I would like tentatively to share the insights of Ms. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on China and East Asia, Indo-Pacific security, and authoritarianism and democracy in Asia.
Her theme is “China, Russia, and Ukraine”.
In early February 2022, China and Russia reaffirmed their high-level strategic partnership.
Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24th, however, almost immediately put that partnership at odds with its principles—phrases like territorial integrity, sovereignty, and non-interference that are often listed as core Chinese principles, but that also appeared in the joint statement—as well as with Xi’s assumed desire to keep the economy on a broadly positive trajectory amid a major COVID outbreak and the approaching Party Congress in the fall.
China’s framing of the conflict has been closely aligned with Russia’s—alignment that is more than rhetorical, given the centrality of information strategies to the unfolding course of conflict.
Chinese officials and news outlets have studiously avoided calling Russia’s action an invasion, consistently blamed the United States and NATO for “instigating” the crisis, opposed the use of sanctions to pressure Putin to change course, and amplified Russian disinformation claims about U.S. support for biological weapons programs in Ukraine.
Pro-Russian, anti-American messages dominate China’s domestic social media landscape. Ukrainians have little agency; Xi’s reported proposal in his 3/18 phone call with President Biden, that the US and NATO negotiate with Russia about Ukraine (seemingly, without Ukraine in the room), emblematizes Beijing’s great-power focus.
