China sees strategic advantage in Russia’s Ukraine invasion

The Chinese government has made clear that it will remain a strategic ally of Russia despite President Vladimir Putin being viewed globally as the aggressor in the war.

As the war between Russia and Ukraine intensifies, China is betting that it comes out the winner. In the past week, Beijing has carefully calibrated its position, opening in neutral then going all-in behind Moscow.

The Chinese government has demonstrated its alignment with Putin in recent days by blaming the U.S. for Russia’s assault on Ukraine, parroting Russia’s Orwellian description of the invasion as a “special military operation” and rationalizing that aggression as an expression of the Kremlin’s “legitimate” perceptions of regional insecurity.

But Beijing could be modifying its position yet again, calling Friday for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to solve the conflict as Chinese banks begin to limit financing to Russian purchases.

Beijing isn’t cheering on a land war in Europe, but it’s not altogether unhappy that the result might be to divert U.S. attention and resources allocated to the Indo-Pacific, where Washington has been aggressively working to offset a perceived growing Chinese regional security threat.

“When China looks at Ukraine, it thinks about U.S.-China relations, so what [Putin] does is a very useful distraction for the U.S. strategic pressure on China in the Pacific, particularly given that the U.S. just announced its Indo-Pacific strategy,” said Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“China is now seen as the U.S.’ biggest [strategic] problem, and China is desperate to either mitigate the strategic pressure the U.S. can apply … or find more strategic leverage to counterbalance [it],” Sun added.

The Chinese government has made clear that it will remain a strategic ally of Russia despite President Vladimir Putin being viewed globally as the aggressor in the war. Beijing dropped diplomatic ambiguity about its position by promoting Russia’s narrative, saying that the U.S. was responsible for the crisis. It also announced trade support to help Russia withstand sanctions.

As recently as Tuesday, the Biden administration was hoping that China might play a constructive role in preventing or mitigating the looming Ukraine crisis, or at least not obstruct efforts to defuse it. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi seeking China’s support “to preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said Wang responded by noting that “the situation in Ukraine is tending to deteriorate” and called for a resolution based on “dialogue and negotiation.”

The administration’s hopes were diminished when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying asserted Wednesday that the U.S. is “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.” A day later, within hours of Russian forces moving into Ukraine, Wang unambiguously aligned China with Russia by telling Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that China “understands the Russian side’s legitimate concerns on security issues” in Ukraine.

Hua hammered that point home by attacking the U.S. when journalists questioned why China would not commit to joining international efforts to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“You keep asking when will China join the U.S. and some European countries to condemn Russia. This reminds me that it is the handful of countries you raised, including the U.S., that has been interfering in China’s internal affairs and attacking China based on disinformation,” said Hua. “Even today, China still faces a realistic threat from the U.S. flanked by its several allies as they wantonly and grossly meddle in China’s domestic affairs and undermine China’s sovereignty and security on issues, including Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.”

President Xi Jinping reinforced China’s tacit acceptance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a call with Putin on Friday. Xi implicitly nodded at Putin’s justifications for the invasion by referencing the “reasonable security concerns of all countries” and took a veiled shot at U.S. opposition to the invasion with a call for unspecified nations to “abandon the cold war mentality.”

Xi also recommended that Ukraine and Russia “solve the problem through negotiations” without calling for a requisite end to hostilities or removal of senior Ukrainian government leaders from a Russian hit list of individuals to be killed or imprisoned in order to allow talks to occur.

The White House has clearly gotten the message. Asked on Thursday whether the U.S. government was “urging China to help isolate Russia,” President Joe Biden replied that he was “not prepared to comment on that at the moment.” That was a backpedal from Price’s call on Wednesday for the Chinese government to “use the considerable influence and sway they have with the Russian Federation to urge Vladimir Putin to back down, to de-escalate.”

“The Biden administration is likely skeptical that it has any leverage at this point to persuade China it’s in their interest to side with the West in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Alison Szalwinski, the vice president for research at the National Bureau of Asian Research. “Given the growing closeness between China and Russia over their shared grievances with the U.S.-led order and the downturn in the Sino-U.S. relationship, there isn’t much to suggest the Biden administration would have any more success bringing China on board with international efforts to isolate Russia now.”

China’s customs administration underscored its Foreign Ministry’s rhetorical support for Russia by announcing that it was lifting restrictions on Russian grain imports, a move apparently designed to ease the sting of sanctions on the Russian economy as well as telegraph solidarity with Putin. The grain decision follows an announcement last week that China was in negotiations to purchase 100 million tons of Russian coal. China is already Russia’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade soaring 36 percent in 2021 to a record $147 billion.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry fired a warning shot Friday toward what it called possible “illegal unilateral sanctions” imposed by the international community in response to the Ukraine invasion that could harm China-Russia trade. “We demand that relevant parties, in handling the Ukraine issue and relations with Russia, shall not harm the legitimate rights and interests of China and other parties,” said Wang. “China and Russia conduct normal trade cooperation in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.”

China appears to be repeating the pattern of economically backing Russia, as it did after Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. But that doesn’t mean that Xi will cut Putin a blank check if and when sanctions against Russia impact China. “[China is] watching very closely what the U.S. sanctions will include and how that will affect them,” Sun said. “It doesn’t mean that China will be deterred from close ties with Russia. It probably just means that China will have to reconsider the scale and the amount of support they’re willing to run there.”

That may already be happening. Two of China’s state-owned commercial banks, Bank of China and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, have restricted financing for purchases of Russian commodities in an apparent move to limit exposure risk to international sanctions against Russia, Bloomberg reported Friday.

The Biden administration has briefed Chinese government representatives in recent months about its “strong concerns” about Russia’s military threat to Ukraine and underscored the toll of an invasion on global and regional security. But neither a State Department spokesperson nor a National Security Council spokesperson were willing to provide any details of administration efforts to prod China to help restrain Russian aggression and protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Both of those spokespersons declined to provide details of the interaction. “Beyond that, I’m not going to get into private diplomatic conversations,” they said in separate written statements.

The administration has made clear, however, that countries that support Russia’s aggression — including China — will pay a price for that complicity. “Nations that side with Vladimir Putin will inevitably find themselves on the wrong side of history. Nations that try to evade or work around these measures will experience the consequences of those actions,” a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement. “We have been clear with the PRC that we seek to work together around issues of mutual concern.”

There are doubts about the potential effectiveness that Chinese economic pressure could have on Russia given Putin’s willingness to endure economic pain for the invasion’s perceived gains. “Because [Ukraine] is a matter of national security and core interest for Russia and Putin has emphasized this priority many times, I don’t think Beijing has any constructive influence over Russian decisions or perceptions,” said Andrew Nien-Dzu Yang, former Taiwan defense minister and adjunct assistant professor at National Sun Yat-sen University.

China was clearly unwilling to assist international efforts to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But if the conflict grinds on, it’s possible that Beijing’s alignment with Moscow could help forge a peace agreement.

But analysts cautioned not to place too much hope in China playing peacemaker.

“Western policymakers may entertain the notion that a third-party Chinese brokered peace will make Russian de-escalation easier, as without third party intervention, deescalating directly due to Western pressure may make Russia lose face and appear weak,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a Taiwan studies lecturer. “That’s the same thinking undergirding their attitude towards China on the Six-Party Talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We know how that one turned out.”