Is China really caught between a rock and a hard place because it cannot reconcile its refusal to condemn Russia over the invasion of Ukraine with its long-avowed stand against any trampling of a nation's sovereignty?
Many analysts believe so and have argued that Beijing's equivocation over this contradiction can only diminish its standing in the world and damage its relations with the United States and the European Union. Some have even alluded to the possibility of a split within China's top leadership on whether to continue with what the world is sure to interpret as tacit support of Russia in defiance of world opinion.
Fair assessment or wishful thinking? No one outside the small, very tight circle of top leaders in Beijing knows. It is possible that they indeed feel they have been boxed into a corner or that there really are major disagreements among themselves over their handling of the crisis.
It is equally possible, though, that the Chinese, and not just the leaders, look at the issues differently from what the US and their allies want them to. They may not see why, having declared their opposition to the invasion, albeit not as unequivocally or vehemently as the West would want, they need also to join in the frenzy of imposing sanctions against Russia when their judgment is that doing so will hurt their own interests.
From their perspective, one does not have to follow the other. It should not surprise anyone that they would suspect that the pressures on them to punish Russia are aimed at driving a wedge between Beijing and Moscow, the only major power the former can count on for support in fighting off the West's intensifying containment offensives.
To be sure, Beijing does not like what the Russians have done. It knows international law is not on Russia's side just as it sees the hypocrisy and double standards of those who have shouted the loudest about Russian transgression but were noticeably silent over the equally illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And it accepts that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has no choice but to act because the US and its allies have, for years, brushed aside Russia's legitimate security concerns and refused to back away from pushing Nato's eastward expansion.
This imperative to fight now against a foreseeable existential threat later is something China, a long-suffering victim of imperialist aggression and occupation, understands all too well. China does not need any reminder that in October 1950, their country was in similar straits.
The tide had turned in the Korean War that had started earlier that year. US forces fighting under the banner of the United Nations against North Korea were pushing the latter's army back north and were poised to cross the Yalu river into China.
According to Chinese records, Chairman Mao Zedong and his senior colleagues deliberated for a week or so, debating whether to send "volunteers" into North Korea to aid Marshal Kim Il Sung's troops and, specifically, beat back the American advance towards China.
Some Chinese leaders like Marshal Lin Biao, the invincible "god of war" in People's Liberation Army folklore, spoke against intervention. Marshal Peng Dehuai, another much revered military leader, supported the dispatching of Chinese fighting men.
In the end, Chairman Mao decided China must intervene. He told an enlarged Politburo meeting that China could not count on US restraint to stop at China's borders. Already General Douglas MacArthur, then commanding the UN forces in Korea, was talking darkly about crossing the Yalu. If a war had to be fought ultimately, Chairman Mao decreed, it had better be fought in North Korea then, rather than within China later.
Fast forward to today and one can understand how the Chinese mind would see the parallel and conclude that joining the chorus led by the West to condemn and ostracise Russia may not necessarily be in China's interest, especially when there appears to be a determined campaign by the US to remove any obstacles in its quest for continued global hegemony.
Many Chinese, and not just the leaders, believe the US considers Russia as just such an obstacle; to them, Nato's expansion - and Ukraine's pursuit of membership - are part of a bigger game to undermine Russia.
The Chinese have no illusion that they are next. They expect the US to use the same playbook and poke them in the eye. If at all they need another example of provocation, former US secretary of state and 2024 presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo has just provided one with his call for America to recognise Taiwan as an independent state,his country's longstanding one-China policy be damned.
China's leaders know whom they can look to as strategic partners and who are the adversaries out to trip them. Thus they are unlikely to set much store by the American proclamation that the US and China can be partners in some areas and competitors in others. Did not Chairman Mao, in his treatise, Protracted War, caution: When pitted against a more powerful adversary, abandon illusions and prepare the nation for a protracted conflict?
So they are not likely to hold their breath for better relations with the West, desirable as these are. If this happens, well and good, but China is not going to prioritise this over the even more important strategic consideration of not letting Russia crumble under sanctions.
China has obviously thought long and hard before it signed off on the 5,000-word joint statement with Russia on Feb 4 announcing their comprehensive strategic partnership in pursuing a whole host of important objectives.
So, contrary to speculation by some observers, it is not likely to backtrack or stall on any of its undertakings. If anything, it stands to reason that China would want to work even harder and quicker with Russia to forge that multi-polar world order that both desire, rather than continue with one dominated by the US, with rules laid down by Western nations and breached whenever it suited their purpose.
In that pursuit, expect Beijing to project to the world, complete unity among its leadership. Again, history has taught the Chinese that a house divided, when facing enemies at the gate, is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
In the dying years of Qing rule, Li Hongzhang, the key official charged with preparing China for war with a Japan bent on annexing Korea, then a Chinese protectorate, and Manchuria, had his legs cut off, figuratively speaking, by corrupt but still influential Manchu princes who derided his warnings about Japanese imperialism. They denied him the necessary funds for armaments and modernising the Chinese navy.
As a result, China was thrashed in the first Sino-Japanese War of 1895, and had to make humiliating reparations, including the ceding of Taiwan and 13,600 tonnes of silver in compensation, which was equivalent to 4.6 times Japan's total national revenue at the time.
It is hard to imagine Beijing ever making this mistake again. In the final analysis, there is little doubt that to President Xi Jinping and his colleagues, Ukraine is a forerunner of what they can expect from the US and its allies before the decade is out.
It is inconceivable that they have not already put the country's best minds to work - studying every facet of this unfortunate war, including the weaponisation of trade and financial services. They will start preparing in earnest for every eventuality.
This is what exercises Beijing most. Not distancing itself from Russia, which is what the West would wish.