Mr. Xi Goes to Moscow, Replacing U.S. Global Leadership
Chinese president Xi Jinping and several other top Chinese leaders landed in Moscow earlier this week for high-level discussions with Russian ruler Vladimir Putin and his senior leadership. The meeting touts a united front between the rising Asian superpower and a regional power lashing out as it adjusts to unavoidable decline. The summit's leading feature is said to be a Chinese plan to broker peace in Ukraine. Both Moscow and Kyiv have stated that they are open to a negotiated peace, subject to conditions that each now rejects, while numerous observers of Russian foreign policy believe some form of negotiated peace is the war's likeliest outcome.
China and Russia are formally united by an "unlimited alliance" announced in February 2022, but a year later the center of power in that relationship has gravitated decidedly toward Beijing. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stalled, making a mockery of its pretensions to military prowess. International economic sanctions have driven Russia into greater dependence on China, which supplies Russia with otherwise unobtainable military equipment and consumer goods. China's purchase of Russian energy exports, which are broadly excluded from their traditional markets elsewhere, has increased by leaps and bounds, doubling in some categories over the past year. In 2022, the total volume of trade between Russia and China reached a record $190 billion.
If China is a lifeline for an isolated Russia, however, Russia is an economic afterthought for China. Despite the massive increase in their mutual trade, Russia still only accounts for just 3% of China's total foreign trade. If Russia disappeared tomorrow, China's steady export-led economic growth and slow but increasingly bold movement toward global hegemony would continue unabated. If China disappeared tomorrow, Russia would lose its greatest source of imported military hardware, its leading foreign supplier of consumer necessities, and its major export market. Moscow would be forced to rely upon smaller and less stable middlemen like Turkey and Iran for its economic needs, and its most potent strategic partner would be the rogue regime in North Korea. In short, Putin needs Xi a lot more than Xi needs Putin.
While much of the discussion was behind closed doors, the centrality of Xi's peace proposal underscores his role not only as the stronger partner in Sino-Russo relations, but as an actor in a role heretofore played by the United States, which under Joe Biden's failing leadership has retracted from the already weak, Obama-esque "primus inter pares" position that all but conceded the end of American global leadership. Now, the same polite and orderly caretakers of American decline who presided over the fiasco in Afghanistan, yielded to Iran's nuclear ambitions, idly looked on as most of Latin America became a hostile realm of the global Left, surrendered more American sovereignty to dubious international institutions, and failed to deter Putin's aggression in Ukraine—all in the last two years—are standing aside as their more confident Chinese counterparts take the lead in pressing for a negotiated end to hostilities at the other end of Eurasia.
Xi's position only makes sense. China has no direct interest in Ukraine, whose battlefields are thousands of miles away and have virtually nothing to do with Chinese security or strategic aspirations. Beijing has taken no position on Russia's territorial claims and has consistently refused to commit itself to supporting Russian objectives, even though Russia is ostensibly an ally "without limits" and could try to claim far more than benevolent neutrality from its Chinese partners. Beijing has consistently opposed any use of nuclear weapons, which Putin has hinted at more than once. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has proclaimed himself "satisfied" with China's policy of "staying away" from the conflict and has his top foreign policy officials periodically consult with Beijing.
Astute observers believe that by holding back, Xi could claim a Bismarckian role as an "honest broker" in this and, potentially, in other regional conflicts—the part America often tried to play in a quest for global hegemony that its timid foreign policy elites no longer believe in. Xi aspired to exactly that on Tuesday, when he claimed to hold an "objective and fair" view of the conflict in Ukraine. Playing the major role in settling that conflict would enhance China's great power status without risk. The Russians are in no position to object to Xi's entreaties. Putin admitted as much during their meetings, claiming to be "jealous" of China's rapid growth and stating that the Chinese peace plan "can be taken as a basis for peaceful settlement in Ukraine." Xi has equally little to fear from Washington, which is on the defensive vis-à-vis Beijing in the Pacific and lacks the strength either to deter Putin from further aggression or to moderate Ukrainian conditions for a negotiated peace. For now, then, all eyes are on the East.
Post a Comment