China believes that the US and NATO should negotiate with Russia in parallel to the talks between the authorities in Moscow and kyiv
Two don’t fight if one doesn’t want to, or in the words of Xi Jinping, “it takes two hands to touch palms,” his Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying quoted him on Twitter. It is not a Chinese proverb, but the appearance of a third version of international reality, halfway between the brutal Russian invasion “without any provocation” -as US President Joe Biden maintains- and Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” to “liberate” the former Soviet satellite from “the Nazis” -as defined by the Kremlin-.
The US president held a long two-hour videoconference with the Chinese president on Friday, which still paled before the seven-hour meeting held on Monday in Rome by the White House National Security Advisor, James Sullivan, with his Chinese counterpart. . If the conversation was “intense” then, this Friday was a “frank and in-depth” exchange of views, according to the Chinese statement. The White House, which took three hours to circulate an almost empty note of twelve lines, did not use any adjectives to describe it but diplomatic sources described it as “detailed”.
China believes that the United States and NATO have provoked Russia by advancing the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance to its borders, which in some way justifies Putin’s reaction and accuses the allies of not having known how to respond to the security concerns that Moscow has. That is why Xi, who publicly declares himself neutral and deplores the violence, believes that the solution lies in dialogue. And not only the one that is taking place between Russia and Ukraine, but also the one that -in his opinion- the United States and NATO should also be holding with Russia.
uncheck failure
If this was indeed China’s previous goal, it ultimately failed. But if the US wanted China to distance itself from its Russian ally, it was also left without it because there was no point of distance with Putin in the extensive Chinese statement.
According to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, US intelligence believes that China is evaluating sending Russia military aid, in addition to supporting it to evade economic and financial sanctions that threaten to sink its economy. The Russian debacle would also have a cost for China, which in the last two decades has strengthened its ties with the Putin government to make it its second largest supplier of oil after Saudi Arabia. All this also comes at a bad time for the Asian country, just out of the pandemic and still fighting the virus, but in every crisis there is opportunity. And this is a Chinese proverb.
Experts believe that China would benefit geopolitically from “war”, as Xi has called it in recent days, despite the fact that Chinese state media continue to talk about “crisis” or “conflict”. Everything that damages the hegemony of the United States in the world is positive for the Asian giant, which is also ready to replace Russian influence in the world. Chinese companies are complying with the sanctions on Russia privately, but the Beijing government refuses to adhere to them in public because “neither war nor sanctions will bring peace,” he wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday. the Chinese ambassador, Qi Gang.
This Friday’s video conference had a dual purpose for the White House. On the one hand, it was Biden’s opportunity to gauge how far Xi will go in supporting her for Putin, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. On the other hand, the US wanted to warn him about the consequences he will suffer if he takes sides in this war on the side of Russia. For that, the US president had to use all his diplomatic experience acquired over 36 years in the Senate, most of it at the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and even the Shanghai Communiqué that half a century ago represented the first diplomatic negotiation between both countries.
The US president assured his counterpart that he does not intend to start another Cold War with China, but is committed to managing their differences and trade competition through dialogue. He in return wants China to share in the responsibility of “working for world peace and tranquility.” His abstentions in the UN Security Council vote on the invasion of Ukraine “spoke for themselves,” Psaki said in that regard.
China, for its part, saw this meeting -which it agreed to “out of courtesy”, its note insisted-, as an opportunity to highlight its relevance in the world and also its discomfort at “the wrong message” that “some people in the US The US has sent the Taiwan independence forces”, which he warned could have an impact on the bilateral relations of both countries. Biden said last year outright that Washington would support Taiwan in the face of a possible Chinese attack. This Friday, the White House limited itself to reiterating in its brief statement that the president’s position “has not changed.” Everything indicates that neither of the two leaders left this virtual meeting with what they were looking for at the beginning.
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