Wang Xiangwei
26 Feb, 2022
As one Chinese saying goes, no matter how much one plans things out, life always intervenes.
Back
in 2000 and 2001, George W Bush, in his presidential campaign and in
the first six months of his presidency, sharply criticised his
predecessor Bill Clinton’s notion of “strategic partnership” with China
and instead labelled Beijing as a “strategic competitor”, seeing China
as a long-term threat.
Among other things, he pledged to do
“whatever it took” to defend Taiwan as his administration signalled it
would enhance arms sales to the self-governing island.
His
administration’s initial emphasis on an adversarial outlook on its
relations with China deepened in April 2001 when a US navy spy plane
accidentally collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China
Sea, sending bilateral ties into a tailspin.
Then everything
changed on September 11 when the United States suffered its worst
terrorist attack in history, prompting the Bush administration to focus
on fighting terrorismworldwide as its overarching priority. Relations
between the two countries were later to improve so much that Bush and
his family attended the Beijing Summer Olympic Games in 2008 and at that
time Chinese officials labelled his presidency as the best for US-China
relations.
Now back to the present time. Just as US President
Joe Biden has inherited Donald Trump’s chaotic but adversarial policies
towards China and has gone one better by rallying America’s Western
partners in a united front to contain Beijing (“the most serious
competitor”), the Ukraine situation has exploded.
Since Russian
President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine’s breakaway regions
of Donetsk and Luhansk, after recognising them as independent, fears
about an all-out war have been growing.
No doubt, the unfolding
crisis has added a new dynamic to China’s tortuous relations with the US
and its Western allies. As the crisis is set to consume the attention
of Washington and Brussels and other capitals of the world for the next
few years, it is very likely that their united front pressure against
China will ease.
Of course, it is naive to think that
Washington’s focus on Russia would lead to any fundamental shift in its
relationship with Beijing, like it did more than 20 years ago. That ship
has already sailed as confronting China was one of the few things that
united the politicians in Washington before the Ukraine crisis.
But
Beijing will certainly gain more room to manoeuvre and more
geopolitical benefits if the conflict over Ukraine persists. But
Washington’s miscalculations have pushed Moscow and Beijing into a
closer bond. Before Putin’s visit to attend the opening ceremony of the
Beijing Winter Olympic Games and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this
month, there was speculation that Chinese officials were worried that
Putin would take action against Ukraine during the Games, which would
have distracted the world from China’s moment of glory. Intriguingly,
Putin announced his moves against Ukraine just one day after the Games
had concluded.
Following
the meeting between Xi and Putin, the Chinese state media hailed a
strategic partnership of “no limits”. Xi stressed commitment between the
two countries to deepening back-to-back strategic coordination and
upholding international equity and justice side by side in the face of
profound and complex changes in the international situation, Xinhua
reported.
But it turns out there are limits. China has stopped short
of supporting Russia’s moves on Ukraine and senior officials including
Foreign Minister Wang Yi have called for more diplomacy and negotiations
to reduce tensions.
But on Wednesday, Hua Chunying, the foreign
ministry spokesperson, minced no words in accusing the US of creating
fear and panic and talking up the threat of war and expressing
opposition to new sanctions imposed on Russia.
From a Chinese
perspective, with the Ukraine situation threatening to get out of hand,
Washington’s priority will shift to Eastern Europe from its Indo-Pacific
strategy which is aimed at containing China. That is clearly in
Beijing’s favour.
It is very unlikely that Washington and its Western
allies will have the time and resources to confront Beijing and Moscow
at the same time.
But as Beijing’s top foreign priority is to
ensure a relatively stable environment so as to develop its economy, it
certainly does not want to see a full-blown war over Ukraine, which
would have a devastating impact on the world economy and create major
disruptions to supply chains. Besides, China is also Ukraine’s largest
trading partner. So it is expected to do a delicate dance to secure more
diplomatic leverage, backing Moscow’s security interests while at the
same time trying to avoid antagonising Washington too much.
Meanwhile,
Chinese officials are clearly uncomfortable with discussions at home
and abroad about the link between Ukraine and Taiwan.
From Beijing’s
point of view, there is no comparison between the two situations as
Ukraine is a sovereign country while Taiwan is considered a province of
China and is not recognised by the international community except for a
handful of small countries.
Beijing has two concerns.
Some
Chinese analysts are worried that the pro-independence movement in
Taiwan could take advantage of the Ukraine crisis to bring its agenda to
international attention.
Secondly, they are also concerned that
the crisis will prod the nationalistic elements on the Chinese mainland
to influence the national discourse and pressure the Chinese government
to get tougher on Taiwan by learning from and emulating some of Russia’s
tactics in relation to Taiwan.
But Beijing has its own plans for
Taiwan, with which it says it will reunite through peaceful means or by
force if necessary. Making the island a hot international issue under
the current circumstances is the last thing Beijing wants.
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Wang
Xiangwei is a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post.
He is now based in Beijing as editorial adviser to the paper