Liu-wen Fang cried when she saw the first images of Kiev being attacked and set on fire when Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The 26-year-old supplemented her business studies with an exchange year in the Ukrainian capital in 2018, where she studied Russian and Ukrainian at a large university.
She grew very fond of Kiev and its people this year. She recalls strolling the city’s meandering riverbanks and visiting its sprawling parks, sipping cocktails with friends in its charming bars and in homes like the ones she now watched as Russian missiles reduced them to charred ruins. had dinner parties.
“It was very difficult to see the city that was my home being turned into a war zone,” Fang* told Al Jazeera from her home in Shanghai.
Before the invasion, Fang had had a fairly positive attitude toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin. After the invasion, that all changed.
“What I saw and heard from my Ukrainian friends, that their lives were destroyed because of Putin’s imperialist fantasies, meant that I lost all my support and respect for Russia and for Putin,” she said.
Fang knows her critical view of Russia is unique, especially in the context of China’s deeply censored news media environment, and especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine. But more than a year after the invasion, there are signs that ordinary Chinese perspectives on Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s view of Putin are shifting.
China’s dwindling support for Russia?
Hsia-Liang Hou, 41, from central China’s Chengdu Province recently reassessed his views on Russia and Putin.
For years he saw Russia as a country with a powerful military and Putin as a strong and intelligent leader who dared to stand up to the West and NATO.
But after more than a year of war without a decisive Russian victory, Hou said he had begun to see the invasion of Ukraine as a demonstration of Russian weakness rather than strength.
“Russia is much bigger than Ukraine in many ways and they had all the advantages in the beginning but they still didn’t get very far on the battlefield,” he told Al Jazeera.
When Hou first heard that Russian forces had invaded Ukraine, he saw it as a retaliatory move by Moscow aimed at repelling NATO and the United States with determination and speed. After all, NATO wanted to encircle China and Russia, and Putin “was one of the few leaders who resisted it,” he said.
But Russia’s lack of success in Ukraine has prompted him to reassess whether the NATO threat is as urgent and imminent as he had thought.
“If NATO is such a huge threat to their country’s survival, why aren’t the Russians fighting harder?” he asked.
Tai-Yuan Wan had also thought Russia’s invasion was justified because he believed the US was scheming and an aggressive NATO was working to gain more and more power closer and closer to Russia.
But as fighting continues into the second year, Russian forces don’t seem really trying to “save Ukraine” as Moscow claims, he said.
Russia “now just wants to burn the country, which I don’t support,” Wan told Al Jazeera from the Chinese capital, Beijing.
Rescuers arrive at a residential area hit in a Russian attack on Kiev, Ukraine, in December 2022 [File: Roman Hrytsyna/AP Photo]Van also does not support Russia’s recently announced plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus.
“I think this is a very aggressive move and a threat to world peace, and it leads me to believe that Russia is much more aggressive than the West in this conflict,” Van said.
Wan, Hou and Fang all said they rarely talk about the war in Ukraine with their friends and family in China.
Many Chinese don’t feel that the war is affecting their lives, so they don’t keep abreast of events and have very little say in the matter, Wan said.
People in China also receive very different information about the war depending on where they get their news from, Fang said, explaining that opinions about the war depend on whether they get news “from Chinese media or if they also get news from some foreign media”. .
“That makes it difficult to discuss the issue,” Fang said.
Wan, Hou and Fang said they noticed that more and more Chinese saw the war as a Russian mistake.
However, Hou believed that most were still on the side of Russia in the conflict.
Hou’s view is supported by a Carter Center China Focus poll conducted last April of Chinese public opinion on the war in Ukraine. That poll found that about 75 percent of respondents agreed that supporting Russia in Ukraine was in China’s best interest.
However, Wan disagreed.
“I think most people in China today believe that the invasion was wrong,” he said.
Wan’s belief is supported by a more recent poll released in November by Japanese think tank Genron NPO, which found that about half of Chinese respondents expressed some opposition to the Russian invasion.
The more recent poll may indicate that sentiment in Chinese society is shifting away from support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
China should be neutral
There appears to have been no such shift in terms of President Xi Jinping’s policies towards Russia or his opinion of Putin.
That the Chinese leader stands side-by-side with the Russian president became clear when Xi arrived in Moscow on March 20-22 for a three-day visit.
During the visit, the two leaders expressed their condemnation of US behavior on the international stage and announced their intention to deepen ties on a wide range of issues, from trade to military affairs.
Su-Mei Chen from Shanghai said she was disappointed with the outcome of Xi’s visit to Russia.
The 30-year-old told Al Jazeera she was already skeptical about the Chinese government’s 12-point peace plan for the war in Ukraine, which was unveiled on the anniversary of the Russian invasion. Chen viewed the plan as mostly in Russia’s favour.
She had hoped Xi’s visit would lead to more realistic steps to end the war.
“The only positive thing about China maintaining close ties with Russia after the invasion was that China could potentially pressure Russia to find a peaceful solution,” she said.
“But Xi hasn’t even spoken to the Ukrainians and he’s expanding cooperation with the Russians, so now it looks like China is completely on Russia’s side in the war,” she added.
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin toast at a reception following their talks at Moscow’s Kremlin March 21, 2023 [File: Pavel Byrkin/Sputnik/AFP]That China is so committed to Moscow is not favored even by some Chinese who support Russia, such as 48-year-old Shenzhen-based Kou-Tong Wong.
“I hope Russia wins the war, but this is not a conflict that has anything to do with China, so we shouldn’t send weapons or soldiers to fight there,” he told Al Jazeera.
Despite the Chinese media’s very positive coverage of Russia’s perspective on the war, Chen believes there is a general reluctance among ordinary Chinese to support Moscow unconditionally.
“This is because many Chinese see China as a peaceful nation that does not interfere in distant conflicts, and also because the ties between the Chinese people and the Russian people are weak,” she said.
Chen’s point of view stands in sharp contrast to Putin’s and Xi’s relationship. Both leaders had repeatedly touted deepening China-Russia ties during Xi’s Moscow visit.
But none of those polled by Al Jazeera believed that Xi’s relationship with Putin reflected the general relationship between Chinese and Russians.
“I think it’s mainly a political alliance of convenience between two governments and not an expression of a deep bond between two peoples,” said Fang, a former exchange student in Ukraine.
“Even though there was a strong bond between Chinese and Russians, that doesn’t guarantee anything,” she added.
“The deep kinship between Russians and Ukrainians did not prevent them from waging war against each other.”
* Interviewees’ names have been changed to protect their identities.