Why China Is Sabotaging Ukraine
Beijing Has No Interest in a Peace Agreement It Can’t Help Broker
Foreign Affairs, June 14, 2024
For a moment last August, it seemed that Beijing was finally ready to distance itself from its “no limits partnership” with Moscow. That month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent his special envoy for the war in Ukraine, Li Hui, to discuss Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace formula with diplomats from several countries, including Ukraine and the United States. The formula calls for Russia to withdraw to Ukraine’s 1991 borders, send its war criminals to international tribunals, and pay reparations to Kyiv. The plan clearly represents Kyiv’s favored conclusion to the conflict, and merely by engaging with it, Beijing suggested that it might be ready to play hardball with Moscow.
But China’s first public participation in discussions about that formula was also its last. On May 31, Beijing announced that it would not be joining some 90 other countries at a June 15–16 peace summit in Switzerland to debate, based on Zelensky’s proposal, how to end the war. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, explained that Beijing would attend the summit only if Russia were a participant and if any plan presented would receive a hearing. For Ukraine, both requirements are nonstarters.
Xi, it seems, will not abandon his troublesome Russian partner or even pay lip service to aiding Kyiv. Instead, China has chosen a more ambitious, but also riskier, approach. It will continue to help Moscow and sabotage Western-led peace proposals. It hopes to then swoop in and use its leverage over Russia to bring both parties to the table in an attempt to broker a lasting agreement.
This gambit is unlikely to work. Neither Russia nor Ukraine appears anywhere close to being ready for serious peace talks—at least for now. Kyiv and its partners do not trust China to operate in good faith. And Beijing has very little experience in pulling off the kind of major, international negotiations it wants to spearhead here.
But these obstacles are unlikely to sway Xi. He has little to lose if the war in Ukraine goes on. China will therefore continue to be a stick-in-the-mud: indirectly helping Russia, derailing Kyiv-led diplomatic initiatives, and pretending to engage in diplomacy instead of genuinely trying to work with other parties to find a solution.
CLOSER AND CLOSER
For Beijing, ties to Russia are of great strategic significance. China and Russia share a 2,600-mile border, and Russia provides China with cheap natural resources and even some advanced military technologies. Xi also benefits from having a like-minded authoritarian among the UN Security Council’s permanent members.
There are still limits to Chinese-Russian relations. Western markets are essential to the health of the Chinese economy, and they give Beijing access to cutting-edge technology. As a result, Beijing has been careful to avoid crossing Washington’s redlines. But China does operate on the basis that everything which isn’t forbidden is allowed. Beijing may not be shipping lethal aid to Russia, but many Russian operators and their partners in China and Central Asia use China as a staging ground for industrial products key to Russia’s embattled economy, such as machine tools and chips. In two years, trade between the countries has increased by more than 60 percent, to a record $240.1 billion.
The White House, aware of its economic power, has tried using sanctions to stop this cooperation. In December 2023, it issued an executive order threatening to apply secondary sanctions on any international bank found to be even unknowingly clearing payments for the Russian military industry. Later, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken made trips to China and outlined to Chinese leaders and financial institutions the grave consequences they would face for violations. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, meanwhile, visited Europe to brief allies on the issue and called on them to put pressure on Beijing.
China expects that the peace summit will fail.
These measures have had some effect. According to customs data, Chinese exports to Russia decreased by double digits throughout March, April, and May. An overwhelming majority of Chinese banks have started to take an extremely cautious approach when clearing any Russia-related transactions. Some have abandoned dealings with Russian entities altogether. But it is unclear whether these measures will stop the flow of products which have been identified by Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU as essential to the Kremlin’s military industry—and which China ships to Russia in massive quantities.
Meanwhile, Beijing and Moscow are continuing to lay the foundations for a deeper and more durable economic relationship. During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to China on May 16, Chinese and Russian state railroad companies signed an agreement to expand cross-border infrastructure that will help facilitate Russian exports to the east. On the same trip, Putin likely greenlit a scheme to ship more Russian gas to Central Asia so that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan could have more gas to ship to China, thus enabling Moscow and Central Asian governments to increase their profits. Following his trip, Putin called the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to tell them about the visit, something he has never done before. On June 7, Gazprom signed contracts that would expand Russian gas exports to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Beijing and Moscow also discussed ways to clear sensitive exports from China to Russia. To do so, they could designate specialized banks that are largely immune to U.S. restrictions. Such banks would not connect themselves to the global financial system and have correspondence accounts only in Russia, settling all payments in yuan and rubles through China’s international payment system. Their transactions would be cloaked under multiple layers of shell companies. The United States could try to target this system by tracking down suspicious transactions and sanctioning the banks, but that would be difficult because all the payments would bypass U.S.-dollar and other Western payment systems. China, after all, used a similar scheme with its Kunlun bank to effectively evade sanctions on Iran.
Economics isn’t the only area in which China and Russia are deepening their relations. They are also presenting an increasingly unified diplomatic front. Putin and Xi have now visited each other three times since the war in Ukraine began and displayed great mutual fondness. During a visit to Moscow in March 2023, Xi told Putin that “there are changes happening, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” and suggested that the Chinese and Russian leaders should “drive those changes together.” When saying goodbye to Putin this May, Xi embraced him twice on camera—something he rarely does. The message of closeness was intentional and clear.
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
Putin and Xi may have a genuine affinity for each other, but Beijing also has a self-interested reason to side with Moscow in peace endeavors: China has its own peace initiative, and so it wants to sabotage the United States and Europe’s efforts. On May 23, a week after the most recent meeting between Xi and Putin and a week before China declined to attend the Swiss peace summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Celso Amorim, chief adviser on national security to the president of Brazil. In a joint statement on settling the Ukraine crisis, they called for an international peace conference in which both Russia and Ukraine would be represented and all peace plans would be reviewed. (Not surprisingly, Brazil has also refused to send high-level officials to the Swiss conference, and may send no one at all.)
Beijing knows that, for now, its proposal will go nowhere. But it has reasons to believe that the June summit will end in a diplomatic impasse that will be difficult to conceal, despite the best efforts of the organizers and Ukraine’s partners. Even if the summit’s participants can create a concluding joint statement that is cogent and pro-Ukraine, there is no way for them to impose it on the Kremlin. In fact, since many key countries of the global South will send only low-level delegations to the summit or else skip it altogether, the practical effect of the meeting’s communiqué will be even more modest than that of the UN General Assembly’s 2022 resolutions criticizing Russian aggression.
In other words, China expects that the peace summit will fail. It believes the meeting will do nothing to advance peace or to rally the world behind Ukraine’s maximalist demands. That failure may give Beijing a shot to make itself a central player in diplomatic efforts, or at least pretend to be one—perhaps by partnering with friendly countries that have a proven track record in Ukraine-related talks. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, have facilitated discreet talks on prisoner swaps. Turkey was instrumental in reopening the Black Sea to grain shipments. All three states are on good terms with Beijing.
There’s a reason why China feels confident that it can present itself as a major broker. Beijing has the ultimate trump card: the ability to bring Russia to the table. Russian officials may have initially given China’s initiatives the cold shoulder in 2023, but they have since thanked Beijing multiple times for its proposal and signaled their readiness to negotiate if China’s approach is accepted. Putin himself expressed these sentiments in a statement to Russian journalists as he departed Beijing. “We have said more than once that we believe that China is sincerely striving to settle this problem,” Putin said. “It offers different options and is very flexible.” These comments suggest that Putin may have even reached an understanding with Xi, wherein Russia agrees to negotiate if called on by Beijing in exchange for China pledging not to travel to Switzerland.
If Beijing can indeed either directly or indirectly create a cease-fire agreement, it could work wonders for the government’s geopolitical standing. By stopping the killing and destruction, China would be celebrated in both the global South and in many European countries. Beijing would also be subject to less U.S. and European criticism of its support for Putin’s aggression. At the same time, because a cease-fire would not resolve the territorial dispute between Moscow and Kyiv, the issue of reparations to Ukraine, or accountability for war crimes, Western sanctions would continue—ensuring that Russia remains economically dependent on Beijing. And because any pause in hostilities will not stop Russia from expanding its military, a cease-fire will not obviate the need for the United States to dedicate resources to Europe. Washington’s bandwidth in the Indo-Pacific—including in the schedules of its most senior national security officials—would therefore remain limited.
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
China may have formidable leverage over Russia and, as a result, influence in any negotiations. But the most ambitious scenario, in which Beijing plays a leading role in the war’s termination, is highly unlikely to materialize. For the time being, both Kyiv and Moscow have no appetite to stop fighting. The Russians believe that Ukrainian defensive lines will eventually crumble due to limited manpower and Western support. Ukraine and its backers hope that Russian advances on the battlefield will remain incremental and exact an unsustainably high cost, which will force Moscow to reconsider its objectives. Neither thinks the conflict will be endless.
Even if both sides were ready to talk, it is hard to see how they could reach a bargain. The parties will likely never agree over the status of Russian-occupied territories, and were they to agree to disagree they would still have to contend with unrelated, unacceptable demands. The Kremlin, for instance, would insist that any deal to end the war be contingent on the West stopping its flow of military support to Ukraine, leaving the country at Putin’s mercy and allowing Moscow to invade again. For Kyiv, this is understandably a nonstarter.
China’s relations with Ukraine’s allies—both the United States and Europe—are another stumbling block. Any complex negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will have to involve Kyiv’s partners. Moscow will want to have at least some one-on-one negotiations with Washington—since the Kremlin sees the United States as a principal party to the conflict—and China will want to link the termination of the war with fixing at least some aspects of its bilateral ties to the West. But both endeavors will cause issues. For moral reasons, it will be difficult, though not entirely impossible, for Washington to negotiate with Moscow without Ukrainians in the room. The United States will not abandon its approach to competition with China, be it on export controls, the beefing up of U.S.-led alliances in the Indo-Pacific, or tariffs on Chinese products. And Beijing’s actions regarding Ukraine, including its efforts to undermine the Swiss conference, have eroded trust in China in key Western capitals. That trust has been all but destroyed in the European capital most crucial to an agreement: Kyiv.
Finally, China has no proven track record when it comes to complex negotiations. A much-touted deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran was really negotiated from the bottom up, with Riyadh and Tehran giving Beijing the opportunity to portray itself as a mediator. China has never taken the lead in major crisis diplomacy. And its inertia, lack of diplomatic imagination, and refusal to risk failure—particularly when Xi’s prestige is in jeopardy—will most likely prevent it from the kind of innovation needed to find a solution. Indeed, it is unclear whether China actually believes that it can put a stop to the hostilities or if it is merely posturing.
For Americans concerned about the United States being usurped by Beijing, the latter country’s lack of capacity may seem like good news. But it does not mean Washington will have it easier. In fact, China’s failure could make the United States’ endeavors more difficult. The war in Ukraine may be a drain on the West’s resources and on the economies of developing countries, but it suits Beijing’s interests just fine. China has gained power over Russia, all while paying minimal economic and diplomatic penalties. China, then, may stay the course. It can continue to ridicule the West’s approach to the war and call for diplomacy without trying to achieve much in reality.
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