Beijing hopes peace between Russia and Ukraine can be Made in China

China State Councilor Wang will visit Moscow in the next few days after a fresh peace proposal was offered. PHOTO:REUTERS

BEIJING/KYIV – A year after declaring a “no-limits” partnership with Russia, China is now seeking to convince the world that it is a neutral actor which can help end the war in Ukraine. It will not be easy. 

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi has arrived in Moscow, the state-run Tass news agency said on Tuesday, citing a source. He is expected to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on the Ukraine crisis on Wednesday.

Beijing’s efforts have been disparaged by the United States, 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 Mr Blinken and Mr 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 spy balloon spat that roiled relations in February.

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 Mr 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,” he said.

Biden visits Kyiv

Chinese President Xi Jinping has yet to talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since the invasion, despite speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin 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 does not 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.

Russia’s war in Ukraine

While China has not released details of the peace plan, Mr 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 scepticism on the ground, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying that a Russian troop withdrawal in 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 ceasefire and for a halt to arms deliveries to Ukraine.

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 United Nations, 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 ceasefire. At the same time, past efforts to mediate have foundered.

At the Munich Security Conference, held from last Friday to Sunday, Mr Zelensky 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 Mr Xi as a global statesman while also shaping the outcome towards 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 Mr Putin ever since the invasion, Chinese diplomats have recently sought to create some distance with Moscow.

In a phone call with Mr Lavrov in early January, new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said ties were based on “Three No’s”: no alliance, no confrontation and no targeting of any third party. 

Mr Wang, who is ranked higher than Mr Qin in China’s system of government, and reportedly may meet Mr Putin later this week, also used that language during remarks at the Munich forum.

Even as Mr Wang accused the US of “finger-pointing and even coercion” regarding China’s ties with Russia, he also emphasised that the two countries were not allies and were not 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 Dr Henry Huiyao Wang, founder of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a policy research group in Beijing. 

Mr 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 should not be taken literally. 

“The West has been very alarmed about this ‘no-limit friendship’ description,” said Mr Zhou, who attended the Munich meeting.

“I am really surprised why they are so sensitive about it,” he said, adding that it was natural for Beijing to develop good relations with neighbouring 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, Ms Yao Yunzhu, a retired major-general of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, pushed back at that characterisation. 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’.” BLOOMBERG, REUTERS

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