Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian praised the country’s ties with Russia as Western powers pressure Beijing to condemn the war in Ukraine.
“A key takeaway from the success of the SinoRussian relationship is that both sides are moving beyond the Cold Warera political and military alliance model and are committed to developing a new model of international relations based on nonconfrontational and nonothers attack countries,” Lijian said during a news conference.
“This is fundamentally different from the Cold War mentality behind some countries’ efforts at cliques and zerosum games. [em teoria econômica, situação em que um lado deve perder para outro poder ganhar]”, drove away.
China and the US have conflicting positions on the war in Ukraine due to the close partnership between Beijing and Moscow. The former even avoids using the term war, as requested by Russia, which describes the invasion as a “special military operation”.
The Chinese are attempting to maintain a neutral stance, saying that “the territorial integrity of any sovereign nation” must be respected, but that Russia’s security concerns are “legitimate.”
On the other hand, the Americans are leaders in imposing political, financial and economic sanctions on the Russians and helping Ukrainians defend themselves through war. In addition, the White House has already officially expressed fears that Beijing will help Russia with arms sales which the Chinese have denied and called on President Xi Jinping to use his influence to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to to end the war.
In a phone call last month, US President Joe Biden said there would be consequences if China backed Russia. Xi responded that “military conflicts are of no interest to anyone” and that the “Ukrainian crisis is something we didn’t want to see,” according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
*With information from Ansa