This week we will find out if there is a “Chinese peace” for Ukraine or if it is an illusion that has never been achieved in reality. The key event of the beginning week is Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow. Those who want to believe in China’s possible mediating role have enormous expectations of this visit, as if it could mark a turning point, the beginning of a peace process. Pessimists point to Xi’s agreement with Vladimir Putin’s narrative of Western guilt behind the war. The more cynical have a worse suspicion: that a Chinese ceasefire plan at this stage, freezing military positions on Ukrainian territory, could guarantee Putin maximum territorial conquests by blocking Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive. Xi’s diplomatic success as a mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran revived optimism about China’s role as a peacemaker. The role of the People’s Republic was crucial and clearly visible in this thaw, which must lead to the reopening of the respective embassies in Riyadh and Tehran. China conducted a “field invasion” in an area of the world where the United States and Russia had a much higher historical influence. Was it a harbinger, a premonition, that Xi also wants to gain the same influence by decisively intervening in the European conflict?
To allay the excessive expectations surrounding Xi’s visit to Moscow, which begins tomorrow, there is the visit itself: the People’s Republic’s communist leader will stay in the Russian capital for three days, Putin’s guest, an unusually long duration for a state visit; while he will call Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who has yet to be confirmed, and only at the end of the marathon of meetings with the Russian leader. There isn’t the symmetry that one might expect from someone who wants to play a mediating role. Looking at what the Chinese government’s main media outlets are saying about this visit, as well as Beijing’s geopolitical experts, one sees a gap in the expectations or hopes raised in some European countries. On the eve of the trip, attention in China appears to be focused primarily on a long series of bilateral agreements being signed at meetings between Putin and Xi. A growing economic symbiosis should be ratified, especially with supplies of oil, gas and other raw materials from Russia to China. In this growing trade (and at very advantageous prices for the Chinese buyer), the renminbi is replacing the dollar as a payment currency, allowing Moscow to bypass financial sanctions and Beijing to advance its long-term project aimed at increasing the renminbi’s global role decrease US currency.
In exchange for raw materials, China will increase its sales of technologies to Russia, especially technologies that Putin can no longer buy from the West due to sanctions. All those “dual technologies” for civil and military purposes, with which Beijing has de facto already supported the Russian army, but without openly violating the sanctions, can be hidden in this area. Semiconductors and drones fall into this category. China’s ambiguity in this area can continue without having to explicitly challenge the West by announcing that China will supply arms to Russia. It’s an ambiguity that allows Xi to keep all commercial outlets for “Made in China” in the West open without jeopardizing his “unlimited friendship” with Putin. China’s role as a peacemaker has received less space and visibility in Chinese press analysis than the cooperation agreements with Russia, which are the focus of the bilateral summit. And when it comes to the war in Ukraine, the media of the People’s Republic continue to spread a far from neutral version. NATO is blamed for the conflict, and the origin of the tragedy is attributed solely to US aggressiveness. This is in line with China’s first “peace plan”, speeches by foreign policy chief Wang Yi and statements by Xi to his parliament.
Russia’s aggression has never been condemned; on the contrary, Chinese condemnations relate to NATO enlargement and the “Cold War mentality” attributed to the United States. Consistent with Putin’s narrative of NATO’s alleged “encirclement” of Russia, Xi conflates it with his own description of the world: where an imperialist America seeks to “suppress and stem” China’s legitimate descent. Xi’s ideological vision explains why his diplomacy has a very narrow path to release some news about Ukraine. On the one hand, China would have an interest in making the hopes of the most optimistic Europeans come true by launching an initiative that could attract some interest in Berlin and Paris: with the aim of sowing divisions within NATO and at least some European countries of remove the line along the Washington-Warsaw-Kiev axis. On the other hand, Xi derives a long-term benefit from the prolongation of this war: America’s attention is sucked into the European tragedy, Western arsenals are drained to support Ukraine, all of which constitute an objective weakening of resources that could counter a possible invasion of Taiwan or at least an expansion of Chinese influence in Asia.
We’ll see if Xi wants to use his visit to Moscow to reverse this trend and introduce elements of de-escalation of the conflict, or if, on the contrary, a hug with Putin will strengthen the logic of opposing blocs. In the first case, if a “peace plan” worthy of the name emerges from Moscow, the global influence of Chinese diplomacy will make a much larger leap than the thaw between Arabia and Iran. Second, by the time the “peace plan” becomes another empty shell, and thus a favor for the Russian leader, Xi will have confirmed that he shares with Putin the idea that hastening the West’s defeat is possible, and must be there you can not arrange. From a European perspective, however, it is worth noting that Xi is the first foreign leader to visit Putin after his indictment before the international tribunal: a gesture of legitimacy at the highest level.