China is tying itself in knots over Ukraine

A few hours after Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine, Beijing announced that Russian wheat, previously barred because of fungal contamination, was now disease-free and large scale imports to China would begin. It was a first tangible sign of Xi Jinping’s willingness to cushion the blow of western sanctions on the Russian economy, and in effect underwrite Putin’s Ukrainian aggression.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest wheat producers, and trade is highly vulnerable to western restrictions. China’s wheat lifeline followed the signing last month of a 30-year contract for Russia to supply natural gas to China’s north east and a commitment to far greater energy cooperation. Significantly, the gas deal was in euros rather than US dollars, the usual currency of the resource markets.

China said its ultimate aim was to expand the use of its own currency, the yuan, in trade settlements between the two countries – a move that would further protect Russia from international financial sanctions. It would also serve both their aims of building an alternative payments system to that dominated by the US dollar.

China is the only major government not to have clearly condemned Putin’s aggression – leading Joe Biden to say that any country failing to do so was ‘strained by association’. Yet even as China constructs an economic backstop for the Russian economy, it appears to be struggling for a coherent response to Putin’s aggression.

On Thursday, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying tied herself in knots as she tried to avoid describing the Russian action in Ukraine as an invasion. ‘The Ukrainian issue has other very complicated historical background that has continued to today,’ she said. State media followed suit, keeping the story off their front pages and echoing Moscow’s language about a ‘special military operation’, while blaming Nato, Kyiv, Washington – anybody other than Putin. China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said ‘China understands Russia’s legitimate concerns on security issues.’

Then on Friday there appeared to be a slight change of tone, when state broadcaster CCTV reported that Xi had spoken to the Russian leader and urged the two sides to negotiate to end the conflict. ‘China supports Russia negotiating with Ukraine to resolve the problem,’ Xi told Putin. ‘China’s basic position on respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is consistent. In response Putin said that Russia was willing to conduct ‘high-level negotiations with Ukraine.’

Late on Friday, China abstained on a US-drafted resolution from the United Nations Security Council deploring the Russian invasion. Beijing reportedly came on board after the wording was softened slightly and a personal reference to Putin was removed. For weeks ahead of the invasion, China dismissed British and American warnings about impending aggression from Moscow, accusing the West of hyping the threat.

Perhaps Beijing was duplicitous, perhaps it was wrong-footed. Either way, both Xi and Putin have made a big display of their strengthening partnership, most recently at a summit ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics, when they endorsed their respective security concerns – and reaffirmed their mutual hostility towards the west. Theirs is in many ways a marriage of convenience. But it is no less dangerous for being opportunistic. Success by Putin in Ukraine and a failure by the west to follow through with tough and sustained sanctions might well embolden Xi in the Taiwan Strait. His stance on Ukraine may well be motivated by the belief that Putin would respond by supporting (or at least stay silent) on any Chinese military assault on Taiwan.

As Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, Taiwan strengthened its combat readiness and early warning systems. Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen warned this week that China might exploit the Ukraine conflict to step up pressure on the democratic self-governing island. For some weeks now, the worst nightmare for strategists in Washington has been that Moscow and Beijing were coordinating their actions. At the very least it is widely accepted that Xi is watching the West’s reaction to Ukraine as he calibrates his own strategy in the Taiwan Strait.

Xi and Putin share a deep paranoia about western democracies and the US-led international order, which is now under assault in Ukraine. They both believe in the sanctity of their respective spheres of influence, and are both driven by a strident nationalism and a sense of historic grievance and victimhood. By their way of thinking, the future of Ukraine and Taiwan have nothing to do with the people who live there.

But there are important differences between Taiwan and Ukraine. Beijing claims Taiwan is not a sovereign state, that it has always been part of China – though that no more stands up to historic scrutiny that Putin’s rambling questioning of Ukraine right to exist. Taiwan is an economic powerhouse, a model democracy, semiconductor superpower, central to the global economy and American political and military psyche.

The notion of ‘non-interference’ and ‘sovereignty’ have for decades been central to Chinese communist party propaganda. The reality is of course very different. Beijing has been a routine violator of both, but it is still the way Beijing likes to present itself. It is one thing for Xi to support the security concerns of his ‘old friend’, but as hard as Beijing tries, it is difficult to describe Putin’s actions as anything other than naked aggression against a sovereign state.