Vladimir Putin has led his buddy Xi Jinping into a foreign policy mess.
It’s one that has left Beijing sounding even more insincere than usual as it explains an every-which-way position on what may be the biggest war in Europe since World War II.
“China’s position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and stays unchanged,” said China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
Amid a sea of contradictions and bald-faced lies, at least this snippet was true.
Beijing has had a consistent position on “the Ukraine issue” – but it’s not the vacuous formulation China’s foreign ministry has offered over recent days, calling for peace while giving cover to a warmonger.
The real position is a Beijing classic: blame America.
Hua took the foreign ministry podium on Wednesday night to make that loud and clear.
“The US has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” said Hua, who is also China’s assistant foreign minister.
She called the US “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine” and denounced the “illegal unilateral sanctions” imposed on Russia by America and its allies, including Australia.
With an undisguised smirk. she added:” China is always committed to promoting peace.”
China’s blame America strategy has now encountered a problem: the reality of Russia’s war machine.
Remarkably, the Chinese system seems to be surprised that Putin is going ahead with his long telegraphed invasion.
Yun Sun, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the US think tank Stimson Centre, says there is a “sense of shock” in the Chinese policy community.
“Having subscribed to the theory that Putin was only posturing and that US intelligence was inaccurate as in the case of invading Iraq, the Chinese were not anticipating a real invasion by Russia,” she writes.
China can hardly blame a lack of communication channels.
A fortnight ago, Xi hosted Putin as his guest of honour for the Beijing Winter Games opening ceremony.
Back then, China’s foreign ministry thundered that America was fabricating “false information” about Russia preparing to invade Ukraine.
Now that Putin has begun his attack, Beijing’s propaganda machine has sent instructions to scrub the Chinese internet of anything that might reflect badly on their strategic partner.
“Don’t post anything unfavourable to Russia and favourable to The West,” said an order accidentally published by an editor at the party state-controlled Beijing News.
Sure enough, China’s curated internet is bristling with denunciations of wicked Americans and praise for Putin.
China now says it wants “all parties to exercise restraint” and to “resolve differences through dialogue”.
Those appeals are late coming.
A fortnight ago, hours before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, Xi and Putin signed a statement on China and Russia’s “no limit” partnership.
Brazenly, the two strongmen outlined the sphere of influence tenets Putin is now manifesting with troops and tanks.
Some see strategic brilliance in all this: two authoritarian leaders outfoxing hapless liberal democracies.
Others argue the Ukraine crisis is exposing the limits of Xi’s foreign policy – one that has hitched China to the most destabilising major power in the international system.
Jude Blanchette and Bonny Lin, experts on Chinese elite politics at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argue Beijing will pay a price for its cosiness with Putin.
China has damaged its relationship with Ukraine, a key European partner of the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature global influence project.
Russia’s carnage has cemented China’s dilemma.
“Beijing could throw Moscow a lifeline: economic relief to alleviate the effect of US sanctions,” write Blanchette and Lin in a new essay in Foreign Affairs.
“But doing so would damage Chinese relations with Europe, invite severe repercussions from Washington, and drive traditionally non-aligned countries such as India further into the arms of the West.”
And the alternative?
“If Beijing snubs Moscow … it may weaken its closest strategic partnership at a time when, given deteriorating security in Asia, it is most in need of outside help.”
Xi’s Communist Party is masterful at manipulating how people within China see the world outside.
Insisting that everything is the fault of America and its wicked allies works as propaganda.
That same Manichean world view has its limitations as a foreign policy doctrine.
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