Alignment without alliance: China’s growing ambivalence to Putin’s war
Alignment without alliance: China’s growing ambivalence to Putin’s war
WRITTEN BY LUNTING WU AND KAMIL MATUSIEWICZ
4 November 2022
Although Russia and China are strategically dependent on each other, they are hardly allies. In September, Russian and Chinese presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand, at a time when Moscow was suffering serious military setbacks in Ukraine. At the meeting, Putin revealed that Xi had had some questions and concerns over the conflict. Commenting on the turbulent times, Xi refused to fully back the military actions, underlined the importance of stability, and reportedly conveyed to his Russian counterpart that “China will work with Russia to fulfil their responsibilities as major countries and play a leading role in injecting stability into a world of change and disorder”. One could interpret this remark as an implicit suggestion that Russia is currently not fulfilling its responsibility as a major power and does not “inject stability” into the world. Without explicitly condemning Moscow’s aggression, Beijing is growing less and less enthusiastic about the war. How far is China willing to go to acquiesce to Russia's aggression?
Status-quo cooperation
First and foremost, China and Russia are crucial economic partners for each other, especially at this critical juncture. From a functionalist perspective, Russia finds in China an alternative market for its commodity exports, whereas China’s increased bargaining power enables it to feed heightened domestic energy demand at a cheaper price. Ever since the war started, China has been importing Russian oil, gas, and coal at a bargain price. In August, China’s coal imports from Russia hit the highest level in the last five years, reaching 8.54 million tons. For the first seven months of 2022, China’s LNG imports from Russia surged 26 per cent from the same period last year. Moreover, crude oil imports soared by 22 per cent, rendering Russia to be the second-largest import partner of China behind Saudi Arabia in September 2022. For its part, the inexpensive energy supply from Moscow has helped China combat inflation. At the SCO summit, Putin noted that bilateral trade exceeded USD 140 billion last year and predicted that it could reach USD 200 billion in the near future. In this sense, the decoupling of both sides is unlikely, as both countries continue to reap significant benefits from cooperation.
From a strategic lens, a devastated Russia would not be in Beijing’s interest. Both countries converge on fighting against a set of commonly imagined rivals: the US and NATO. For Beijing, US activities near its (south)eastern coast are considered a security threat, as well as a major obstacle to reunifying with Taiwan. Moreover, the post-Ukraine revitalisation of the transatlantic military alliance is not in China’s favour, particularly against the backdrop of all the military pacts (for example, AUKUS and Quad) that are aimed at curtailing Beijing. Li Zhanshu, then-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said during his visit to the State Duma on 9 September that the US and its NATO allies are “a threat to national security and the lives of Russian citizens [that] put Russia in an impossible situation”. He then noted “the necessity of all measures” and promised that China would be providing all assistance”. Coalescing with Russia, for now, is still of strategic significance for China to wield against the perceived western encroachment in their respective neighbourhoods.
Functional, strategic and normative factors have shaped Beijing’s growing ambivalence towards the war, and despite the absence of outright condemnation, a subtle shift and distancing can be discerned.
Furthermore, liberal hegemony is the very concept that both powers seek to fight. Wary of the Orange Revolution, Xi warned in his speech at the SCO summit that colour revolutions were the main threat to regime stability. He also made clear at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress that China has adopted a “clear-cut stance against hegemonism and power politics” and never wavered in opposition to “unilateralism and bullying”. Yang Jiechi, Director of the Foreign Affairs Commission, told the Russian ambassador in September that Beijing “is willing to work with the Russian side […] to promote the development of the international order in a more just and reasonable direction”. Both perceive the global order as unjust and believe that the international institutions favour Western powers and serve as a vessel for US hegemony. While China is mindful that Russia is an egoistic actor nostalgic for its imperial past, the two partners bond together through the shared rejection of liberal democracy and US interests.
Growing ambivalence
In the meantime, however, we can observe growing ambivalence from Beijing. Despite its economic ties to Moscow, it is not in Beijing’s economic interest to violate Western sanctions on Russia. Since the war started, Chinese business actors — be they state-owned or private — have either suspended ongoing cooperative agreements with Russia or refused to embark on new projects. In March, China’s state-owned oil company, Sinopec, withdrew from an investment plan worth USD 500 million in a new gas chemical plant in Russia, whose senior executive was targeted by sanctions. The China-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) stopped all activities associated with Russia and Belarus. In April, the telecom giant Huawei suspended concluding new orders with Russia and sent employees in local offices on holiday; in September, the same company relocated some of its Chinese and Russian managers to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for the same reasons. In May, at least five Chinese companies were told to stop working on Moscow’s Arctic LNG 2 project amid EU sanctions. Furthermore, tech giants like Xiaomi Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd. stopped shipments to Russia. No updates have been released regarding the proposed Power of Siberia 2, Russia’s second gas pipeline to China. Fearful of being hit by secondary sanctions at a time when draconian zero-covid measures batter the economy, Chinese actors have functional motives for not relying too much on Moscow.
Additionally, protracted warfare puts China’s exports and food security at risk. On the one hand, prices in Europe and the soaring inflation rate may effectively slow down economic growth, thereby dampening Chinese exports to the EU. On the other, Ukraine was one of China’s main sources of foodstuffs imports, but Moscow’s aggression disrupted Beijing’s corn imports from Ukraine and forced it to search for alternatives from the US, adding to its food insecurity. Strategically, a prolonged war in Ukraine may not be in Beijing’s interests. As mentioned, the SCO summit took place at a time when Moscow was suffering military setbacks on the frontline after months of warfare. One week later, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that a “protracted Ukraine crisis [is] not in the interests of all parties”. Siding with a retreating Moscow, whose offensive capacity has been significantly overestimated, would cause damage to the credibility of Beijing's leadership domestically.
Mixed comments from online social media users regarding Russia’s poor performance have surfaced in China’s highly censored online environment. This is in stark contrast to the fact that in the initial stage of Putin’s war only pro-Kremlin discourse was allowed to circulate. Some posts even openly mock the staggering failures of the Russian military. Admiration for Russia is waning amid Ukraine's counter-offensives, with terms like “weak goose” brought up on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China.
When examining China’s strategic considerations regarding its relations with Russia, one should also consider the broader picture at the regional and global levels. Regionally, Central Asian states to varying degrees search for autonomy from Russia’s long-standing patronage, have demonstrated defiance to Moscow’s pressure and sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Aligning too closely with Moscow risks alienating Beijing from its other western neighbours, especially if they are on the transit routes of the Belt and Road Initiative. Furthermore, China is apprehensive about its deteriorating relations with Central and Eastern European countries, as more and more nations are either exiting the 17+1 Initiative or revisiting their China policy. In this light, Beijing must make sure not to lose partners over an outright endorsement of an illegal intruder in Ukraine.
Some would argue that such ambivalence stems from two factors. First, for Beijing the ongoing warfare could be tolerated insofar as Russia is partially weakened so that China may exert greater influence in Central Asian countries and Russia could eventually become its junior partner. Second, the war in Ukraine provides Beijing with valuable insights into possible Western reactions should it attempt to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan, while it also gives lessons for the People’s Liberation Army about boosting key military capabilities.
From a normative standpoint, although Beijing has time and again echoed Russia’s justification for its invasion by invoking the indivisible security concept (which was also incorporated in the Global Security Initiative Xi launched in April), Xi made no reference to indivisible security in his last meeting with Putin. This shows the limits of China’s sympathies for Russia’s security demands. Both share the perception that military blocs like NATO embody a ‘Cold War mentality’ and undermine others’ security. However, Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the annexation of its territory, and threats to use nuclear weaponry have put China at odds with its longstanding foreign policy tradition of upholding the UN Charter and sovereign equality of states. The unease is all the more palpable when Beijing itself is facing what it perceives to be separatist movements in various parts of the country. Supporting an irredentist Kremlin undermines the rationale behind Beijing’s tight control over its autonomous regions.
China seemed to be firmly on the fence with its approach to Russia, as Beijing's economic and strategic ties with Moscow were strengthened over the years. Nevertheless, there is much to lose if its endorsement of Putin is seen as too vehement amid the changing circumstances. Functional, strategic, and normative factors have shaped Beijing’s growing ambivalence towards the war, and despite the absence of outright condemnation, a subtle shift and distancing can be discerned.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biographies
Lunting Wu is a PhD Candidate in International Relations and Lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, Research Associate at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script”, and Nonresident Fellow at the Instituto do Oriente of the University of Lisbon.
Kamil Matusiewicz is a Berlin-based political observer and freelance writer, and a graduate of the Gdańsk University of Technology. Image credit: Kremlin.ru.