Few analysts expected China’s peace plan for Ukraine, which officials trailed all week, to have any concrete measures for solving the crisis. Their suspicions were correct. The position paper published by China’s foreign ministry on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion called for the “sovereignty of all countries” to be respected, without detailing what this meant for Ukraine. In each of the 12 points, the plan reiterated Chinese talking points about the conflict without offering a solution.
The Chinese peace plan is the culmination of a flurry of diplomatic meetings that kicked off at the Munich security conference on 17 February. There Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, presented a bullish front to western officials, denying claims made by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, that China was on the verge of sending weapons to Russia. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said such a move would be a “red line” for the bloc. Wang insisted China wanted peace.
On 22 February Wang arrived in Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin and other top officials, including the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Wang reaffirmed the close friendship between Russia and China, saying he expected the relationship to reach a “new consensus”. However, he stopped short of using the term “no limits” to describe their relationship, a phrase that was used in a joint Sino-Russian statement published a few weeks before the war began. There are signs Beijing is growing increasingly keen for the conflict to be resolved swiftly via a political settlement – and that its patience for Russia’s war is wearing thin.
“Russia needs China much more than China needs Russia,” said Bobo Lo, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a thinktank based in Washington DC.
The meetings in Moscow were the culmination of a year in which Beijing has tried to juggle the conflicting priorities of maintaining its relationship with Russia and protecting its economy, which is dependent on a global order dominated by the US. Lo said Russia still had the capacity to be an “immensely disruptive actor” to China’s interests, particularly in central Asia. So Beijing has tried to straddle an increasingly untenable neutrality while still making statements that support Russia. On Thursday, China abstained in a UN general assembly vote demanding that Moscow withdraw from Ukraine.
Many analysts think Russia’s invasion caught China off guard. The Chinese embassy in Ukraine only made public efforts to register and evacuate the roughly 6,000 Chinese nationals the day after the invasion. Territorial sovereignty is a core principle of Chinese foreign policy, making it difficult to endorse a cross-border incursion.
Chinese rhetoric soon adapted to accommodate the idea that the conflict is not Russia’s doing. “On the surface, the Russia-Ukraine conflict that broke out in February 2022 appeared to be initiated by a Russian attack,” wrote Tian Wenlin, a professor of international studies at Renmin University, a top school in Beijing, on 16 May. “But it was actually the result of the US promotion of Nato’s eastward expansion and the squeezing of Russia’s strategic space.” State media has accused the west of a “cold war mentality”.
But behind the fulsome rhetoric, the war has put China in a difficult strategic position. “The west has never been more unified,” said Lo, referring to Europe and the US. “The United States has got its leadership mojo back. If you’re sitting in Beijing, these are all bad things.”
Faced with a dire domestic trifecta of slowing economic growth, a shrinking and ageing population and the spread of Covid, Xi seems to have been extending olive branches to European countries. The Sino-US relationship is the worst it has been in recent memory, especially since the spy balloons saga. But trade with Europe is still important. In recent months Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, travelled to Beijing to meet Xi, as did the European Council president, Charles Michel. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, and Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, are also planning visits.
Any attempts to cosy up to Europe will be scuppered if Beijing is seen to be supporting Russia. Few analysts expect China to send arms, although, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is considering releasing the intelligence it has to support that claim. On Friday, Der Spiegel reported Russia was in talks with a Chinese manufacturer to buy 100 drones that could carry 35-50kg warheads, without citing sources. Chinese officials have not commented on the allegation.
Instead, China is trying to position itself as the peacemaker – an exercise in “damage limitation”. said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute thinktank in Sydney. “Even if the plan has legs, which I doubt, Putin will want something from the Chinese to even entertain it,” he added.
“Putin would doubtless demand what he needs to make battlefield gains – arms and ammunition – but China would be taking a severe risk in providing military support.”
Yun Sun, the director of the China programme at the Stimson Center thinktank, said: “China is aiming to present itself not as an advocate for Russia, but an advocate for peace.” But any outcome that results in a Russian defeat, with the risk of regime change in the Kremlin, would be bad for Xi. Under Putin, Russia is China’s only powerful ally. “China wants a partner to jointly counter the US with,” Sun said.
China therefore wants to keep Putin’s regime afloat without aggravating its own relationship with powerful trading partners. China has been an economic lifeline to Russia throughout the conflict. It has continued to buy Russian oil, albeit at discounted prices. It is increasingly using yuan rather than US dollars to finance those purchases, helping Russia’s economy to become more resilient to western sanctions, which are based on the use of the dollar. The yuan’s share of Russia’s currency market increased from less than 1% to 48% between January and November last year.
One of China’s key lessons will be about sanctions. In its peace plan, China reiterated that it “opposes unilateral sanctions unauthorised by the UN security council”. But the war has shown the extent to which western countries are willing to withstand economic pain, such as higher energy prices, to punish an aggressor. The longer and more painful Russia’s war, economically and militarily, the more reasons for Beijing to be cautious about any potential incursion on Taiwan.
“If Joe Biden can get that excited about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then how much more so is he going to be if Beijing invades Taiwan?” Lo said. “Taiwan isn’t just about Taiwan. If Taiwan falls … then it raises all sorts of questions about the whole system of US security alliances and relationships, not just in the Indo-Pacific, but across the world. So Taiwan cannot be lost.”
