China’s Ukraine dilemma: Broker peace or boost Putin?

On the first anniversary this week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, attention has been focused on dueling speeches by two leaders deeply invested in its outcome, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden.

But the emergence of a third voice could turn out to matter even more – that of China, Mr. Putin’s main ally and the United States’ true superpower rival.

After 12 months spent largely on the sidelines, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has in recent days begun to signal his intention to take a more active role. He is reportedly planning a visit to Moscow in the coming months.

How Mr. Xi chooses to approach the war in Ukraine will impact more than the conflict itself. It could alter the direction of world politics once it is over.

On the diplomatic front, Mr. Xi is due to deliver a “peace speech” on Friday, one year to the day after Russia’s tanks, armor, and troops poured across the border into Ukraine.

But the Chinese leader faces a fundamental choice, underscored this week when U.S. officials revealed intelligence reports that he is considering providing arms and munitions to Mr. Putin.

Will Beijing seek to position itself as the key player in an eventual negotiated settlement? Or will it become Russia’s indispensable military ally in trying to turn the tide of the war?

The prism through which Mr. Xi will make that call is clear: his own nation’s interests, and in particular his core vision of a rising 21st-century China displacing the U.S. and its allies from their post-World War II position of dominance.

But it is an especially difficult choice because of the seismic changes in world politics caused by Mr. Putin’s so-far unsuccessful campaign to take over Ukraine.

Those changes, alongside pandemic pressures at home, explain Mr. Xi’s uncharacteristic political hibernation over the past year, offering occasional rhetorical succor to his beleaguered ally but otherwise choosing to stay out of the fray.

When Mr. Xi’s top foreign policy representative, Wang Yi, visited Europe last week, the envoy was left in no doubt about the geopolitical fallout from the war.

Mr. Xi has long assigned Europe a central role in his project to expand his nation’s global clout. The 27-nation European Union is Beijing’s largest trade partner and, with the U.S., has been key to China’s rise.

Until February last year, Mr. Xi envisaged European countries inexorably asserting more autonomy from Washington, potentially helping to insulate China from a worsening of its own U.S. ties.

But the war has revived a trans-Atlantic sense of common values and common cause.

Foreign Minister Wang arrived at the annual Munich Security Conference calling for a return to economic business as usual with Europe, and urging Europeans to distance themselves from what he suggested was self-interested U.S. hawkishness on Ukraine. He was met with a collective cold shoulder and a stern warning not to ship arms to Russia.

In a meeting with the Chinese envoy, Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, said that providing military support to Mr. Putin would be “a red line in our relationship.”

Mr. Xi now faces the task of defining his country’s relationship with Russia.

Twelve months ago, that must have seemed straightforward. In a 5,000-word joint statement during Mr. Putin’s visit to China for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the two leaders pledged a friendship “without limits” and mapped out a shared vision of a world order in which America was just one major country among others.

They criticized what they portrayed as a pretentious Western notion of “democracy” that trampled on other countries’ sovereignty, and denounced American “military blocs” as a threat to other nations’ security.

But since the war broke out, and as it turned against the Russians, Mr. Xi and other Chinese officials have rarely gone beyond echoing the overall Kremlin narrative, implying that NATO’s expansion plans made the invasion an act of Russian self-defense.

Mr. Xi’s conundrum now is that he still values the political underpinning of his relationship with Russia: the two sprawling neighbors share a common interest in constraining Washington’s power and influence. Mr. Wang, who visited Moscow after his European mission, unequivocally reaffirmed the alliance, portraying it as rock-solid.

Yet the Chinese leader also knows that providing Mr. Putin with weaponry would likely be fatal to prospects of reversing the downward spiral in relations with Washington and cause a major rift with European countries as well. Beijing would likely face added Western sanctions and find itself painfully isolated from its major markets.

Mr. Xi has been weighing his options for months, doubtless hoping he could avoid making a clear decision so heavily laden with consequences.

That’s where the “peace speech” comes in. It is very unlikely to find much traction in the short run, especially with Russia now poised to mount its largest military operation in Ukraine since the invasion.

But it is a signal that finding a way to end the war that Mr. Putin began is not only in Ukraine’s interest, or that of America and its allies.

It’s in China’s as well.