OPINION: Why China is No Peacemaker for Ukraine

China – Russia’s closest strategic partner and the greatest challenger to US global primacy – cannot, and will not, influence Moscow to make peace with Ukraine. The shared China-Russia hostility to America’s global primacy, and the fact that both countries find one another useful in several ways, rules out China playing the peace broker.

This needs to be realized by western European leaders who continue to delude themselves that Beijing could persuade Moscow to end its bestial war with its neighbor. This includes the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, along with France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Finland, among others. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has even declared that a phone call from President Xi Jinping to Russian President Vladimir Putin is all that is necessary to end the war in Ukraine.

Whilst there is a general recognition among Western European leaders that China has been strengthening Russia’s war machine by supplying it with critical dual technology components, many believe Beijing can persuade Russia to curtail its aggression because of its large oil buys from Russia, and the help it is giving Russia in the face of Western sanctions.

The China issue is reason enough for Ukraine not to rest easy that Russia garnered insufficient support from its partner BRICS countries at the recent Kazan summit for its call for changes to the global order by invading Ukraine. Instead, Ukraine should keep a more watchful eye on the China-Brazil peace plan, which Beijing presented earlier this year. President Xi Jinping recalled the Plan, which roused President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ire for not condemning Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, when he met President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit.

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Why China is no peacemaker

1 – The strategic partnership

Russia, as China’s comprehensive strategic partner, remains determined to subjugate Ukraine. That is why Putin recently decided to lower Russia’s threshold to carry out nuclear strikes against any country joining forces with Ukraine. Since Russia has the world’s largest number of nuclear warheads, Moscow, at the very least, wants to scare the US against crossing its latest red line.

So far, China has remained silent on Russia’s belligerence, although Beijing has, time and again, reiterated that there should be “no expansion of the battlefield”, no use of nuclear weapons and no attack on nuclear power plants and other peaceful nuclear facilities. 

Whilst upholding the principle of territorial integrity, China has frequently supported Russia’s so-called “legitimate” interests in Ukraine and, like Moscow, has blamed NATO expansion for the war in Ukraine.

2 – Economics and geopolitics

Over the last three decades, China’s astonishing economic and military rise has made it the world’s second-largest power. Russia, meanwhile, has become heavily dependent on trade with China.

However, economics explains only one aspect of the Sino-Russian relationship. The geopolitical strategic factor also explains, in part, China’s strengthening of ties with Eurasian Russia since 2003.

For instance, Sino-Russian naval drills in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas (in 2015 and 2017 respectively) established China’s claim to be a European power. Joint exercises in the Indian Ocean in 2019, as well as Russia-initiated joint drills in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas about a fortnight before air and naval exercises in the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk in late September – aimed to show off a joint ability to deal with security threats they perceived as being created by their common foe, the US.

In March 2022, China was one of the 35 countries –comprising 18 per cent of United Nations (UN) member states – that abstained from supporting a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it also lays claims to the territories of its Asian neighbors. So, Beijing’s talk about the importance of the principle of territorial sovereignty rings hollow.

4 – China’s peace plans

In February 2023, China came up with a peace plan which again highlighted the territorial integrity of states and Beijing’s opposition to the use of nuclear weapons. Last May, and again in September, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, China presented another peace plan, this time with Brazil, which voted for the General Assembly’s resolution upbraiding Russia’s aggression. Brazil’s cooperation was probably shaped by its interest as Russia’s largest diesel buyer and as a self-styled spokesperson for emerging economies.

Neither plan called on Russia to pull its troops out of the Ukrainian territory it has occupied – in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That suits Russia. Nor did the China-Brazil plan mention that Russia has threatened nuclear war several times since it mounted its assault on Ukraine. A disappointed President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected the plan.

5 – False impartiality

Impartiality – and the ability to influence – are highly desirable qualities in a peacemaker, but China’s refusal to rebuke Russia’s transgression of international law reveals the opposite about its stance on Ukraine. 

And shortly before the UN General Assembly’s session, Putin’s applause for Russia’s “trusting relationship” with China, Brazil (and India) did not enhance their image as impartial do-gooders.

Zelensky’s “victory plan,” which prioritizes immediate membership for NATO, has riled Russia. Moscow has warned Zelensky to “realize the reasons that led to this conflict,” and accused him of pushing NATO into direct conflict with Russia.

So far, China has not commented on Zelensky’s plan, but reports in the state-steered Global Times allege that Washington’s latest tranche of $425 million of military aid to Ukraine will only prolong the conflict. Clearly, China is playing a foolish blame game against the US, while implying that Ukraine should not be helped against an aggressor.

Lesson for the West

Putin’s latest nuclear threats signal that Russia will not be constrained by China. The threats do raise queries about the extent to which China may figure in Moscow’s political and strategic calculations. For example, China’s strong economic ties with the West could turn sour because of the ongoing war in Ukraine. But Russia and China are too useful to each other to part ways.

All told, Europeans should not delude themselves into thinking that China, which has much to offer and take from Russia, will nudge Moscow to respect Ukraine’s territorial inviolability and talk peace. Instead, the West must give, posthaste, Kyiv the weapons it needs to win against a destructive, aggrandizing Russia which is bent upon extinguishing Ukraine’s statehood.

Anita Inder Singh is a Founding Professor of the Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi and has been a Fellow at the International Forum for Democratic Studies in Washington, DC. She has taught international relations at the graduate level at Oxford and the London School of Economics and is currently writing a book on the US and Asia. She has also published widely (in nine countries) on nationalism and the International Relations of Europe and Asia. More of her work may be viewed at www.anitaindersingh.com

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.