
Image credit: Government of the PRC
By David Curtis Wright
If the idea of Chinese mediation between Russia and Ukraine starts gaining some traction and currency, it should be seriously considered and not blithely dismissed out of hand. There are reasons to be fairly confident that China would serve well in this capacity.
If Ukraine and Russia are unable to enter into serious peace negotiations themselves, somebody should get Russia and Ukraine talking, whether Israelis, Turks or, yes, Chinese. As potential mediators, the United States and its allies, including Japan, would be unacceptable to Russia, and Russia will also not approve of any country as mediator if it voted against Russia at the UN. Ukraine, for its part, would of course not approve of any of the few countries that actively supported Russia. So that leaves a large body of neutral or abstaining countries as the only pool of viable candidates.
So the choice must be from among neutral or abstaining countries. In the Sunday 13 March 2022 edition of the New York Times there was an important op-ed piece by Wang Huiyao, the founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization (a think tank in Beijing), who argued persuasively that “unpalatable as some in the West may find the idea, it is time to offer the Russian leader an offramp with China’s help.” This point is well taken, as is his observation that China has a significant economic interest in a quick resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian war.
I do not for the most part seek to argue or speculate on how likely it would be for China to end up mediating between Kyiv and Moscow. Instead, I give below some potential objections to Chinese mediation (whatever its prospects) and my responses to them.
Doesn’t China have a record of human rights issues? Yes, it does. There is much room for improvement in the Chinese government’s recognition of, and respect for, human rights. But this does not ipso facto mean that China would be an incompetent mediator. Even governments with problematic human rights records can and do wish for peace when it is aligned with their interests.
Don’t we have major political and diplomatic disagreements with China? Of course we do. Anybody who follows the news knows that the list of these disagreements is a long and convoluted one. But how does this establish that these political disagreements disqualify China from attempting to mediate in the Ukraine-Russia War?
Isn’t China deeply unpopular in the international community? First of all, that depends on how “the international community” is defined. If it is conceived as the developed democratic world (Anglophone and Francophone North America, Western Europe and Japan), then yes, but together the developed democratic world consists of only 11.67% of the globe’s population, and China’s relations with the rest of the world are nuanced and varied. Second, even if countries and/or their national leaders are not well-liked, they can still make concrete contributions towards ending war. China is a great power in many ways today, but not yet diplomatically, so it would know well how much it stood to gain or lose diplomatically in its mediation and act accordingly.
Wouldn’t China as mediator simply allow Russia to steamroll over Ukraine? No, China would not do that. China would never simply waltz into the negotiation room and give Russia a blank cheque. China would have way too much at stake diplomatically and geo-strategically to do this. Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has never successfully mediated between two major international belligerents. Successfully doing so between Ukraine and Russia would be a feather in China’s cap and propel the country a long way towards emerging as a major global diplomatic power. China’s leaders are too rational and calculating to allow a golden opportunity like this to be botched by maladroit diplomacy.
Does China not stand to benefit in some way from continuing warfare between Ukraine and Russia? Many commentators in China’s chattering class do in fact take it almost as an a priori article of faith that China will emerge as a beneficiary from this war. But exactly how that benefit will come about and what exactly it will be is not widely or clearly specified by China’s commentariat. What is more, a protracted war between Ukraine and Russia would be inimical to China’s long-term economic interests on the Eurasian landmass, in particular its sprawling and ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, the stated objectives of which are, inter alia, enhancing regional connectivity and working toward a brighter future. Indeed, it might ultimately turn out that China has too much at stake to stand with Russia against the West.
Haven’t other countries tried mediating? Yes they have, and the results thus far have not been optimal. If in the future conditions look right, why not give China a chance, especially since it more than any other country on earth is in a position to communicate effectively with Russia? China’s government is fully capable of making its voice heard loud and clear (and fairly) in Moscow. And if not even China can talk some sense into Russia, then the world may know that nobody can. It is conceivable that China could emerge as the last best hope for peace on the European continent.
Haven’t China and Russia become much closer over the past few months? Yes, certainly. This more than any other issue could be a spanner in the cogs as far as prospects for Chinese mediation are concerned, especially given that China presents itself to the world as a concerned and principled onlooker of the war in Ukraine, one not taking sides. Domestically, however, the Chinese Communist Party is busy depicting Russia as a long-suffering victim instead of an aggressor and defends its strong ties with Moscow.
It seems that if China does end up in a mediating role, it would likely start out negotiations with two acknowledgments: 1) that Russia has genuine and legitimate security concerns that should be addressed, and 2) that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity ought to be respected. As Yun Sun of the Stimson Center (a Washington D.C. think tank) recently commented, China sides with Russia on security concerns but stands with Ukraine on normative matters of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Balancing these two stances has been a delicate diplomatic trapeze act for China, and it would be especially so in mediation. If China did otherwise than being an honest and objective mediator between the two warring states, all of Beijing’s hortatory boilerplate over the years about respecting territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression towards other countries’ territories and resolving differences through peaceful negotiation (in short, the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”) would amount to transparently cynical hyperbole and claptrap in the eyes of the world.
Successful Chinese mediation would be a win for several parties: Ukraine, for obvious reasons; Russia, for winning its point about Ukraine never joining NATO; and China, for successfully mediating and perhaps backing away from or clarifying some of its earlier comments that may have been misunderstood by some members of the international community as being supportive of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It would also be a win for the EU, because its current rush to arm itself might be slowed or even halted. (Europe is rearming now at an alarming pace because it is terrified of Putin, and even Sweden and Switzerland are not so neutral anymore.) It would even be a win for the United States, because it would not want to be dragged into yet another foreign war. There is significant war-weariness in the United States, even and especially among right-wing conservatives, who are much less likely to see Russia in a negative light than the moderate and liberal majority of Americans.
Beijing’s relative international silence over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is growing increasingly deafening, and Beijing is eventually going to have to do something about its (and the world’s) Russia problem. Beijing needs to distance itself from Russian aggression against Ukraine while maintaining its relations with Russia. This will be a very delicate balancing act for China, but China is already working on that act.
And if things actually do turn out this way – if it really is China that defuses the crisis in Europe, then so be it. Better China’s Silk Road to peace than the potential highway to hell of a European-wide, and possibly even worldwide, conflagration.
David Curtis Wright (@DavidCurtWright) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Calgary, affiliated with that university’s Centre for Military, Strategic, and Security Studies, as well as a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.