OPINION: My bet is that China’s President Xi Jinping will “do the unthinkable — defuse the Russia threat, before it is too late,” writes Stephen S. Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. —With war raging in Ukraine, China’s annual “Two Sessions” convey an image of a country in denial. As the Communist Party and its advisory body gather in Beijing this month, there has been little or no mention of a seismic disruption in the world order—an omission that is all the more glaring in view of China’s deep-rooted sense of its unique place in history.
China’s denial The wide-ranging statement on Sino-Russian cooperation spoke of a “friendship between the two States [that] has no limits.” It featured an almost breathless accounting of common interests, as well as commitments to addressing climate change, global health, economic cooperation, trade policy, and regional and geostrategic ambitions. The West was put on notice that it faced a powerful combination as a new adversary in the East.
Yet China can’t have it both ways. There is no way it can stay the course, as Li suggests, while adhering to the partnership agreement with Russia announced by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Yet in the span of just one month, Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine has turned this concept on its head. If China remains committed to its new partnership with Russia, it faces guilt by association. Just as Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades, the same fate awaits China if it deepens its new partnership.
But, at the National People’s Congress on March 7, Wang dug in his heels, insisting that “China and Russia will…steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership.” It is as if Putin knew full well when he went to Beijing in early February that he was setting a trap for China.He has the greatest leverage of any world leader to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
But history, and the current events that shape it, have an uncanny knack of shifting the leadership calculus in any country. That is true not only in democracies like the U.S. but also in autocracies like Russia and China.
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