Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin enter a hall for talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File)
China and Russia have had a long-standing partnership but Russia’s Feb. 21 occupation of Ukraine might be testing their relationship.
The two powers declared that the friendship between their countries “has no limits” on the eve of the Winter Olympics, which opened Feb. 4 in the Chinese capital Beijing.
Some observers say this might change with the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia launched what was initially described by President Vladimir Putin as a “special military operation” in Ukraine and it seems to have caught China off guard.
So far, China seems unwilling to be openly supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move.
“It’s likely spook that Putin’s game is China’s game,” tweeted The Moguldom Nation CEO Jamarlin Martin. “Putin is showing himself to be a big gambler, China is the opposite. They have over a 1.3 billion mouths to feed & keep happy. It’s unlikely China will be be playing ‘Russian Roulette’ w/Putin.”
Here are five things to know.
By all accounts, Russia did not give China a heads-up on its plans to invade Ukraine. Instead, it seems Putin assumed China would be on board. On Feb. 4, China and Russia issued a joint statement about their mutual support. The depth of Sino-Russian relations gave the “impression” from the statement that China did know about Putin’s military plans. But that might have been an illusion created by Putin.
“A careful examination of the events suggests that China was, in fact, played,” reported The Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on forging international peace and security through analysis and outreach.
Prior to Russia sending troops to Ukraine, the Chinese policy community did not appear to believe that Russia was going to invade. Chinese media issued stories downplaying the possibility.
On Feb. 22, the second day of the invasion, Chinese state-owned banks imposed restrictions on financing for Russian commodities.
Additionally, Bank of China’s Singapore operations has ceased financing deals involving Russian oil and firms.
China so far has not helped Russia to evade Western sanctions. Alicia García Herrero, the chief Asia Pacific economist at French corporate and investment bank Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera she expected China to comply with U.S. sanctions while continuing to support the Russian economy through the Chinese financial system.
“As far as banks are concerned, they can lend in RMB, and basically there is a number of things you cannot do, but there is a huge number of things you can still do,” García Herrero said. “Even European banks can still finance energy imports, so why would Chinese banks not do it if European banks are going to do it, at least so far?”
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On Feb. 28, four days after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese Foreign Ministry implicitly criticized Russia. It said that “no country should unscrupulously damage other countries’ sovereignty and security in pursuit of its own absolutely military advantage and absolute security.”
“If anything, the ‘Rashomon effect’ involving China’s role in the lead-up to the Russian invasion tells more about the state of China-Russia relations than anything else,” The Stimson Center reported. “The relationship is clearly motivated by their shared threat perception about the U.S. But on the other side of the same coin exists distrust and manipulation between the two.”
The Rashomon effect refers to an instance when the same event is described in significantly different ways by different people who were involved.
The Chinese may have been blindsided by “tunnel vision” regarding Russia’s value in the competition with the U.S. “Regardless of the result of the Russia-Ukraine war, the lesson about Russian manipulation and exploitation will be one of China’s most important takeaways,” The Stimson Center reported.
If Russia had informed China of its plans to take over Ukraine, it would seem likely China would have evacuated its own citizens, The Stimson Center reported.
The day after Russia’s invasion, China’s embassy in Ukraine began to register the 6,000-plus Chinese nationals living there. Since chartered planes are not an option due to the war, the embassy coordinated “other means” on Feb. 27 to take out the Chinese people there, The Stimson Center reported.
Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin enter a hall for talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. The U.S., Britain and a handful of others aren’t sending dignitaries to the Beijing Games as part of a diplomatic boycott, but the Chinese capital is still attracting an array of world leaders for Friday’s opening ceremony. Russia’s athletes will be competing under a neutral flag, but the presence of Putin, an enthusiastic skier and hockey player, will reinforce that they are the Russian national team in all but name and soothe wounded national pride. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File)
