As the Communist Party and its advisory body meet in Beijing this month, there has been little or no mention of the Ukraine war, a silence that is all the more deafening given China’s deeply embedded sense of its unique place in history. With its brazen aspirations for great power, modern China may well be at a turning point.
NEW HAVEN – With the war in Ukraine, China’s annual “Two Sessions” convey the image of a country in denial. As the Communist Party and its advisory body meet in Beijing this month, little or no mention has been made of a seismic disturbance to the world order, an omission that is all the more blatant in view of China’s deeply embedded sense of its unique place. . in History. With its brazen aspirations for great power, modern China may well be at a turning point.
Two documents, the Sino-Russian Joint Cooperation Agreement, signed on February 4 at the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and the Work Report, presented on March 5 by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to the Assembly National Popular, summarize the disconnection of China. The sweeping declaration on Sino-Russian cooperation spoke of a “friendship between the two states [que] it does not have limits”. He presented an almost breathless description of common interests, as well as commitments to address climate change, global health, economic cooperation, trade policy, and regional and geostrategic ambitions. The West was warned that it faced a powerful combination as a new adversary in the East.
Just 29 days later, however, it was business as usual for Li, who introduced what is now the annual Chinese standard prescription for development and prosperity. A familiar list of reforms emphasized China’s continued commitments to poverty reduction, job creation, digitalization, environmental protection, meeting demographic challenges, disease prevention, and a wide range of economic and financial issues. Yes, there was a widely noted adjustment to the economic forecast, with a 2022 growth target of “around 5.5%” which, while weak by Chinese standards, was actually a bit stronger than expected, and some hints of probable fiscal, monetary political support. and regulatory authorities. But this job report stood out for saying as little as possible about a world in crisis.
However, China cannot have both. There is no way he can stay the course, as Li suggests, while adhering to the association agreement with Russia announced by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Many believed that Russia and China had come together to devise a grand strategy for a new Cold War. I called it the China triangulation gambit: teaming up with Russia to corner the United States, just as the Sino-American rapprochement 50 years ago successfully cornered the former Soviet Union. The United States, the architect of that earlier triangulation, was now being triangulated.
However, in the space of less than a month, Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine has changed this concept. If China remains committed to its new partnership with Russia, it faces guilt by association. Just as Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades, the same fate awaits China if it deepens its new partnership. This result, of course, is completely at odds with China’s development goals that Li just enunciated. But it is a very real risk if China maintains unlimited support for Russia, even by easing the impact of Western sanctions, as a literal reading of the February 4 deal implies.
The Chinese leadership seems to feel this untenable dilemma. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was met with unusual silence from the Politburo Standing Committee, the Party’s seven top leaders, China has since underlined its traditional alternative principle of respect for national sovereignty. At the Munich Security Conference last month, Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized this point, along with China’s long-standing insistence on nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states, an argument that directly affects Taiwan. .
But at the National People’s Congress on March 7, Wang stood his ground, insisting that “China and Russia… will steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership.” It is as if Putin knew full well when he went to Beijing in early February that he was setting China up.
Xi now faces a critical decision. He has the most leverage of any world leader to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. To do that, he needs to send a strong message to Putin that Russia’s brutal invasion crosses China’s principled red line on territorial sovereignty. That means he will have to register a strong objection to Putin’s efforts to rewrite post-Cold War history and resurrect imperial Russia. To negotiate an end to the devastating conflict that Putin unleashed, Xi will have to put his February 4 association commitment back on the table as a decisive bargaining chip. Russia’s prospects are bleak at best; without China, she has nothing at all. China holds the trump card in the ultimate survival of Putin’s Russia.
Xi’s own place in history may also be at stake. At the end of this year, the 20th Party Congress will meet in Beijing. The top item on the agenda is no secret: Xi’s appointment for an unprecedented third five-year term as Party General Secretary. China watchers, including myself, have long assumed that nothing would stand in the way of this well-telegraphed outcome. But history, and the current events that shape it, have the uncanny ability to change the calculus of leadership in any country. That is true not only in democracies like the United States, but also in autocracies like Russia and China.
The choice for Xi is clear: He can stay the course set by his February 4 deal with Russia and be forever tainted by the sanctions, isolation, and unbearable economic and financial pressures that come with such a stance. Or he can broker the peace that will save the world and cement China’s status as a great power led by a great statesman.
As the architect of the “Chinese dream” and what he believes is the further rejuvenation of a great nation, Xi has no choice. My bet is that Xi will do the unthinkable: defuse the Russian threat, before it’s too late.The author
Stephen S. Roach, a Yale University faculty member and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China and his forthcoming book is titled Accidental Conflict.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2020