Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia and the Russia-Ukraine War
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow to confer with Russian President Vladimir Putin is understandably focusing speculation on what China’s actual position on the Russia-Ukraine War is.
It may also give us a better idea of what differences among the Western allies may be. Potential conflicts between Ukraine’s position and that of the US will be of particular interest.
Ryan Hass sees China having three main goals in its current dealings with Russia: The “first is to lock Russia in for the long term as China’s junior partner.”
For Xi, cementing Russia as China’s junior partner is fundamental to his vision of national rejuvenation. China views the United States as the principal obstacle to its rise. Having to focus on securing its land border with Russia would divert resources and attention from China’s maritime periphery, where Xi feels the most acute threats. [my emphasis]
He argues, “China’s second objective is to guard against Russia failing and Putin falling.” Hass sees that as requiring from China’s perspective “that Moscow not objectively lose in Ukraine.“ (He doesn’t elaborate on what might constitute losing “objectively” in China’s view.)
The third goal has to do with Taiwan:
China’s third objective is to try to de-link Ukraine from Taiwan. Chinese leaders grate at the suggestion that Ukraine today foreshadows Taiwan tomorrow. They want the world to accept that Ukraine is a sovereign state and Taiwan is not, and that the two should not be compared.
This goal informed China’s peace proposal for Ukraine. Chinese diplomats almost certainly will seek to chip away at Ukraine-Taiwan comparisons going forward. In addition to chafing at the increased international attention being devoted to Taiwan’s security, China’s leaders do not want the developed world to treat its response to Russia’s aggression as a warmup for how it would react to future Chinese actions against Taiwan. [my emphasis]
The Carnegie Endowment’s Evan Feigenbaum also doesn’t see much chance that Xi will lean hard to Russia to pull back from Ukraine in the immediate future:
[D]espite a recent Chinese position paper that seeks to present Beijing as a prospective arbiter of peace in Ukraine, no one should expect Xi to impose conditions on President Vladimir Putin or Russia. Nor should anyone expect a substantive diplomatic initiative with new points beyond the positions that Beijing has offered to date. These positions are, broadly speaking, friendly to Moscow’s view, which is precisely why Putin unsurprisingly told Xi at a meeting on Monday in the Kremlin that he would be “happy to discuss” them.
To be sure, Beijing is working hard to create a perception of balance. But in doing so, it is playing primarily to a few audiences while ignoring the United States: Ukraine, Russia, the Global South, and, to a much lesser extent, Europe.
[my emphasis]
A Wall Street Journal report reports on how the Biden Administration seems to be looking to dismiss any Chinese proposals for an immediate cease-fire. There could be a hint here of the US publicly signaling to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he will be expected to resist any such calls for a cease-fire.
As Russia and China lay out the agenda for the Putin-Xi meeting, [National Security Council spokesman) John] Kirby said the U.S. wants to draw attention to any Chinese proposal for a cease-fire that would “be one-sided and reflect only the Russian perspective.”
Mr. Kirby, when asked by reporters, said he couldn’t speak for Mr. Zelensky and whether he would accept a Chinese-backed proposal. “We certainly don’t support calls for a cease-fire that would be called for by the PRC in a meeting in Moscow,” Mr. Kirby said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Mr. Zelensky has taken a different approach with Beijing, so far, commending the 12-point Chinese position paper on Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky, however, stressed the Chinese paper’s emphasis on territorial integrity. His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he also “discussed the significance of the principle of territorial integrity” in a phone call Thursday with his Chinese counterpart.
[my emphasis]
In considering the risks and benefits for Ukraine that would be involved with a cease-fire at this point, it is important to remember that despite its failure to achieve its goal in the early weeks of the war in 2022, Russia has substantial advantages over Ukraine in facing a long war of attrition.
As George Beebe notes, “In a war of attrition, Russia has a much larger base of manpower and military industry to draw upon than does Ukraine.“
Sending U.S. or NATO troops would risk a direct clash with the Russian military and potential escalation into nuclear conflict. Western stockpiles of artillery shells and missiles for the war are dwindling, which in turn has implications for American military readiness elsewhere in the world. And it is becoming evident that the United States and its allies cannot ramp up defense manufacturing quickly enough to meet Ukraine’s urgent needs.
And Beebe makes this important point relative to potentially divergent priorities between the US (militarily weakening Russia) and Ukraine (limiting the damage of the war). As the year drags on, the negotiating position of the US could become more constricted than it is at the moment:
Both Ukraine and Russia could, for different reasons, find China increasingly attractive as a potential mediator, even if neither is yet prepared for significant concessions. Washington, which sees no such attractiveness, could still play spoiler to a Chinese-sponsored peace process, as it retains considerable leverage over Ukraine. But does Biden want to risk the potential domestic and international repercussions of appearing to oppose a settlement? [my emphasis]
Stuart Lau’s analysis in Politico is a bit heavy on what he calls the “bromance” between Putin and Xi, a bit of journalistic cheesiness that we sometimes get from Politico. But this is part more substantial:
Beijing’s worldview requires it to stay strategically close to Russia: As Beijing’s leaders see it, the U.S. is blocking China’s path to global leadership, aided by European governments, while most of its own geographical neighbors — from Japan and South Korea to Vietnam and India — are increasingly skeptical rather than supportive.
“The Chinese people are not prone to threats. Paper tigers such as the U.S. would definitely not be able to threaten China,” declared a commentary on Chinese state news agency Xinhua previewing Xi’s trip to Russia. The same article slammed Washington for threatening to sanction China if it provided Russia with weapons for its invasion of Ukraine. “The more the U.S. wants to crush the two superpowers, China and Russia, together … the closer China and Russia lean on each other.”
It’s a view that chimes with the rhetoric from the Kremlin. “Washington does not want this war to end. Washington wants and is doing everything to continue this war. This is the visible hand,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month. …
But Beijing’s overall top priority is to “lock Russia in for the long term as China’s junior partner,” wrote Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. “For Xi, cementing Russia as China’s junior partner is fundamental to his vision of national rejuvenation.”
To achieve this, Putin’s stay in power is non-negotiable for Beijing, he wrote: “China’s … objective is to guard against Russia failing and Putin falling.” [my emphasis]
This is another reason to be dubious about Western hopes and fantasies about “regime change” in Russia.
Ryan Hass dismisses the notion that any “bromance” between Xi and Putin will have much effect on policy, noting that it “may play a small role” in the process. But Hass writes, “in my personal experiences around Xi and my study of his leadership over the past decade, Xi has proven himself to be uniquely unsentimental. He is a cold-blooded calculator of his and his country’s interests above all else.”
Hass, Ryan (2023): Fatalism is not an option for addressing China-Russia relations. Brookings Institute 03/17/2023. <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/03/17/fatalism-is-not-an-option-for-addressing-china-russia-relations/> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Feigenbaum, Evan A. (2023) Beijing’s Lean Into Moscow. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 03/20/2023. <https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/03/20/beijing-s-lean-into-moscow-pub-89317> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Hutzler, Charles (2023): U.S. Seeks to Head Off Any Chinese Call for Cease-Fire in Ukraine. Wall Street Journal 03/17/2023. <https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-seeks-to-head-off-any-chinese-call-for-cease-fire-in-ukraine-ef456819> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Marcetic, Branko (2023): The danger of downplaying the Ukrainian battlefield toll. Responsible Statecraft 03/15/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/03/15/the-danger-of-downplaying-the-ukrainian-battlefield-toll/|> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Beebe, George (2023): Responsible Statecraft 03/20/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/03/20/bidens-looming-trap-in-ukraine/> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Lau, Stuart (2023): Why Xi Jinping is still Vladimir Putin’s best friend. Politico EU 03/20/2023. <https://www.politico.eu/article/xi-jinping-china-vladimir-putin-russia-best-friend-ally-war-in-ukraine/> (Accessed 2023-20-03).
Hass, Ryan (2023), op. cit.