China is adamant about its friendship with Russia. To do this, it is sacrificing its longstanding, intensive economic relations with Ukraine. Kyiv is now demanding a final departure from Beijing.
Beijing/Kyiv/Munich – Individual politicians repeatedly bring China into play as a mediator in the Ukraine war. Most recently, it was Brazil’s old-new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who, together with representatives from Beijing, proposed himself as a mediator at the meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “Our Chinese friends play a very important role in this,” said Lula on Tuesday at the joint press conference with Scholz in Brasília. “It’s time for China to get involved.”
In Kyiv, the euphoria over the proposal should be clear – not only because Lula recently indirectly blamed Ukraine for the outbreak of war. Nor have there been any indications so far that China has any serious interest in playing a balancing role. Beijing’s official line since the beginning of the war has been: The USA and NATO are to blame for the conflict. Officials have not uttered a word of public criticism of the Russian invasion. Since the beginning of the war, Beijing has ignored Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The fate of Ukraine seems to leave China cold – despite a “strategic partnership” concluded with Kyiv in 2011.
Kyiv: No illusions about China
Now that has consequences. Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk – known in Germany as the opinionated ex-ambassador of his country in Berlin – calls for Kiev to rethink its relations with China. “China’s position is becoming less and less acceptable to us,” Melnyk said at a recent event. “We must prepare a new strategy for relations with Beijing.”
In August 2022, Zelenskyj China in an interview with the Hong Konger South China Morning Post called on to use his political and economic influence over Russia to end the attack. He wanted to speak to China’s head of state Xi Jinping directly: Since the start of the Russian offensive, “we have officially asked for a conversation.” Selenskyj last spoke to Xi on the phone in 2021 – and praised China as “Ukraine’s number one trading and economic partner”. He hopes that Ukraine will become “a bridge to Europe for Chinese companies”.
However, China is not only sacrificing its image in Western Europe to its pro-Russian stance – it is also sacrificing its close economic ties with Ukraine. A look at the previous cooperation shows that the geostrategic value that Xi attaches to his connection to Russia must be very high.
China to be Ukraine’s largest trading partner from 2019 – until 2022
“In 2019, China had replaced Russia as Ukraine’s largest trading partner and had become the top importer of Ukrainian barley and iron ore,” writes Zongyuan Zoe Liu in one Study for the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Ukraine also overtook the US as China’s largest corn supplier a few years ago. In 2016, the COFCO Group, China’s largest agribusiness, built a $75 million grain and oilseed transhipment terminal at the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv.
Ukraine was also China’s second largest arms supplier after Russia, while the People’s Republic was the largest buyer of Ukrainian arms. From the start, China had a great interest in Ukrainian armaments, such as Soviet missile technology. The purchase of the half-finished Soviet aircraft carrier “Varyag” to a private company from the Chinese special administrative region of Macau, which allegedly wanted to turn it into a hotel with a casino, made international headlines in 1999. A little later, the colossus was formally handed over to the People’s Republic, which then turned it into China’s first military aircraft carrier, which today travels the seas under the name “Liaoning”.
China: Major projects in Ukraine with an uncertain future
In addition to food and armaments, projects for infrastructure and energy are among China’s priorities in Ukraine. In 2017, Kyiv joined the New Silk Road infrastructure initiative (Belt and Road Initiative/BRI) at. According to Liu, Ukraine wanted to use its ties with China to “accelerate the modernization of transportation, particularly railroads and roads.” Conversely, the country was an attractive transit country for Chinese goods to Europe thanks to its free trade agreement with the EU.
In 2017, according to the CFR study, Chinese engineers completed the modernization of the Yuzhny port near Odessa, which is currently used for grain exports under the international agreement. Also in 2017, two Chinese companies were awarded the contract to build the fourth metro line in Kyiv, financed by Chinese banks. In addition, the telecommunications group Huawei was commissioned in 2019 to set up a 4G network for the Kiev subway. In 2020, Huawei and Ukraine’s Technical Security Agency agreed to cooperate on cyber security and cyber defense.
China also participated in the development of renewable energies in Ukraine. According to the CFR study, the company China National Building Material had already built ten solar power plants in Ukraine by 2022, which accounted for half of the country’s total installed solar power capacity before the start of the war. By early 2022, Ukraine and China had signed contracts worth nearly $3 billion to build the Silk Road. These are projects whose future is more than uncertain. Other countries are likely to make money from the reconstruction of Ukraine in the future.
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