Pearls and Irritations

China will bring peace to Ukraine when it decides that a war that carries the danger of international escalation goes against its commercial interests.

Seeing the photo last month of Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian, shaking hands in Moscow, it occurred to me that Putin should wear short pants. The Kremlin painted it as a meeting between equals, as the consolidation of a beautiful friendship, but the reality is that for China, Russia is a junior partner.

China is a growing superpower. Russia, a country ruled by a dangerous nutcase, has a primitive economy that depends for its survival on the sale of raw materials to Beijing.

At the end of March the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, travels to China. When his photo is taken with Xi Jinping, his long pants will not be too big for him. They will discuss the Russian war in Ukraine in a climate of mutual respect, not Chinese condescension.

Sánchez will address the issue that most divides the world as a representative of NATO and the European Union. Spain unequivocally supports their opposition to the Russian invasion with rhetoric, money and tanks. There is no doubt that Sánchez will consult with his allies in Washington and in Europe before meeting with Xi Jinping. They will no doubt encourage him to explore the possibility of opening a loophole with China so that perhaps one day the Asian giant will use its enormous influence over Russia to help end the war.

Sánchez said as much in Brussels after attending an EU summit: “We will also talk about Ukraine, where the most important thing is that a stable and lasting peace can be guaranteed” in which “the fundamental thing is to preserve an international rules-based order.” Nobody has any illusions that the supposed peace plan that Xi Jinping proposed to Putin will achieve results in the short term, which is why Sánchez chose his words well when he added that he was referring to “that peace when it comes.”

Today, China and Russia are allies against the perfidious West. Stopping the killing of both Russians and Ukrainians is not an imperative for China, any more than it is for Putin. China is guided by its interests, full stop. The question is whether the time will come when it decides that a war that carries the danger of an international escalation goes against its interests, that is, its commercial ones.

There is a phrase that a president of the United States formulated a century ago: “the chief business of America is business”. The same can be said of China today. If they conclude in Beijing that Russian warmongering is interfering with their mission to conquer the world through trade, they will seriously think about influencing Putin to behave like a responsible adult.

What are the chances of that happening? Well, let’s start by seeing how the alliance with Russia has fared for China after a year of war. The members of the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee are known to be coldly analytical. They cannot have exactly celebrated the fact that the Russian imperialist adventure has turned into a fiasco.

Putin met Xi Jinping in February of last year, three weeks before the invasion. If he then managed to convince Xi Jinping that taking Kyiv would be a matter of days, today the Chinese leader knows that Putin was having himself on big time. Xi Jinping also understands that the much talked about Russian professional army consists of a bunch of demoralised incompetents who have not been able to match the amateur military force of a poor but audacious enemy.

As for geopolitics, the word that Putin likes so much, China has not fared so well either with its claims to global economic dominance. The world has become polarised around the war, but let’s look at the side that China leads. A resolution was put to the vote at the United Nations last month demanding that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine. Six countries voted along with Russia against the resolution: Syria, North Korea, Belarus, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua. Thirty-two abstained, including China, and 142 voted in favour, including China’s two powerful pro-Western neighbours, Japan and South Korea.

It is difficult for this equation to change, so China will have to ask itself one of these days if it wants to continue seeing itself as the head of a bunch of nobody countries facing a bloc from which it buys the vast majority of the things it needs and sells to them even more of what it produces.

Ignore everything I have written so far in the event that China decides to supply Russia with weapons, in which case we would be seriously approaching World War III. But there are no signs of it. And let’s not forget that China acts as a powerful deterrent to Putin following through on his threats to resort to nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

What could a Chinese peacekeeping role consist of? Not in voting with the United States at the UN, not in convincing Russia to surrender. None of that. Among other things because Russia is an important source of oil and minerals for Chinese industry.

No. The possible role of China would be seen once the war reaches such a point of paralysis that a ceasefire will have to be negotiated followed by a peace agreement. The success of such a mission will depend entirely on the guarantees that can be given that Russia will not be tempted to invade Ukraine again. And also, that NATO would not invade Russia. Putin and his propagandists in the Russian media say they believe the United States and its allies want to wipe out their country. Pure paranoia, but we will have to play along with it. There is no power more credible than China to offer such guarantees, and incidentally offer them to Ukraine.

This, I believe, is what Pedro Sánchez has in mind when he says that he will explore Chinese aid options to preserve a rules-based international order and maintain stability on the Russian border. The main incentive for Xi Jinping is that, as Sánchez well knows, a world war is not good for business.

This column appeared in Clarín, Argentina, 25 March 2023, and is translated by Kieran Tapsell.

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