China’s Dry Run
Putin’s war is a valuable case study for Xi.
Acynic might suspect Xi Jinping encouraged all this.
Intelligence reports indicate that the Chinese boss had advance knowledge of what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine and asked him to delay the invasion until after the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. And almost exactly one month ago, Moscow and Beijing issued a joint statement announcing a new era in their relations, one with “no limits” and “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
It is notable that in the joint declaration, Beijing announced its formal opposition to NATO expansion for the first time, and the two parties denounced the hegemonic attitudes of a nation “representing but the minority on the international scale” — meaning the United States. It is a kind of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact for the 21st century.
Chairman Xi’s big idea — “Let’s you and him fight” — is almost a masterstroke of statecraft.
Putin’s war is providing Xi with an invaluable case study, a kind of dry run for what the Western response to some outrage perpetrated by Beijing — say, the invasion of Taiwan — might look like. And what the Chinese have learned already must be very useful: There is more unity within Europe and between Europe and the United States than many had expected; the allies have been effectively unanimous in their approach to economic sanctions; the SWIFT system was quickly and easily weaponized; private actors ranging from the biggest oil companies to the London Stock Exchange have been powerful forces in their own right, going beyond what is required of them under the law; the boldness has not been only digital and financial but also physical, as the French seize Russian cargo ships in the English channel and the Germans seize yachts and other property belonging to Russian oligarchs; the West’s self-interested sanctions carveouts for energy and other sensitive sectors have not provided Moscow as much slack as might have been expected; central-bank sanctions have proved particularly effective; Russia’s largely untested military has underperformed, while the Ukrainians have fought fiercely rather than offer token resistance in the face of overwhelming force; President Joe Biden has felt compelled to repeatedly assure the American public that no American soldiers will be fighting in Ukraine but vows to defend “every inch” of NATO territory; the allies have offered substantial military aid to Ukraine rather than restrict themselves to humanitarian assistance, though that military assistance does not extend to fighter jets; international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have been quick to act.
Beijing already had been working to harden the Chinese economy against Western sanctions, but now Chairman Xi and his associates have a much stronger incentive to do so — and a much better idea of how to do so. With its large economy and technological competence, China is well-positioned to work around any exclusion from SWIFT and other digital tools and to develop a program of economic countersanctions that would have much more effect than anything Russia could manage with its roughly Florida-sized economy.
Like Putin, Xi is more of an oligarch than a dictator, and he must take into account the political views and financial interests of the other members of the Beijing junta. Though China may have more resources to throw at the problem, it also has more to lose.
But Xi has some advantages that Putin does not. China may not deserve to have a better reputation in the international community, but it does: Xi’s efforts to position China as a responsible and cooperative player in world affairs have paid real dividends, and even many of those who acknowledge the autocracy and brutality of Xi’s government do not think of it as a Russian-style mafia state. China has respect and credibility. The choice between being on the bad side of Russia and being on the bad side of the United States is easy for most countries — but the choice between being on the bad side of China and being on the bad side of the United States? Even India, which has long viewed Beijing as one of its principal antagonists, has trouble doing that math.
On top of that, Beijing has an advantage vis-à-vis Taiwan that Moscow does not have vis-à-vis Ukraine: The formal agreement of many Western powers, including the United States, that Taiwan is part of China — the so-called One-China Policy. Putin’s claims about the continuity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are absurd; Xi’s similar claims regarding Taiwan are not. And as a matter of publicly stated policy, Washington “acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.” The United States abandoned its mutual-defense treaty with Taiwan in the 1970s. President Biden recently reported that he had secured China’s promise to “abide by the Taiwan agreement,” but there is no such agreement. The lack of such an agreement and the resulting policy of “deliberate ambiguity” is in fact the foundation of U.S.–Taiwan relations.
President Biden apparently is unclear on that. Chairman Xi is not.
Things are not going well for Putin in Ukraine. And while Beijing may not enjoy giving the impression that China has lent its support and its credibility to a fiasco, Russia’s troubles are not entirely unwelcome to China. Russia already is the junior partner in the Beijing–Moscow relationship, and if Putin’s war leaves Russia an even-more-junior partner — economically devastated, isolated, and militarily humiliated even if it ultimately prevails over Ukrainian forces — there will be some upsides to that for Beijing. The more dependent Moscow is on Beijing for political patronage and financial support, the higher a price Beijing can extract, both economically and geopolitically.
A masterstroke — almost.
If Washington was pleasantly surprised by Germany’s decision to make a serious investment in rearming itself, both Moscow and Beijing must have been positively shocked. A reinvigorated and possibly expanded NATO buoyed by a revivified Germany — and an energized Europe that has seen players such as Sweden and even Switzerland come off the sidelines — is a nightmare for Vladimir Putin. But it also frees up American resources — financial, military, political, moral, and intellectual — to support Washington’s turn to the Indo-Pacific. Putin’s war will be a setback for Moscow, but it will also be, in that respect, a real loss for Beijing. In ten years, Beijing may see this not as a masterstroke but a misadventure.
Xi Jinping is not the only one who is taking notes.