Opinion

China has plenty skin in the game of ending conflict in Ukraine

Xi Jinping fears conflict may spin out of control and frets about its economic impact

Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war cross the border between Ukraine and Moldova in Palanca, Moldova. At least 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Photograph: EPA

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Paul Gillespie
Sat Mar 12 2022 - 02:00

Seventeen days on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine it is difficult but essential to seek out the potential shape of a peace settlement and to think about the new global order it might represent.

This is a necessary part of the intensifying international debate on foreign policy responses to the crisis. It includes the one on how Irish security and defence policies should respond. We are part of the European Union, which has common and differing interests and values at play within its members. The same applies to the other major world powers, regions and blocs, including the US, China, and Russians, as well as Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, all of which are variously affected.

Discussions between France, Germany and China this week on Ukraine offer a revealing triangular portal through which to examine these changes in the distribution of world power. Convened by President Emmanuel Macron as current EU chairman, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke for an hour on the crisis and agreed to keep in touch on it.

For Macron the initiative is part of his activism on EU strategic autonomy, extending now from security and defence to energy and climate action and linked to his persisting dialogue with Putin, within a long-standing Franco-Russian affair. Scholz’s role continues the Franco-German one in the 2014-2015 Minsk accords on Ukrainian neutrality and Russian minorities in Donbass and Luhansk.

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Scholz has a fundamental interest to ensure China, Germany's main trade partner since 2015, remains open economically

Macron hopes the new German leadership will follow his lead in linking up with China as the power with greatest leverage over Putin’s Russia.

Scholz has a fundamental interest to ensure China, Germany’s main trade partner since 2015, remains open economically. German commentary on the meeting this week underlined how important continuing Chinese growth is for legitimising the Chinese leadership. Politically, too, convincing the Chinese to exert leverage on Russia for a peace settlement would help develop links with Europe to counteract a new cold war in Asia, as the Chinese say is intended by the US led Indo-Pacific strategy.

Xi Jinping condemned western sanctions during Tuesday’s call, warning they “will affect global finance, energy, transportation and stability of supply chains, and dampen the global economy that is already ravaged by the pandemic. And this is in the interest of no one.” He said “we need to jointly support the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and encourage the two sides to keep the momentum of negotiations, overcome difficulties, keep the talks going and bring about peaceful outcomes.”

More broadly Xi argued: “We need to actively advocate a vision of common, comprehensive, co-operative and sustainable security. China supports France and Germany in promoting a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework for the interests and lasting security of Europe, and by upholding its strategic autonomy. China will be pleased to see equal-footed dialogue among the EU, Russia, the United States and Nato.”

There is much to parse and analyse in Xi’s comments. He is concerned about the conflict going out of control, fearful about its economic effects, anxious to work with the French, Germans and EU for a settlement and keen to link that to a wider vision of European and global security.

Looking at the Chinese statement through another triangular lens – between the US, the EU and Russia – is equally revealing in this rapid transition. There is hard evidence for a revival of western solidarity through Nato between the US and EU in the Ukraine crisis. But that should not obscure the tensions between the US and its various European partners on Ukrainian neutrality and Minsk, both of which the US effectively opposes. And what if Trump wins in 2024? Both the US and Russia must come to terms with a stronger and more independent EU emerging from this crisis.

Since we make peace (and security) with our enemies not our friends that would include Russia – and China

That will be all the more important if there is a genuine effort to revive the common, comprehensive, co-operative and sustainable security in Europe through a reimagining of the 1975 Helsinki accords on co-operation and security in Europe based on these values, as Ireland and other European states are committed to do under Finnish chairmanship by 2025.

Since we make peace (and security) with our enemies not our friends that would include Russia – and China. It is a preferable and more compelling vision of how to manage a more multipolar world than the competing logic of a new binary cold war between the West and a Chinese-Russian bloc. Realising it is a profound challenge for the next three years.

Ukraine crisis