With the speculation that Beijing is considering provision of “lethal aid” to Moscow a question to ask is why would China shift her position in arming Russia that could possibly be outweighed by the risks. On two continents, U.S. and European perceptions are that this act would likely cause more fractious China-U.S. relations and could further alienate European leaders at a time when Beijing has seeked to reinvigorate China-Europe relationships.
It has been expressed that Xi’s personal cocommitment to the Sino-Russian partnership could likely exacerbate the problems of what is regarded as “stove-piped” decision-making.
On one level, Yun Sun has argued that Xi’s admiration for Russia is such that it constitutes a “complex” based on his background as a revolutionary “princeling.” Xi grew up during the high tide of the Sovietization of China’s political, economic, and military systems, and his education was shaped by Soviet/Russian models. This “complex” expresses itself in contemporary Sino-Russian relations in “a leader-level nostalgia for the Sino-Soviet partnership” of the 1950s, an admiration for Putin’s “strongman” rule, and a rare but effusive declaration by Xi that the Russian leader is “my closest foreign colleague and my best confidant.”
Perhaps most troublingly, Xi’s Russia “complex” has resulted in a “selective bias in his judgment about Russia’s national power,” where he is prone to “overestimating Russia’s strengths and reliability, while underestimating its weaknesses and the risks posed to China.”
Not to be neglected is that present posturings come at a time when China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Qin Gang told Dmytro Kuleba China “has committed itself to promoting peace and advancing negotiations and calls on the international community to create conditions for peace talks.”
Qin also said “China hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained,” according to the statement, as Russian’s invasion of Ukraine has recently passed its one-year anniversary.
Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, also reiterated similar thread.
Feng Yujun – a lead analyst of Sino-Russian relations for Fudan University has drawn attention to this “complex” with a critique opinated piece that the Sino-Russian partnership is based on a fundamentally flawed assessment of what it contributes to China. He further argues that “Chinese elites have not yet soberly realized that there has been a historical reversal in the comprehensive national power of China and Russia” and that while “our national power is ten times that of Russia, many people’s minds are still subservient to it.” As a result, China is “basically led by the nose by Russia.”
Such a mindset, Feng continued, has enabled Russia to manipulate China in the U.S.-Russia-China strategic triangle by “mobilizing” Sino-U.S. “contradictions” to persuade China that it needs close alignment with Russia to mitigate worsening ties with the United States. He concludes that, while China should desire “stable and constructive” relations with Russia, enjoying that type of relationship with Washington is actually more important, as that relationship will “determine China’s overall international environment in the future.”
However, it must be said that Xi does not see geopolitical situations on this narrow perspective. Indeed, Xiping maintains that Russia and China as sharing similar domestic and systemic threats or challenges to their regimes, necessitating close Sino-Russian ties to combat Western, that is, specifically U.S-led hegemonic efforts into constraining them.
“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” Mr. Xi said in a speech, (in chinese).
This posture has to be seen in light of not only what but also why Beijing is stabling Russian support for her geostrategic positioning in Asia.
The calculations on whether to supply Russia with arms have less to do with the trajectory of the fighting in Europe than with its own long-term concerns about the possibility of conflict in Asia, experts say – particularly “about future confrontation with the U.S.,” says Alexander Korolev, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, (christianmonitor, 15/03/2023).
Just to refresh: at the initial phase of Russo-Ukraine cross-border conflict, Ming Jinwei – a senior editor at the Xinhua News Agency – had written in Weibo that China had to back Russia “with emotional and moral support while refraining from treading on the toes of the United States and European Union” so that in the future China could have “Russia’s understanding and support when wrestling with America to solve the Taiwan issue once and for all.”
Since U.S.-China relations has worsened, it is to Beijing’s geostrategic positioning to align closer to Russia. Further, the possibly in weapons provision and other military assistance – albeit as covertly as possible – will also likely to increase. “The most likely issue which might lead to further deterioration is obviously Taiwan,” quoted saying was Chen Cheng, professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Meanwhile, during Xi and Putin’s meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on 15th. September 2022, the China’s readout underlined Russia's reaffirmations of its commitment to the “One China principle,” condemnation of “provocative moves by individual countries on issues concerning China’s core interests,” and Sino-Russia commitment to “promote” regional security and stability “based on the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.”
China’s assessment of the global security environment, one has to emphasis, also factors into the perceived need for a continuance in solidifying ongoing Sino-Russian partnership.
What is striking here is how China’s perception of the war in Ukraine intersects with its prevailing view of Sino-U.S. relations. One China's analyst from the Center for Strategy and Security at Tsinghua University argues that not only has the war in Ukraine “accelerated and intensified” U.S. “strategic deployment” against China but a “system of strategic suppression” has been formed that “binds China and Russia together.” China thus “sees little benefit to be gained from sacrificing its relationship with Moscow in favor of embracing a Washington that has declared China the greatest external threat to the United States and the ‘rules-based order.’”
More importantly, Xi himself has recently expressed similar views.
On March 3, Xi jinping was reported to have described China’s international environment as full of “uncertainties and unpredictable factors.” Foremost of these is that “the Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment and suppression of China.” In such an environment, China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang stressed on March 7, “becomes the more imperative it is for China and Russia to steadily advance their relations.”
In such a context, China’s decision to arm Russia, then, it is not based just with Xi’s personal investment in having closer ties with Moscow, but the more geostrategic calculations on the survivability of China as a civilised state.
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