U.S. officials are well aware that China may be the only global force with the authority to lift sanctions against Russia. The current situation in the Ukrainian arena was the primary focus of the meeting held on March 18 between President Joe Biden of the United States and President Xi Jinping of China via video conference. Since then, press leaks have confirmed that Russia asked to buy weapons from China to compensate for its war losses, and the United States is very concerned, not only about the possibility of China agreeing to this request, but also about China’s principled position rejecting the imposed Western sanctions on Russia.
However, we do not know the specifics of that virtual conference, especially since nothing was leaked about the atmosphere that prevailed in it and whether or not the American president resorted, in his conversation with his Chinese counterpart, to the language of threats and intimidation, as suggested by Western press reports. We don’t know how the Chinese president responded to Biden’s efforts to find common ground and use persuasive rhetoric.
The official press statements released by the two sides after the meeting give the impression that Biden wanted to appear as a strong president who does not hesitate to use the language of threats and intimidation towards China, whom he considers a stubborn opponent of American policy, and that the Chinese president wants to appear as a leader who does not hesitate to teach troublesome interlocutors lessons in moxie.
In a press release issued after the meeting, the White House said that President Biden “made clear to his Chinese counterpart the extent of the consequences that his country would face” if it provided material support to Russia. News outlets also cited an unnamed senior US official as saying that Biden “informed the Chinese President that Beijing will face serious consequences, not only from the United States, but from the who’s who of world powers”.
According to statements made by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhao Lijian, the Chinese president was eager in his meeting with the American president to clarify China’s position on this problem.
First, to blame the United States heavily for the onset of the Ukrainian crisis due to its insistence on the expansion of NATO to the east, and to urge that “those who caused it should think carefully about their role in it, take seriously their responsibilities, and take practical steps to alleviate the situation and solve the problem, instead of blaming others.”
Second, China has maintained an “honest and objective” stance on this crisis from the get-go, arguing that “the countries that should feel really uncomfortable are the ones that think they won the Cold War, and that they can dominate the world, and ignore the concerns of other countries,” and has pushed NATO’s eastward expansion through five rounds despite the opposition of other countries.
Third, China has called on the United States and NATO to “stand by peace and justice to ameliorate the crisis situation in Ukraine,” as it “holds the key to resolving the conflict.” Finally, China “supports peace talks, makes efforts to resolve the Ukraine situation in a peaceful manner, and will continue to play a constructive role in this respect.”
In fact, a comparison of the two parties’ official statements reveals that Biden and Xi’s meeting was neither easy nor amicable and constituted a significant challenge for both sides.
The United States, on the one hand, understands that China may be the only power in the world able to abrogate and thwart the sanctions imposed on Russia, thereby allowing Putin to achieve a victory that will have far-reaching strategic repercussions, especially that it will inevitably halt NATO’s advance towards the East. To put it another way, the United States helped Russia escape the bottle it had been confined to since the Soviet Union’s fall in the early 1990s. On the other hand, it understands that it is not in its interest to engage in a direct and simultaneous confrontation with Russia and China at the same time, because doing so would have contributed by itself in pushing them together towards an undesirable political and strategic alliance, and so it will do whatever it can, using both carrots and sticks, to convince China that its siding with Russia in the current Ukrainian crisis would be counterproductive.
It is obvious that China sees the Ukrainian issue as a significant challenge, as well as a potential opportunity that it believes it should try to take advantage of in every manner possible. Prolonging the crisis while simultaneously maintaining sanctions against Russia could cause a global economic recession in which it would be the biggest loser, and its bias towards Russia would show it in favor of the use of force as a means of resolving disputes on an international scale, which is the opposite of the slogans it raises along the way. This would do serious damage to not only its international reputation but also its domestic one.
China sees the Ukrainian issue as a chance to not only increase its influence in the international system but also to move closer to a position of leadership, which it believes it will achieve in the not-too-distant future. And because the current raging clash between Russia and the West on the Ukrainian arena could end by weakening both of them, especially if China manages it wisely that avoids entering into a direct confrontation with either of them, neutrality becomes, in principle, the position most consistent with Chinese interests, taking care in how it is actually implemented.
China has already decided that it will take the stance that the West should not be allowed to bring Russia to its knees or strive to exhaust it. China is well aware of the strategic focus the United States is placing on it and treats the country as both its greatest rival and its most formidable enemy. It is also aware that a U.S. victory in this conflict will allow the United States to reassert its unilateral hegemony over the global system and reestablish its hold on Europe. This is why it abstained from voting on a US-drafted resolution condemning Russia in the UN Security Council and why it is so eager to reaffirm its principled positions, which include opposing not only the use of force to settle international disputes but also the use of unilateral economic sanctions as a means of managing international crises.
It is too early to predict the long-term effects of the Ukrainian crisis, but its trajectory so far suggests that China is in a position to hold the balance and potentially shift the scales in favor of one of the warring parties.
China may believe that the time is not yet ripe to resolve a problem of this size, and therefore it may be preferable for it to wait until the situation becomes more favorable before it throws its weight behind either of these two parties. To act as a mediator rather than taking sides, which may be accomplished if the warring parties could be persuaded that requesting China to mediate would be in their best interests. When that time comes, China will be incentivized to work toward a settlement that allows not only a ceasefire in exchange for ensuring Ukraine’s neutrality and a halt to NATO’s expansion to the east, but also the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia so that the global economic system can return to its usual activity and emancipation from the stagnation situation that threatens the world.
(Mohamad Zreik is an independent researcher from Lebanon.)
