While President Xi Jinping is expected to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, Beijing is stepping up efforts to present itself as a “responsible power”.
This is a great first since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin will receive his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Moscow for three days. A trip that has nothing to do with a simple courtesy call, because negotiations are on the agenda. “It will be a face-to-face interview, there will be an informal lunch. And from the [mardi] March 21 will be a day of negotiations,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian Presidency.
For its part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spoke of a “movement for friendship and peace”. Is it about the war in Ukraine, from which China has been keeping a clear distance since February 2022? No details have been filtered in this direction yet. In recent weeks, however, Beijing has unveiled its major “global security initiative” and engaged among other issues such as the historic resumption of talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Is China establishing itself as a new mediator? In what interest? Franceinfo looks back on the foreign policy of the world’s second largest economy.
A “biased neutrality” towards Ukraine
Ever since Russia invaded Ukrainian territory on February 24, 2022, China has preferred to play the card of neutrality and reject strong condemnation and sanctions. On the first evening of the invasion, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a 12-point statement calling for respect for everyone’s national sovereignty while calling for the abandonment of a “Cold War mentality” opposed to the United States directed to the Soviet Union for more than forty years.
On February 21, Beijing unveiled its grand peace plan entitled Comprehensive Security Initiative, which only vaguely mentions the Ukraine conflict. Indeed, the document calls for “supporting the political solution of trouble spots such as the Ukraine crisis through dialogue and negotiations”. So far from arms sales and military support, unlike the United States and the European Union, for example.
“China has an obvious interest in presenting itself as a responsible power that contributes to world stability,” analyzes sinologist Antoine Bondaz, who believes that Beijing will not really play the mediator between Moscow and Kiev. “In the case of Ukraine, China remains in a biased neutrality and implicitly supports Russia but avoids condemning it,” argues the Chinese foreign policy expert.
“Being a mediator implies that there has been aggression, that Russia has violated the UN charter… That’s not China’s position yet.”
Antoine Bondaz, sinologist
at franceinfo
For Beijing, the conflict in Ukraine is above all an opportunity “to show that China’s foreign policy is peaceful and to show the image of a great country,” Zhao Tong, a researcher at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Beijing, told RFI . Even if it means sticking to “basic questions” and “few concrete proposals”, emphasizes the expert. Accused at the end of February of wanting to supply arms to Russia, China defended itself. But Beijing is continuing its military exercises with Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said via Telegram (in Russian) on March 15 about Russia-Iran-China naval maneuvers in Oman.
Efforts related to Beijing’s interests
On March 10, Chinese diplomacy played a nice trick by bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia back to the negotiating table, ending seven years of rifts. An announcement that surprised the international community but according to Antoine Bondaz it is not that surprising. “This role China is trying to play is not new, he points out. China’s first special envoy to the Middle East dates back to 2002. And in 2017, Beijing hosted negotiations between Israel and Palestine.” What is new, however, is that this mediation “led to big announcements in the media,” the expert notes.
Nevertheless, Antoine Bondaz emphasizes that China’s diplomatic efforts in this region are never far removed from its economic interests. “China needs stability because it buys Iranian oil, which is subject to Western sanctions,” he said. Saudi Arabia is also becoming an increasingly important customer for the Chinese defense industry, the South China Morning Post reports. Last November, Riyadh bought $4 billion worth of Chinese arms and equipment, including drones and anti-ship missiles.
Closer to Beijing, the open crisis between Burma and Bangladesh, where more than a million Rohingyas who fled Burma are refugees, has caught China’s attention. Negotiations under Chinese auspices thus paved the way for the repatriation of these persecuted populations in Burma at the end of October 2022, as reported by the specialist website Modern Diplomacy (in English). “In this case, China has a direct interest because this crisis in a neighboring country risks spreading to its territory,” explains Antoine Bondaz.