New Balance: China’s Next Step
Yixu Zhou, Online, Staff Writer
November 11th, 2022
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, China has imposed harsh public health rules. For the most part, China has been opaque and non-cooperative on the diplomatic front. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other key Chinese officials have largely refrained from overseas visits or face-to-face international meetings since the start of the pandemic. In September 2022, President Xi Jinping made his first trip abroad since the outbreak, indicating a change in China's approach to international affairs (1). The dialogue between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Xi at the recent summit in Uzbekistan also demonstrated the gradual change from relatively positive, to ambivalent Chinese support for Russia. Concerns about economic sanctions and energy issues have become major factors in Xi's wavering support (2).
China's support for Russia depends to a large extent on two factors. Driven by geopolitical pressures, China views Putin's Russia to act as a magnet for U.S. attention in the global political landscape[VJ1] . It is more in China's interest to have the U.S. and NATO focus most of their attention on the quagmire in Ukraine. The more the U.S. focuses on European affairs, the less external political pressure China will experience. The outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war provides China with a large political and economic buffer. China can use this time being the secondary focus of the West to calibrate its strategy towards Taiwan and continue its internal economic recovery. To achieve this, it is essential for China to refrain from fully overt political support for either the U.S. or Russia. In addition, China's concern about the Western economic blockade is another factor that has prevented China from truly expressing open support for Russia. China's economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and social stability and the foundations of Chinese governance have been shaken after massive job losses and business closures. At the same time, China needs energy imports against the backdrop of a global recession and soaring energy prices. The United States and Russia are China's most important trade partners in the economic and energy fields, respectively. In this complex situation, any overt political statements are not in China's own economic or national security interests.
Following Xi's return, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the US focused on the vision of rebuilding economic cooperation ties. Both Yi and Blinken have avoided making joint statements on sensitive international political topics, such as the Russia-Ukraine war (3). This move by China shows that it is straying from changing (or has already achieved) its "closed-door" attitude that it took during the pandemic. Draconian public health policies have led to the withdrawal of large amounts of foreign investments from China. The essential factor is whether China, as an export-oriented economy, can withstand the political instability that would result from massive worker unemployment and economic collapse as the world economy declines. Although, at the 20th Congress, President Xi Jinping has stated his determination to implement a "zero-COVID policy", he has also mentioned his vision for economic redevelopment. The "zero-COVID policy" is inherently contradictory to economic reconstruction and development. China may continue to adhere to its characteristic pandemic mitigation policies in the years to come, but as is often said, "Don't watch what they say, watch what they do." The economy is fundamental to the country's competitiveness. If China wants to be highly competitive under a more complex world in the future, economics is the most important thing to be considered. President Xi Jinping has said that China will not give up the option of reunification with Taiwan by force, which means that building up military power will also be a priority in the coming years. Of course, China’s military expansion will also need to be backed up by the country's economic power (4). The slogan "common prosperity" also foreshadows China's ambitious economic development goals after the 20th National Congress. With China's extreme dependence on other countries, the closure brought about by the continued high-handed epidemic policy will not have any positive effect on the economy. Based on practical and political needs, the Chinese government has to change its domestic and foreign policy.
The Russo-Ukrainian war has given China a political space and has allowed China to make the political and economic choices that best serves its interests, namely, to remain relatively neutral. China's recent behaviour in the diplomatic arena has also demonstrated its desire to establish enhanced cooperation with both Russia and the United States in the energy and economic file. The act of profiting from both sides would undoubtedly be difficult to achieve in a period of peaceful development. But in the context of the global economic recession and the Russo-Ukrainian war, this option is permissible for China on the basis of a desirable economic and political balance between two world powers. What can be predicted is that China's relations with the US will gradually become more peaceful as the economy becomes the core foundation of China's development again, and China can also obtain the necessary cheap energy from Russia. How long such a new balance in China's favour will last depends on when the Russo-Ukrainian war ends. When the war is over, the world will return its attention to Taiwan’s issues, and China will be at the centre of the conflict.
Sources:
(3)https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/wshd_665389/202209/t20220924_10771042.html
(4)https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/xis-work-report-to-the-20th-party-congress-5-takeaways/