Delegate after delegate came up to the rostrum Monday at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly and condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an unjustified, barbarous act against a sovereign state. When it was China’s turn, Beijing’s U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, predictably took no side in the crisis, saying only that talks between Ukraine and Russia should continue.
“The Cold War has long ended,” Zhang said. “The cold war mentality based on confrontation must end. Nothing can be gained from stirring a new cold war.”
Zhang’s message was directed at Russia and the West, but someone should remind him to refresh his browser. A new cold war is on its way. And it could quickly spiral into a new hot war, another World War, if the international community doesn’t act decisively to prevent it. One of the most pivotal nations at the fulcrum of this crisis is China.
As the destruction and mounting civilian death toll in Ukraine continues, Ukrainian resolve to defend its homeland no matter the cost has held fast. The worst is yet to come, though. Satellite images of a Russian military convoy 40 miles long on its way to Kyiv suggest the hours and days ahead for the Ukrainian capital will be hellish, bloody and potentially cataclysmic.
On the sidelines has been China, which has measured its words and actions with sufficient ambiguity to firewall its true intentions. China’s reticence has been obvious ever since Russian tanks and troops rolled into Ukraine on Feb 24, and even before that terrible day. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, the Biden administration showed Beijing a raft of evidence of Russian troops amassing along the Ukrainian border, The New York Times reported. Biden’s ask of China? Convince Putin to stand down.
Not only did Beijing reject Washington’s request, it relayed to Moscow the intelligence the U.S. had on the troop buildup. China became Russia’s enabler, which is not so surprising given the tight bonds Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have mutuallynurtured for more than a decade. In the short term, Xi’s rebuff of Biden amounted to two autocratic comrades-in-arms sticking it to the United States and the West.
But long term, is that the path that Xi and Beijing really want to take?
That’s certainly what Putin craves. For the Kremlin, Xi may be the lifeline it needs to survive the massive broadside to the Russian economy that Western sanctions have delivered. Those sanctions include a freeze of hundreds of billions of dollars that Russia’s central bank have in financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe. The asset freeze has helped send the ruble into a tailspin, and prompted Russian authorities to shut down the country’s stock market for a second consecutive day Tuesday.
With the world’s second largest economy, China could help Russia weather the storm. But a new alliance forged between Russia and China would dramatically upend the world order, and yield exactly what Ambassador Zhang said China feared — a new cold war antithetical to China’s ultimate aim of global economic dominance.
China’s ascent is inexorably tied to the trajectory of the global economy. Beijing’s economic tethers extend to all corners of the world, particularly to the West. The European Union’s biggest trading partner in 2020 wasn’t the U.S. — it was China. Siding with Russia in a revamped world order threatens China’s ambitions in the long run. Unlike his unhinged counterpart in Moscow, Xi is coolheaded enough to know that.
The Biden administration’s previous attempts to get Beijing to dissuade Putin from his deadly gambit in Ukraine failed. The White House now must persuade Xi to not risk China’s global ascent by too closely linking itself with a reckless tyrant who’s tanking his own country’s economy even as he kills the innocent.
And it must convince the Chinese leader to not become Putin’s enabler, his guarantor toward a drastic global shift that once again pits East vs. West. The Cold War had the world living on the edge of nuclear war. It’s a horrible chapter we thought we could forget. China could acquiesce to Putin and expedite the Cold War’s return. Or it can help ensure it remains a memory, locked far away.
