China hopes conflict will remain limited

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping this year. Picture: AFP

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, wants his “best, most intimate friend” and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to score a win from the Ukraine crisis – but only if Putin can do so by facing down the West, not by full-on invasion.

Beijing would be seriously conflicted by a military attack patently launched by Russia.

The two huge states are more closely allied than they have been since the early days of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. When Putin flew to Beijing for the opening of the recent Winter Olympic Games, this was perhaps the warmest moment at the otherwise wintry event.

He and Xi signed a 5000-word joint statement that comprised a manifesto for pursuing energetically a new international order championing their authoritarian inclinations, including insisting that “the advocacy of democracy and human rights must not be used to put pressure on other countries”, and aligning Putin’s Greater Eurasian Partnership with Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The leaders both seek legitimacy strongly through bursting the claimed chains of past national victimhood, and leading their countries into rejuvenated uplands of international respect.

Joining any condemnation of Russia, including at the UN, would taste bitter for Xi and would wound that valuable alignment, whose leading edge comprises strategic co-operation.

However, a core and enduring pillar of the People’s Republic of China remains its staunch opposition to “interference in other countries’ domestic affairs” – recognising its vulnerability to both internal resentment and external criticism about its suppression of regions including Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Thus Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Munich Security Conference last weekend: “The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of any country should be respected and safeguarded. Ukraine is no exception.”

The Ukraine embassy in Beijing posted a Chinese language statement on the domestic platform Weibo – which readily censors material perceived as injurious by the authorities – accusing Russia of “seriously violating the basic principles of international law”. It has gained 300 million views.

In the past, Beijing has abstained rather than back Moscow in associated UN votes, and has not recognised Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

A further complicating factor for Beijing is that China bought its first aircraft carrier from Ukraine back in 1998, now renovated and leading the burgeoning Chinese naval fleet as the Liaoning.

While Beijing might be content to see the West wounded by the Ukraine crisis, it needs strong continued economic and other connections with the US and Europe, and it would not seek to place these at risk on Moscow’s behalf.

It would benefit from a resulting diversion of US forces from the Indo-Pacific to Europe, but would be unlikely to reassess significantly any plans for seizing Taiwan based on a Ukraine template.

Xi wants the PRC’s future to be increasingly in its own hands, including options for Taiwan. But for now, while seeking ever greater economic autonomy, he is also aware that China needs continued global engagement.

And this year, his overriding priority is to preside over a stable – meaning, in this Covid era, a locked-down – China to help ensure his reappointment as leader at the crucial five-yearly National Party Congress in November. Wars don’t aid such stability.

Rowan Callick is an industry fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute