(Beijing) A “limitless” friendship. A month after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing, the invasion of Ukraine is testing the strength of ties between China and Russia.
Posted at 6:30 a.m.
On the one hand, a sacrosanct attachment to the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of States. On the other, a rapprochement with Moscow steeped in common hostility towards the United States. Since the February 24 invasion, Beijing has engaged in a balancing act between these two imperatives of its foreign policy.
At his annual press conference on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi once again declined to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and even celebrated a ‘rock-solid’ friendship with Moscow. . He again argued for “legitimate (Moscow’s) security concerns”.
But the regime of President Xi Jinping seems to have been surprised by Ukrainian resistance to the Russian offensive and by the vigor of Western sanctions.
On the very day of the invasion, the spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Hua Chunying, categorically rejected the term “invasion”, blamed it entirely on the United States and questioned the existence of victims of the bombardments, a small sentence then removed from the official report of his press briefing.
“There was obviously perplexity in the first reactions” Chinese, analyzes Professor Sergey Radchenko, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the United States.
Delay in evacuation
At the same time, the most anti-American fringe of the Chinese internet was having a blast, with macho comments suggesting that young Ukrainian women take refuge in China, before censorship blocks “vulgar” content.
In the end, China took the risk of appearing as an accomplice of Moscow, especially since the Russian offensive was launched less than three weeks after the warm reception of Vladimir Putin by his Chinese counterpart in Beijing.
We will have to wait for the 1er March for Mr. Wang to say “deeply regret” the conflict, during a phone call to his Ukrainian counterpart.
On the ground, the evacuation of some 6,000 Chinese in Ukraine has been delayed by the fact that Beijing has completely ignored warnings from the United States of the imminence of an invasion and has not called its nationals. to leave the country.
After the outbreak of hostilities, the communist regime first mentioned an air evacuation of its nationals, while Kyiv had already announced the closure of its airspace.
Then the Chinese embassy suggested that its citizens identify themselves with their national flag, before backtracking following incidents that allegedly occurred with Ukrainians.
“The position of the Chinese government has complicated things for its citizens,” notes sinologist Manoj Kewalramani, of the Takshashila Institute (India). “If there were to be Chinese victims in Ukraine, the pro-Russian neutrality of the Chinese government would be more difficult to maintain”, he warns, while the Chinese embassy in Kyiv assured Monday that it had evacuated “most” of its nationals.
“Facade neutrality”
The strong Western reaction to the invasion puts Beijing at odds with the Europeans, while its relations with the EU are clearly more important than with Russia.
Beijing is reduced to calling for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell even judged that China was the only possible mediator in the conflict.
But when asked about this on Monday, Wang Yi simply said he was ready to “work with the international community for the necessary mediation when the time comes”.
Sinologist Steve Tsang, of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, judges that Beijing’s attitude would not make it an impartial mediator in the eyes of Kyiv, because “it is a facade of neutrality, which in reality leans on the Russian side.
According to him, the worst outcome for China would be for a long war and sanctions to lead to the fall of the Putin regime and the return of pro-Western power to Moscow.
“I doubt that Xi Jinping wants to see an escalation of the war in Ukraine,” he observes. “What he would like is for Putin to get what he wants without too much collateral damage […] for China and its relations with the rest of the world”.