weakened by reckless adventures abroad, including, in Beijing’s view, bringing Putin into the Ukraine conflict.

In this view, echoed in recent days in public statements and quasi-official analyses, the Russian invasion has drawn American power and attention towards Europe, causing the possibility that President Biden, like his recent predecessors, will try but fail. focus on China and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

“All the difficulties and all the trade-offs and all the confusion we’re talking about,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, who has studied Beijing. come, it’s short term. action leads to war. “In the long run, Russia will become the center of the international community, and Russia will have no one to turn its back on China.”

China’s way forward is by no means certain. Moving closer to Russia would risk engendering animosity towards China in Europe and beyond, a possibility that worries Mr. Xi’s government for all its obscurity.

And if Germany, France, and other allies build up their defenses as promised, the United States may finally be free to channel more military resources against China. Mr. Biden has vowed to assemble a “coalition of democracies”, while US military leaders have said they will not let Ukraine distract them from China.

“We also feel very, very worried because the Russia-Ukraine war will force Europe to tilt towards the US, and then China will be crushed,” said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Nanjing University. deeper into the dilemma”. US allies in the Pacific, including Japan and Australia, “will also adopt a stronger military posture. So it all seems unfriendly to China.”

China’s initial stumbles after the Russian invasion also raised concerns about Xi’s ability to navigate the aftershocks of war.

He has repeatedly warned Chinese officials that the world is entering an era of upheaval “the likes of which have not been seen in a century.” Those officials, however, appear unprepared for the upheaval of Putin’s Ukraine offensive.

Until the day of the invasion, they mocked warnings that Russia was ready for war, accusing the United States of causing tension instead. Since then, they fought to reconcile Putin’s sympathy for security grievances with their often claimed respect for the principle of national sovereignty, including that of Ukraine.

Mr. Xi, in a TV affair along with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Sholz of Germany, lamented the “flame of war that is kindling” in Europe. However, his diplomats were blow up the fire on Russian disinformation, accusing the United States of developing biological weapons in Ukraine.

“This is not good for China’s international reputation,” said Bobo Lo, an expert on China-Russia 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 non-Western countries, as it is essentially linking itself to a great power.”

China could also face economic disruption from war and Western efforts to punish Russia by restricting trade and cutting off its financial institutions. Chinese officials have condemned such measures, and while the United States and its allies have shown considerable unanimity in imposing them, other countries share Beijing’s reticence in taking them. use powerful economic tools as weapons.

In any case, China’s economy is large enough to take blows that could paralyze other countries. Chinese companies may even be well-positioned to capitalize on Russia’s desperate commercial needs, like happened when Moscow faced sanctions over its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

China’s strategy reflects a hardline stance towards the United States since Mr. Biden took office in 2021 – largely because officials had hoped for some easing following the turbulent and confrontational policies of the United States. President Donald Trump.

“In its China strategy, the policy continuity of the Biden administration with the Trump administration clearly outweighs any difference,” said Yuan Peng, president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. in Beijing, wrote at the end of last year. “Biden has repeatedly stated that the US is not in a ‘new Cold War’ with China, but China often feels chills creeping in everywhere.”

Whatever happens in the war, China sees its deepening relationship with Russia as a way to counterbalance the United States. The The partnership that Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin celebrate Last month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing became too important to be sacrificed, whatever some officials had doubts about the fighting.

Given that the era of American domination after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a historical anomaly, both Xi and Putin adopted geopolitical doctrines that called for their countries to reclaim their great power status. country.

Just as Mr. Putin describes the US as threatening Russia on its western border, Mr. Xi sees US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own. is a similar threat off the coast of China.

In recent weeks, Chinese analysts have repeatedly cited old works by a British geographer, Sir Halford John Mackinder. He argued that whoever controlled Central Europe would control vast swaths of land stretching from Europe to Asia. Whoever controls Eurasia can rule the world.

One modern Russian proponent of such thinking, Aleksandr G. Dugin, has written extensively about what he sees as the growing conflict between the liberal, decadent West and conservative Eurasia with Russia is its soul.

Mr. Dugin, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s philosopher”, has built a following in China, appearing in state media and visiting Beijing in 2018 to make a series of lectures. His host on that occasion was Zhang Weiwei, an academic-propaganda who has won Xi’s support and who last year gave lecture before the Politburoa council of 25 top party officials.

“The West shouldn’t be the hegemon in determining common standards because the West or Europe, or the West in general is just a part of humanity,” Dugin told a radio interviewer. Chinese state television in 2019. “And the other part, a majority of the human race, lives outside of the West, in Asia. “

Such aversion to international standards of human rights or politics, allegedly dictated by the West, has become a frequent theme of China’s criticisms of the United States. It is the subject of a government opinion report in December, against a virtual summit of democracies hosted by Biden, and a lengthy statement Putin and Xi made when they met in Beijing last month.

As Russia turns to support Beijing against Western sanctions, analysts say, Russia will increasingly see China as a diplomatic and economic lifeline and as a geopolitical lever. its strategic management.

“The old order is rapidly disintegrating, and strong politics are on the rise again among the world’s powers,” wrote Zheng of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. “Ambitioned nations, like tigers keeping an eye on their prey, want to find every opportunity amid the ruins of the old order.”