Financial Times: China is tightening its embrace of Russia while building a bulwark against the West
The Financial Times published an opinion piece by China editor James King, under the titled of China Tightens Its Embrace of Russia as It Builds a Bastion Against the West.
The Russian war in Ukraine and the content of Beijing’s relations with Moscow are primarily related to confronting the West, which is led by the United States.
The primacy of China’s anti-Western orientation explains the general messages emanating from the Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin summit.
Beijing’s strategy of counter-containment by the United States is consistent with its tight embrace of Russia.
While few people know what Xi said to Putin during private discussions, public reading of their meeting indicates that the Chinese leader did not put significant pressure on his ‘dear friend’ to end the war in Ukraine.
China’s credibility as a potential peacemaker in the crisis quickly evaporated.
Despite hopes that Xi might contact Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone after his visit to Moscow, no such call has taken place so far.
Yu Ji, a senior researcher at the London-based Chatham House think tank, spoke that “since the minimum requirements for peace brokering are to be seen as neutral and to be willing to talk to both sides, China has already lost its credibility”.
Jude Blanchett, a China expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, China’s ultimate hope is a Russian victory in the long war that works primarily against China’s economic and diplomatic interests, but a war that ends in a Russian defeat would be a disaster for Beijing and Xi Jinping personally.
