U.S.-China relations: Analysis says Beijing remains ‘neutral’ in Russia-Ukraine war, threatening to intensify rivalry between two powers – BBC News

Washington recently emphasized that Russia is an imminent threat, while in the medium and long term, China is a long-term threat.

Since the beginning of the war, China’s main approach has been to take a cautious approach in its official presentations on the Russia-Ukraine issue, emphasizing that the territory of a sovereign state is inviolable.

But Beijing has not condemned the Russian aggression for nearly three months. On February 25, China abstained from voting at the UN General Assembly condemning Russia.

The U.S.-China relationship after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war has also become the focus of a lecture held at the University of Denver in the United States recently, and experts have had a heated discussion on this issue.

June Teufel Dreyer, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, bluntly called China’s actions “hypocrisy.” “China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s actions directly contradicts its claim that the territory of a sovereign state is inviolable, which I think is hypocritical,” she said.

Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, believes that the United States tends to deal with China through the perspective of the Russia-China geopolitical axis, or a potential Russia-China alliance, so “China must take into account the worst that may happen, and more China-US relations are often considered from the so-called bottom-line thinking.” 。

As a result, Sino-Russian cooperation in politics, economy, trade and energy will not only be maintained, but also strengthened, he said.

But Xinqiang believes that China’s neutral stance will make “China-US relations worse.”

At the Winter Olympics, which Beijing is proud of in February this year, only Putin, the leader of a major power, attended, while the United States publicly launched a diplomatic boycott, attracting many countries to follow. The leaders of China and Russia issued a joint statement during the Olympic Games, which clearly stated that China and Russia “friendship has no end, and cooperation has no restricted area”. In the past three months, many American observers and media have been eager to quote this sentence, and interpreted it as a possibility that China may support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Sino-Russian joint statement was issued at a time when Russia and Ukraine continued to be tense in the border area, and immediately after the closing of the Olympic Games, Russia attacked Ukraine. A report in the New York Times in March, citing intelligence, said China had asked Russia not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics. China’s foreign ministry calls it “fake news.”

“This obviously raises questions in the United States about how well China understands Putin’s plans. We don’t know the truth, but it does raise questions,” said Paul Beau, a professor of politics at the United States Air Force Academy. Paul Bolt said. He called it a personal opinion.

And in China, distrust of the United States is spreading. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Blinken on March 5 that China opposes any act of “adding fuel to the fire” in Ukraine. This statement appeared several times in subsequent speeches by other Chinese leaders and in Chinese media reports.

In fact, the United States and China have had different understandings of why the Russian-Ukrainian war started from the very beginning. China has stressed that NATO’s eastward expansion led to the war, in line with Russia’s national security concerns. The United States stressed that the war was caused by Russia’s ambitions to reshape its empire.

Some analysts pointed out that the Ukrainian war has distracted the United States from the Indo-Pacific region. But some experts believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has contributed to Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, making it more determined to unite allies against China.

The Biden administration pointed out in its latest Indo-Pacific strategy that the goal of the United States is not to change China, but to shape China’s surrounding environment. This intent is an important part of the Biden administration’s China policy.

“Before the (Ukrainian) war, some people thought things would go according to plan and they didn’t need to worry too much, but the development of the war wakes up these people and they think, ‘Will what happened in Ukraine happen in the Pacific?'” , said Jin Defang.

Such concerns have recently emerged in Japan. At present, the two regions with the most intense international geo-competition are Ukraine in Europe and the Taiwan Strait in the Indo-Pacific. Japan has always supported the free and open Indo-Pacific region advocated by the Biden administration. Seeing that Russia’s actions are threatening the international order, Japan is worried that once China expands its influence in the Indo-Pacific region and causes a war in the Taiwan Strait, Japan will be affected.

After the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, Japan revised its military export control regulations and shipped non-lethal military equipment such as bulletproof vests and helmets to Ukraine. This is the first time Japan has sent military supplies to other countries after World War II. Compared with lethal weapons such as missiles, the military equipment provided by Japan may seem insignificant, but for Japan, it is of great significance.

In April, the U.S. approved a $95 million military aid to Taiwan, the third U.S. arms sale to Taiwan since U.S. President Joe Biden took office. According to the “New York Times” report on May 9, a number of U.S. officials said that the White House believes that China will learn from the Russian-Ukrainian war and adjust its strategy of aggression against Taiwan, so it urges Taiwan to slow down or change its original procurement projects and switch to purchasing other more capable With a small and broad military force.

Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based think tank, has said that Washington’s attitude toward Taiwan’s arms sales has changed, which began before the Ukraine war. “I think it really solidified after the (Ukraine invasion),” she said. “The Pentagon is starting to sound the alarm to make sure Taiwan is serious, so we (the U.S.) need to be serious too.”

China has repeatedly stressed that the Taiwan issue is part of China’s internal affairs and warned the United States to intervene. Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng emphasized on the 6th: “Recently, the United States has been ‘showing its muscles’ at the door of China, piecing together various anti-China circles, and even making a big fuss about the Taiwan issue and testing the red line. This is not the Asia-Pacific version of NATO. What is eastward expansion? If left unchecked, it will eventually push the Asia-Pacific into a fire pit.”