What is China’s relationship with Russia, and with Ukraine?

By Adam Taylor from www.washingtonpost.com

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to travel to Russia on Monday to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The visit, set to last through Wednesday, will attract close scrutiny in Western capitals intent on discerning developments in the increasingly warm relationship between the two countries, both of which are nuclear-armed, permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

More than a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin is a pariah at most international meetings and has relatively few powerful allies abroad.

China has not endorsed Russia’s war on Ukraine and has promoted a 12-point proposal for ending it. But Beijing has stopped far short of condemning Russia’s aggression, and the visit is likely to be interpreted in some corners as a tacit endorsement of Russia’s actions.

The two countries are increasingly aligned in a shared animosity toward the United States and its allies, although the U.S. and Chinese economies, which far outpace Russia’s, remain economically intertwined. Some analysts have compared Beijing’s views on Taiwan as comparable to Russia’s on Ukraine.

Are Russia and China allies? Were they historically?

Moscow and Beijing were not close allies for much of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union became the dominant force in global communism, China was still recovering from a devastating civil war.

Soviet assistance helped China begin its nuclear weapons program in the 1950s, but ideological debates drove a Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, which eventually contributed to a rapprochement between the United States and China in the following decade. That thaw led to a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council for Beijing, where it is among the five countries, including Russia and the United States, with veto power.

Moscow and Beijing normalized relations at the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed. They signed a number of diplomatic agreements, including the final resolution to a long-standing border dispute. Trade between them grew exponentially.

In recent years, as both China’s and Russia’s relationships with the West faltered, their bilateral relationship with each other improved. China did not oppose Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In 2019, China and Russia signed a statement calling for “mutual understanding and compromise for win-win cooperation.” In 2022, they released a joint statement outlining a “no-limits” partnership.

The new alignment is based largely on shared opposition to U.S. power. Beijing, analysts have said, was closely watching the West’s reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to inform its own intentions in regard to Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing sees as sovereign Chinese territory.

“The Russia-Ukraine war has brought great lessons for [China] — they will definitely seek speed,” Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told reporters on the sidelines of parliament in Taipei, referring to China’s military, according to a Reuters report.

⇒ Do You Know Why You Should Never Put A Tall Fence Around Your House?

What is China’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Only weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Beijing and Moscow had emphasized their partnership.

In a joint statement that year after Putin and Xi met in Beijing on Feb. 4, the two leaders said there were “no limits” or “forbidden” areas of cooperation — widely interpreted as an indication that joint military action was not off the table.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put that into question. The war left Moscow isolated at global forums such as the United Nations. China has not formally endorsed Moscow’s war efforts and portrays itself as a neutral party.

China has maintained relations with Ukraine. In February, Beijing released a 12-point proposal for ending the war that included calls for peace talks, a cease-fire and an end to “unilateral sanctions.”

However, the peace proposal included no demands for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory. China has also abstained from votes condemning Russia at the U.N. General Assembly.

However, China has continued to trade with Russia despite, the economic isolation enforced by the United States and its allies via sanctions and export controls. Russia has become increasingly reliant on oil exports to China, with record exports to the country in January, according to exports to data intelligence firm Kpler.

⇒ Click here to find out how to survive when the lights go out!

Western officials have voiced concern about China potentially supplying arms to Russia.

“We want to be crystal clear that would be a poor decision, should they decide to do that,” Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters last month.

Could China broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal?

China may seem an unlikely broker for peace. However, it has some recent dealmaking credentials.

Earlier this month, longtime rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran announced an agreement, which surprised foreign observers, to resume diplomatic ties after a series of secret meetings held in Beijing, mediated by Chinese officials.

Ukraine has kept open a dialogue with China throughout the war, despite Beijing’s ties to Moscow. Xi is expected to hold a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after the Moscow visit.

For China, its ability to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine would be an important signal to the rest of the world that it is a major diplomatic player — a challenge to U.S. primacy.

“The world does not need another Cold War,” Xi told the leaders of China-friendly political parties from around the world last Wednesday. Instead, he told them, China was building a new style of “modernization [that] does not follow the old path of colonial plunder or the hegemony of strong countries.”