On December 2, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Olympic truce for Beijing 2022. To ensure the promotion of peace and solidarity through sport, this truce should have extended from seven days before the opening of the Games until seven days after the end of the Paralympic Games. At the same time, China, irritated by the diplomatic boycott decreed by the United States and several of its allies, including Canada, firmly affirmed that the Winter Olympics it was organizing would play a role in bringing people together.
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
As soon as the Games opened, Vladimir Putin was received with honors. By making the Russian leader the first head of state with whom he had direct contact since the start of the pandemic, Xi Jinping ostentatiously underlined the privileged relations between Beijing and Moscow. And this while the rumors of war were becoming more and more precise between Russia and Ukraine and this truce then seemed so fragile. The Sino-Russian relationship is however not simple, and it could lead Beijing to play a balancing act, on the one hand on the strategic level – between an unpredictable ally and the risk of reinforcing the game of alliance of the States- United –, and on the other hand on the economic level because of the consequences that the Ukrainian crisis will have on the project of the new silk roads in Eastern Europe.
An exercise in economic tightrope walking
The Sino-Russian alliance is largely circumstantial, largely based on shared mistrust, even hostility, towards the United States. The outbreak of the Russian attack in eastern Ukraine now forces Xi Jinping to play a complex game of chess with an uncertain outcome. On numerous occasions, the Chinese leader has clearly expressed his desire for a negotiated solution. Indeed, Beijing says it is reluctant to use force, and Ukraine is, moreover, one of the pivots of its strategy for the new silk roads in Europe: the country is the southern gateway -is and an important trading partner of China, with which it accounted for more than 15 billion dollars of trade in 2020.
A high-flying strategic exercise
Moreover, although clearly opposed to what it considers to be an extension of NATO on the steps of Russia, China is very aware of the fact that it risks contributing, by supporting Moscow, to the return of a major split in the world order that Xi Jinping has always said he wants to avoid.
The attack in Ukraine could close ranks between the United States and its European allies in the face of a Moscow-Beijing axis, and signify a return to a Cold War dynamic.
In addition to weakening Chinese diplomatic progress in Europe, the Russian attack in Ukraine could make China’s neighbors nervous against the backdrop of Taiwan, the India-China border and the South China Sea. Because Xi Jinping could then be tempted to imitate Putin in the controversial files of the Indo-Pacific sphere, which Australia, India or Japan will probably not appreciate. This could bring them even closer to the United States in order to counterbalance Chinese supremacy in this part of the world as much as possible.
Beijing probably does not have the time, even if it may disapprove of it, to condemn Vladimir Putin’s aggressive attitude. China needs a Russia that continues to support it in its territorial claims. Xi Jinping is aware that his relations with Europe will probably suffer from the image that his country’s position in the conflict will project. In his search for allies against Washington and Europe, he cannot afford to find himself isolated alongside Moscow, despite his declarations on the decline of the United States.
Yet that is what is likely to happen. Beijing would have liked to dangle the diplomatic solution in the Ukrainian case while accusing the United States of playing a destabilizing role and of dramatizing the risk of a Russian attack, but the offensive in Ukraine could lead to a recomposition of alliances at the global scale. It will be difficult for China not to take sides while avoiding reneging on an alliance with Russia. This could end up costing him diplomatically… and economically.