Meet China’s ‘junior partner’

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‘LOVE FEST’ — On day two of Xi Jinping’s three-day state visit to Moscow, various economic agreements were signed. The Chinese president hailed “a new era” of strategic partnership and economic cooperation with Russia. And in a joint statement released with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Xi called for “settling the Ukraine crisis through dialogue.”

In other words, it was a day of extremely modest accomplishment for a grand visit billed by the Chinese government as a “trip for peace.” No progress was made on ending the war in Ukraine — or even calling it a war.

Instead, Xi’s visit underscored Putin’s reliance on China at a time of isolation — the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on Friday for war crimes — and China’s growing leverage over Russia in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine.

Nightly spoke with Phelim Kine, POLITICO’s China correspondent who writes the newsletter China Watcher, on what this visit tells us about the state of the relationship between Russia and China — and what it means for the U.S. and Ukraine.

This is a high profile state visit. What’s in it for these two leaders? What do they hope to accomplish?

[It’s] an opportunity for both leaders to project solidarity and unity against the Biden administration’s assertion of “rules-based international order” hinged on universal rights and freedoms and rule of law. Both Xi and Putin find themselves increasingly isolated and threatened by that rhetoric and by how Biden has rallied partners and allies in defense of those principles. Xi has watched with dismay as Biden has rolled out a series China-countering groupings in the past couple of years including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and a reinvigoration of the Quad — an informal geopolitical grouping that includes the U.S., India, Australia and Japan. Meanwhile Putin’s war on Ukraine has left him dependent on China and India — through fire-sale priced deals on Russian oil and gas — for foreign currency lifelines necessary to fuel his war machine in Ukraine. So this a meeting of two autocrats joining together in a symbolic show of defiance against an international community that in many ways has united in revulsion over Ukraine, abuses against Xinjiang Uyghurs and Beijing’s saber rattling toward Taiwan. They want to project confidence, produce a stream of rhetoric about their support for a “multilateral international system” (their code for wanting the U.S. off their collective necks) and sign various deals and memoranda of understanding designed to reflect deepening ties and mutual support in the face of adversity.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby referred to Russia as China’s “junior partner” yesterday, which in diplomatic terms is something of a provocative thing to say. What was the point of that?

Kirby’s language was tooled to sting Putin. And it contains enough truth to really make it hurt. The fact is that despite Moscow and Beijing’s rhetoric about their “no limits” alignment, Beijing has reaped an economic windfall from Russia’s war on Ukraine. China has become Russia’s trader of last resort for everything from non-sanctioned high tech equipment, including semiconductors to jet-fighter parts and electronic jamming technology. It’s not enough to change the balance of power on the battlefield — though the Biden administration has warned that Xi is considering provision of lethal weaponry to Putin — but it allows Russia to limp along and not lose anytime soon. The bad news for Putin is that that relationship is relegating Russia to the status of a Chinese client state which could pay Beijing long term geostrategic dividends at Russia’s expense. A weakened but friendly Russia obviates China’s concerns about a neighbor that has been a military worry far longer than it has been a friend and ally. The two countries settled their long standing border dispute in 2008, but memories run deep in China of a 1969 border conflict with Russia that almost went nuclear.

Putin visited Xi in China just prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. What do the visits reveal about their relationship or the relationship between the two countries?

Xi Jinping has visited Putin in Moscow nine times over the past decade. That makes Russia Xi’s number one foreign destination, underscoring the importance that Xi places in this strategic relationship. Xi and Putin look at each other and see an essential ally that they can stand together with in facing down the Biden administration’s narrative of the 21st century being an existential showdown between autocracy and democracy. Xi also sees haunting parallels in Putin’s bloody battle of attrition for Ukraine with what could transpire if he launches an invasion against Taiwan. Putin’s claim to Ukraine — like China’s assertions of sovereignty over Taiwan — are empirically specious, but resonate with a captive population force fed state-media narratives that reflect Kremlin propaganda rather than empirical reality. An eventual end to the Ukraine war that includes a repudiation of Russia’s territorial claims will inevitably prompt comparison’s to Beijing’s designs on Taiwan that are unfavorable to Xi’s narrative that “reunification” with Taiwan — by force if necessary — is a great unfinished task of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

What does this visit mean for Ukraine?

Ukraine likely doesn’t have high hopes that the Xi-Putin love fest in Moscow will produce any breakthroughs favorable to a swift and just end to Russia’s war of aggression. Beijing has refused to characterize Russia’s actions as an “invasion,” has not condemned Russia’s aggression and has instead blamed the U.S. for the conflict and justified it as Moscow’s assertion of “legitimate security concerns.” So I think we can expect Xi to reiterate the empty platitudes of his 12-point “Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis,” published last month, but fail to produce any specific and meaningful proposals toward achieving those goals. There have been whispers that Xi will call President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in the coming days, but if he does it’s unlikely he’ll say anything beyond what is in that 12-point non-plan. But doing so will help embellish the Chinese propaganda narrative that China is an honest broker in the conflict seeking peace while the U.S. is “adding fuel to the fire” by helping the Ukrainians defend themselves. But the Ukrainians might see any outreach by Xi — after more than a year of snubbing the Ukrainians — as progress of some kind, however minimal.

The Chinese government referred to this as “a trip for peace.” Are there any prospects of a breakthrough from this visit or is this trip about something else?

This trip would be better described as Xi Jinping’s effort to solidify China’s ties with Russia while seeking to portray himself as a statesmanlike peacemaker. This visit comes on the heels of China’s brokering a hostility-reduction agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia earlier this month. And Beijing is casting that as a triumph of Xi’s signature Global Security Initiative, which is Xi’s alternative to the U.S.-dominated multilateral system that evolved from the ashes of World War II. So the “peace” rhetoric will fly thick and fast between Xi and Putin. But it won’t be supported by any meaningful proposal that could actually end the fighting in Ukraine without a unilateral surrender of Ukrainian forces and a “peace” dictated from Moscow. If Xi were serious about peace he could today just tweak some of China’s trade supply lines to Russia to reduce China’s support for Putin’s war machine. But he appears unwilling to do so and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] or on Twitter at @katherinealong.

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