What are China's interests in Ukraine?

Analysing China’s duplicitous stance on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

This is the first of a new format of articles on Observing China which will analyse the domestic and foreign policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This first Investigator is by Charles Parton OBE, Chief Advisor to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy. It focuses on why the PRC’s position on Ukraine should be the touchstone of British-Chinese relations.

The Investigator | No. 01/2024

This image was generated by Artifical Intelligence

Passengers on the London underground at Waterloo station are admonished to ‘mind the gap’. It is a warning apposite also to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rhetoric and reality. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exemplifies that gap. Its suggestions for peace, the ‘Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’, issued a full year after the invasion, and its ‘Common Understandings Between China and Brazil on Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’ of 23rd May 2024, which largely cover the same points (see: Box 1), stand in contrast to CCP action – and also inaction.

Box 1: Summary of the CCP’s 24 February 2023 ‘Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’ (the numbers in squared brackets represent the numbering in the PRC/Brazil proposals):

• Respect the sovereignty of all countries. Uphold the basic norms governing international relations.

• Abandon Cold War mentality. Take seriously the legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly.

• Cease hostilities.[1]

• Resume peace talks. Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.[2]

• Resolve the humanitarian crisis. Humanitarian issues should not be politicised.[3]

• Protect civilians and prisoners of war (POWs). Parties to the conflict should strictly abide by international humanitarian law, avoid attacking civilians or civilian facilities [3]

• Keep nuclear power plants safe.[5]

• Reduce strategic risks. Nuclear weapons must not be used. Nuclear proliferation must be prevented. No research, development and use of chemical and biological weapons.[4]

• Facilitate grain exports. Implement the Black Sea Grain Initiative.[6]

• Stop unilateral sanctions and “long- arm jurisdiction”.

• Keep industrial and supply chains stable.[6]

• Promote post-conflict reconstruction. China stands ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role.

The CCP’s principles and Ukraine

The ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence’ remain the declared backbone of CCP international relations ever since Zhou Enlai, then Premier of the PRC, first raised them in 1953. The first calls for ‘Respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity’. Russia has taken high explosive to the Five Principles, yet the CCP has stood by its ‘no-limits friendship’. As Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, said in his 22nd October 2024 meeting with Vladimir Putin, President of Russia: ‘They have continuously deepened and expanded comprehensive strategic cooperation…The deep friendship between China and Russia will not change.’ Both countries’ military leaders have been equally effusive. Earlier Zhang Youxia, Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission, had described relations as having ‘reached an all-time high’ and called for the deepening and expansion of relations between the respective armed forces, a point also made by Dong Jun, Defence Minister of the PRC.

It is important to grasp how unimportant principles are to the CCP when they conflict with its interests, something for which no one inside the PRC dare criticise or hold Xi to account. In 2013, Xi himself signed a friendship treaty with Viktor Yanukovych, then President of Ukraine. Three clauses stand out:

• Article 5. The Chinese side supports the efforts of the policies of the Ukrainian side to protect the unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine and related questions.

• Article 6. Neither contracting party shall take actions that damage the sovereignty, security, or territorial integrity of the other (contracting party). Neither contracting party shall permit third countries to use their sovereign territory to damage the sovereignty, sector, or territorial integrity of the other (contracting party).

• Article 7. Once complicated situations emerge internationally or regionally that threaten the peace, sovereignty, unity, or territorial integrity of either contracting party, the contracting parties shall immediately begin discussions to develop countermeasures.

Support, action, prevention, discussion of countermeasures? Nothing meaningful happened. Only 14 months after the invasion did Xi speak to Zelenskyy for the first time. Meanwhile the CCP attempts to put some of the blame on the free world for trying to advance the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) reach into Ukraine and thereby threaten Russia. It further widens the gap between words and actions by helping the Russians with resources and components to keep its weapons production running and improving.

Did Putin tell Xi of his intention to invade?

According to ‘senior Biden administration officials and a European official’, a ‘Western intelligence report’ said that ‘senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing [i.e., 20th February 2022]’. Confirmed or not, the likelihood is indeed that Putin did inform Xi of his intention to invade, if not of the exact date. It would have been a monumental undermining of the friendship and cooperation outlined in the Joint Statements of 28th June 2021 and 4th February 2022 for Putin to have kept his close ally in the dark. The absorption of Ukraine – did Putin assure Xi that the ‘war would be over by Easter’? – would have had Xi’s support because it aligned with CCP interests. Xi will have noted that American, British and European reactions to the 2014 seizure of Crimea were more bark than bite.

What are the CCP’s interests in Ukraine?

The CCP does have a geopolitical interest in maintaining its stance and propaganda on the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence’, but that is never going to trump interests with a more practical relevance to the party’s performance in, and thereby hold on, power. Those interests centre on:

• Ensuring that NATO and the European Union (EU) are not strengthened by the accession of Ukraine. Although not directly threatened by NATO, the CCP perceives it to be contemplating a more active role in the Indo-Pacific region. As for the EU, in the ideological struggle between the CCP and ‘America and the western side’ [‘美西方’ – a formulation now appearing more often], the party would prefer a Ukraine which is aligned to its own world view.

• Food security. The CCP is keen to reduce grain imports from the US and its allies. In 2021, Ukraine supplied 29% of the PRC’s corn. Its exports of other agricultural produce, sunflower, sunflower meal, barley, maize and wheat are globally significant and high percentages go to the PRC. In 2013, the PRC bought 100,000 hectares of land for 50 years, with the intention that this would rise to three million hectares.

• Iron ore and other minerals. Ukraine has iron ore reserves of around 30 billion tonnes. In 2021, exports to the PRC amounted to 18.5 million tonnes. While this represented only 1.65% of Chinese imports, the CCP has long desired to reduce its reliance upon Australia for supplies of iron ore. Ukraine also has large deposits of uranium, titanium, manganese, and mercury.

• Infrastructure construction. Prior to the war, the PRC stood to benefit from contracts for the construction of the means of exporting minerals and grain, such as railways and ports. Postwar construction contracts are also likely to come the way of Chinese companies.

However, the CCP has always been against the use of nuclear weapons – implicitly by Russia given that Ukraine gave up various nuclear weapons components under the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. That is clear in its ‘peace proposals’ and elsewhere.

What the CCP wants in Ukraine

‘A speedy resolution’ would be the first answer. The longer the war drags on, the more delayed are the benefits above, the more the CCP’s self-declared neutral stance looks threadbare, and the more the involvement of North Korea or unforeseen events could work against its interests.

The CCP would prefer that Russia win (hence its help in supplying components for Russia’s military industrial output). But as long as a stand-off or Ukrainian victory did not lead to the fall of Putin’s regime and a realignment of Russia with the Euro-Atlantic order, the CCP could live with other outcomes. It would rely on its economic heft to secure contracts for reconstruction – perhaps benefiting from confiscated Russian assets, if they are so used – and it would gear up United Front work to mend fences with the Kyiv government and gradually to move it away from a Euro-Atlantic alignment.

American, British and European interests

Most obviously, it is important for the Euro-Atlantic democracies that Russia loses. The PRC is supplying considerable help. Thus, the first imperative is to devote resources and imagination to identifying the companies, financial backers and methods through which the CCP is aiding the Russian war machine. Euro-Atlantic governments are presumably doing this already, but it needs to be ramped up and their leaders need to be adamantine in following through with sanctions and other ways of inflicting losses on Chinese offenders. The likely Chinese response in turn requires leaders to understand that the CCP already sees itself in a long term ideological and existential struggle of systems. It says so, repeatedly, in internal documents and speeches. Decry though it might those who talk of a ‘new cold war’, the CCP itself is in no doubt that it has already started.

The CCP is winning the propaganda war on Ukraine, particularly in what it refers to as the ‘Global South’. Euro-Atlantic governments need to research and publicise Chinese aims, its hypocrisy, the shallowness of its ‘peace proposals’ and its self-serving actions.

The US, United Kingdom (UK) and European countries cannot dictate to Ukraine how to go about postwar reconstruction, but they do need to consider in advance how they can prevent the PRC from benefiting financially, given the CCP’s complicity in the destruction in Ukraine.

The big unknown at present is how Donald Trump, President-elect of the US, will act when he becomes president in January. Contradictory noises emanating from Washington make it impossible to be certain.

These may not be welcome messages to the UK’s new government as it tries to redefine British-Chinese relations, but it needs to disregard CCP rhetoric and to be clear about what the party says to itself, about what it really thinks, and how it tends to act. Britain needs also to be clear that the CCP’s trade and investment ‘sticks and carrots’ are neither as threatening nor juicy as some suppose.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Advisor to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy.

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