Closed-door meeting in Zhongnanhai
When the war between Russia and Ukraine was imminent, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, members of the Seventh Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, as the highest power center in Beijing, were mysteriously invisible, causing speculation.
The Wall Street Journal reported on February 17, citing people familiar with the matter, that at the time of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Seventh Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China held a closed-door meeting, and one of the topics of intense discussion was how to deal with the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. Beijing expects to support Moscow without compromising its own interests.
It is reported that the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party have spent days weighing how much to support Russia and how to manage the Sino-Russian partnership.
The decision of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee will depend on the development of the crisis in Ukraine, the sources said, and they will refer the outcome of their discussions to the 25-member Politburo, which will later this month. Hold a meeting.
Sino-Russian relations are not like-minded
The Wall Street Journal reported that, in the eyes of many people, the Sino-Russian alliance is just a stopgap measure, not based on like-mindedness.
On Wednesday (February 16), Xi Jinping delivered a speech on Ukraine, his first public remarks on the issue since Russian President Vladimir Putin left China. In a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Xi called for a “comprehensive solution to the Ukraine issue” using multilateral platforms, including the “Normandy Mechanism,” according to Chinese state media. The Normandy Mechanism, a diplomatic channel established in 2014 to end the war in Ukraine, includes Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France.
According to the report, Xi Jinping’s remarks are obviously out of more practical considerations. Notably, Ukraine is a country along Xi Jinping’s iconic “Belt and Road” initiative. When the region may be threatened by the Kremlin, Beijing sees a need to protect its own economic interests there.
In recent years, Chinese state-owned engineering, power and construction companies have invested billions of dollars in projects in Ukraine, which is also a big supplier of cooking oil, machinery and nuclear reactors to China. At the end of 2020, the Chinese and Ukrainian governments agreed to deepen the “Belt and Road” cooperation between the two countries. Liu He, the vice premier of the Communist Party of China, who is in charge of economic work, said that it will promote the “healthy and stable development of Sino-Ukrainian bilateral relations”.
Meanwhile, China has been building a vast network of pipelines in Central Asia to secure its oil and gas supplies and to diversify supply sources. These pipes pass through many ex-Soviet countries.
Carl Minzner, a senior fellow on China affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said, “Putin is causing a lot of headaches for Beijing. Risks to Asia’s energy pipelines are rising.”
According to Minzner’s judgment, the CCP’s official media coverage of the Ukraine crisis has formed a stereotype. On the one hand, it accuses the United States and its allies of providing arms to Ukraine and exaggerating the threat from Russia, while on the other hand, it reiterates the official Ukrainian position on a negotiated solution to the crisis. This shows that Beijing is quite uneasy about Russia’s position on the Ukraine issue.
Divert American pressure on the CCP?
Some analysts believe that the CCP may use the Russian-Ukrainian crisis to divert the pressure from the United States on the CCP.
The Voice of America reported on February 17 that Sun Yun, director of the East Asian Institute at the Stimson Center, believes that Beijing regards the crisis in Ukraine as a useful event to deflect American pressure on China.
She said that if Russia does invade Ukraine, “China (the CCP) will not openly support the invasion, because it is indeed a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a sovereign country, but China will not openly oppose Russia.”
Roderick Kefferpütz, a senior researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Germany, also said, “China (CCP) does not want this crisis to escalate to a level that would trap Beijing and limit China’s (CCP) strategic mobility. The point. A protracted and controlled crisis that occupies the attention and resources of the West is the CCP’s favored situation.”
However, U.S. strategic experts have recently warned that it would be a serious mistake to increase the U.S. deployment of U.S. troops to Europe due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Henzek, deputy director of the Center for Security Policy Studies at George Mason University, believes that the United States should have a full understanding of this: once the situation in Ukraine undergoes a major sudden change, it may distract the United States from the CCP and will benefit the latter. But he said, “I really don’t think we’re going to make that mistake.”
The CCP’s Economic Abacus
Russia’s deployment of troops to Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions by Western countries will undoubtedly have a severe impact on the fragile and resurgent global economy, as well as the already struggling Chinese economy.
The Voice of America quoted Timothy Heath, a senior researcher on international defense at the RAND Corporation, an American think tank, as saying that as a strategic partner, China supports Russia, but it does not want a war, which will adversely affect China’s economy. .
The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing is well aware that aligning so closely with Russia on European security issues could further alienate Europe. As the EU’s largest trading partner, China’s imports and exports with the EU totaled US$828.1 billion last year.
Craig Singleton, a researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a Washington-based think tank, pointed out that the relationship between Beijing and the European Union has been in a downward spiral for more than two years, with the proposed China-EU investment pact being indefinitely shelved and in China After a dispute with Lithuania over the Taiwan issue, the EU quickly rallied to the side of Vilnius and filed a lawsuit against China at the World Trade Organization.
Singleton wrote in “Foreign Policy” that China’s exports to the EU and the UK combined are almost 10 times that to Russia. There have been comments in China that European business partners are far more important to China’s economy than Russian goods. supplier. In recent months, Xi Jinping has personally stepped in to try to ease ties with Europe, yet there is an emerging conflict between China’s growing economic dependence on Europe and stronger ties with Russia.
Roderick Kefpotz believes that the CCP may provide economic support to Russia to help Russia deal with Western sanctions, but this will also put the CCP itself in a very uncomfortable situation: struggling to deal with a variant of the CCP virus. The pressure comes amid an increase in the number of infections of the Mikron variant, an economic downturn and domestic affairs such as the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
The Voice of America reported that maintaining stable economic and trade relations with the European Union is crucial to China’s political and economic stability as China’s economic growth slows sharply and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping seeks re-election in the second half of this year.
“As China’s economy rapidly cools, at least for the foreseeable future, Xi will focus on maintaining economic stability that Putin may be reluctant to pursue in his pursuit of his Ukrainian interests,” Craig Singleton said. “
In his judgment, the last thing Xi Jinping wants is that if his support for Putin is too public, the Chinese economy could face sanctions following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration has repeatedly emphasized that if Russia uses force against Ukraine, the United States will impose a wide range of severe sanctions on Russia with its allies, including sanctions on Chinese companies that cooperate with Russia.
Some observers said that although China and Russia signed a series of cooperation agreements and issued a joint statement, saying that there is “no restricted area” in cooperation between the two countries, the two sides do not necessarily take great risks for each other.
Singleton emphasized that for Xi Jinping, the most important “top priority” at the moment is to maintain stability and ensure a smooth re-election at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China this fall.