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Invasion of Ukraine pulls PRC away from Russia

FORUM Staff

Chinese diplomats and leaders often assert the regime’s longtime, professed policy of “noninterference” in the internal affairs of other countries.

The philosophy, which is the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) strongest, consistent narrative of its international relations since the PRC’s founding, is forcing Beijing to diverge from Moscow.

By invading Ukraine, Russia placed the PRC in a predicament, undercutting the PRC’s position on Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang because sovereignty is of critical political importance to the PRC’s narratives about these regions. The Chinese government’s displeasure with Russia’s actions was evidenced by its abstention from two key votes at the United Nations. Although Russia likely expected a synchronized veto as a sign of friendship, the PRC diverged from the relationship and its record of nearly total alignment with Russia in such international venues.

The PRC abstained from voting March 2, 2022, on a U.N. General Assembly resolution that urged Russia to stop its attack and remove its military forces from Ukraine. The resolution passed 141-5. Besides Russia, only Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria opposed the nonbinding resolution. Thirty-five countries abstained. (Pictured: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, right, watches as Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukrainian ambassador to the U.N., holds a copy of the U.N. charter during an emergency meeting of the General Assembly in New York on March 2, 2022.)

The PRC also abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote February 25 on a resolution demanding that Russia cease its offensive in Ukraine, which Russia vetoed. Eleven of the 15 council members voted in favor of the resolution.

Meanwhile, the PRC routinely invokes its noninterference policy at the U.N. to push back against U.S. military operations or U.N. activities that the Chinese government opposes, analysts said. The PRC and Russia usually vote as one bloc on issues that are extremely important for either country.

“Beijing enjoys bashing NATO, but Putin’s disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty and his support for secessionists will play badly in China,” according to Politico Europe. “The fundamental geopolitical dynamics underlying Putin’s invasion of Ukraine are anathema to sovereignty-obsessed Beijing,” the news organization reported.

“The idea that a minority area or ethnic group could simply claim independence and be recognized by a sympathetic nuclear superpower is China’s nightmare, given that it is perennially worried about dissent in regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. This is not the way Beijing wants international diplomacy to be conducted.”

Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has widely championed the philosophy of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries. The idea emerged in the 1950s as a core foreign policy slogan during the Mao Zedong era when the PRC wanted to present itself as a leader of the world’s developing nations in contrast to the Soviet and Western blocs in the Cold War. Although Mao continued to export revolutionary communism around the world, the PRC lacked resources to get directly involved in other countries’ affairs on a large scale until recent years.

As the PRC has sought to increase its global presence, its practice of noninterference has become increasingly fraught with contradictions. “China has recently been compelled to involve itself in conflict areas outside its borders in ways that some — even some Chinese — see as counter to its policy of non-interference,” explained Jason Li, a research assistant with the East Asia program at the Stimson Center.

“In recent years, major overseas investments such as those under the [One Belt, One Road (OBOR) infrastructure scheme] have created exceptional difficulties for Chinese policymakers to maintain this policy,” Li wrote in a 2019 article for the center’s website.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only exacerbated these difficulties. Russia’s aggression has forced the PRC to turn its back on Chinese citizens, many living in Ukraine, and their over U.S. $1 billion in investments in the Ukraine, which was intended to be OBOR’s gateway to Europe.

The PRC was Ukraine’s largest trading partner in 2020. According to the online magazine The Diplomat, COFCO, China’s state-owned agribusiness giant, invested U.S. $50 million in Mariupol, which Russia inundated with bombs and shells while invading in early March 2022. In addition to needing Ukraine’s grain and animal feed, the PRC bought its first aircraft carrier, the Varyag, which it renamed Liaoning, a prominent symbol its national military pride, from Ukraine.

The PRC has been seizing land illegally or by coercion from the neighboring nations, and its ongoing land-grab tactics in Bhutan, India, Nepal and Tajikistan demonstrate other inconsistent applications of its noninterference doctrine. In addition to its blatant border incursions in India, the PRC recently built a network of buildings, roads and military outposts in a border region in Bhutan that has enabled the regime to gain strategic advantages over India.

Disclosure of the PRC’s colonial activities, in Bhutan in particular, has increased international skepticism of the PRC’s promises, intentions and ambitions for other nations’ territories, according to a report by Robert Barnett published in May 2021 on the Foreign Policy website.

The PRC has also used similar tactics in the South China Sea to gain strategic advantages in the region through its construction and militarization of artificial features.

IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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