Inside China’s Peace Plan for Ukraine

Alexander Gabuev
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
March 1, 2023

China’s vague plan is aimed not at actually ending the war, but at
impressing the developing world and rebutting accusations that
Beijing has become a silent accomplice to Moscow.

A year into the war in Ukraine, China has finally elaborated its
stance on the conflict, releasing a twelve-point document
proposing a framework for a political settlement. The document is
a laundry list of familiar Chinese talking points about the war.
It repeats Beijing’s support for the UN Charter and the territorial
integrity of states, but at the same time condemns unilateral
sanctions, and criticizes the expansion of U.S.-led military
alliances.

Those who expected a roadmap to peace in Ukraine will surely be

disappointed. Yet the authors of the Chinese position paper have
no such ambition, and certainly do not intend for Beijing to
become deeply embroiled in the conflict. The document is sooner a
rebuttal to Western allegations that China has been a silent
accomplice to Russia, and an attempt to bolster its image as a
responsible world power in the eyes of developing countries.

Expectations around the paper were raised by Wang Yi, until

recently China’s foreign minister and now the Politburo’s point
man on foreign policy, who had announced the proposal at the
Munich Security Conference. But the released document
predictably lacked specifics about burning issues such as resolving
the territorial dispute between Kyiv and Moscow or security
guarantees for Ukraine. Moreover, the language of the document
does not bind anyone to anything, Beijing included. This is a
feature, not a bug, of the Chinese position on the war in Ukraine.

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine took China by surprise. As in
2014, when the conflict in Ukraine began (and in 2008 during
Russia’s war against Georgia), China staked out a position so
careful as to be ambiguous. On the one hand, Beijing immediately
came out in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity and the war’s swift resolution. On the other, Chinese
diplomats echoed the joint declaration signed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on
February 4, 2022, in which the Ukraine crisis was blamed on
NATO expansion and the West’s disregard for Russia’s demands
on European security. At the same time, as before, China
condemned Western sanctions against Russia while strictly
observing them.

This vagueness reflects China’s varied and complex interests.

Beijing considers itself a champion of the principle of territorial
integrity and its primacy over the right to self-determination, being
sensitive to not only the issue of Taiwan, but also that of separatist
movements within its own borders.

Still, its strategic relations with Russia are also of great significance
given the two countries’ long and now undisputed border, their
complementary economies, and Russia’s role as a source of
commodities and some advanced weapons (like Su-35 fighter jets
and S-400 surface-to-air missiles) for China. For Beijing, a
scenario in which Russia’s comprehensive defeat in Ukraine
precipitates Putin’s ouster and the installation of a pro-Western
government in Russia is a strategic nightmare that China is
prepared to help the Kremlin avoid.

At the same time, relations with the West are crucial for China’s
economic prosperity and technological advancement. Beijing is
under no illusion that they will improve in the foreseeable future
amid intensifying competition with the United States. But nor is it
keen to accelerate its inevitable break with the United States and
its allies and thereby lose access to Western technology, markets,
and finance. All of this means China cannot unconditionally
support Russia in its war with Ukraine.

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This posture has enabled China to become one of the war’s
principal beneficiaries, even if unintentionally. The conflict has
diverted some U.S. resources away from the Indo-Pacific and
consumed much of the bandwidth of the Biden administration that
would otherwise have been focused on containing China.

It is also to China’s advantage that Russia has been weakened,

isolated, and conclusively reduced to the status of Beijing’s junior
partner: a trend that existed before 2014, but was massively
accelerated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. For now, Russia is
selling China natural resources at a discounted rate and
encouraging Chinese companies to fill the vacuum created by
Western firms’ exit from Russia. Yet in the future, Beijing hopes,
Russia might gradually agree to Chinese terms in any and all areas
of cooperation.

Still, remaining on the fence—even one as wide as the Great Wall—

is becoming increasingly difficult for Beijing. China has come
under intensifying criticism in relation to the war, including from
Europe, whose growing alignment with the U.S.-led transatlantic
coalition is extremely worrying for Beijing. It has thus set out in
search of a convincing rebuttal to the West’s criticism, as well as of
a narrative with which to explain its position to the developing
countries it has worked so hard to court.

Hence the development of its position paper on Ukraine, the

release of which was accompanied by a diplomatic offensive. In
February 2023, Wang visited France and Italy and appeared at the
Munich Security Conference, where he met with U.S. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro
Kuleba. He then visited Hungary and finally Russia, where he was
received by Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Putin himself. Only after this
whirlwind tour of Europe, the itinerary of which was designed to
give the impression of shuttle diplomacy, did Beijing publish the
document.

Yet Wang’s travels were about much more than discussing the
position paper: the release of a compilation of Beijing’s talking

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points didn’t require an expensive voyage by China’s top diplomat.
He sought to persuade Europe that it should not blindly pursue
Washington’s anti-China policy. And in Moscow, Wang engaged
key figures on major questions such as military cooperation, gas
pipeline deals, the yuanization of the Russian economy, Russia’s
access to technology imports from China, and Xi’s planned visit to
Moscow.
Beijing understands that there is no serious demand in Moscow,
Kyiv, or Washington for a peace plan or other compromise that
would put an end to the fighting—at least at this point in time,
when all sides are ready to give war a chance. Chinese leaders
expect that the war will go on for some time. Their proposal, then,
has less to do with actually ending the war and more to do with
maintaining China’s international reputation and undermining
that of the West.

With its ambiguity and, indeed, uselessness, the risk of anyone

seizing on the paper and demanding that China act to make it
reality is negligible. The international reaction to the plan met
China’s expectations (and, most likely, was part of the initial
design).

Moscow issued cautious praise for the document. "Any attempt to

produce a plan that would put the conflict on a peace track
deserves attention. We are carefully considering the plan of our
Chinese friends," said Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

For their part, Kyiv and the West rejected the Chinese proposal
outright. "I've seen nothing in the plan that would indicate that
there is something that would be beneficial to anyone other than
Russia if the Chinese plan were followed,” U.S. President Joe
Biden told ABC News.
These reactions suit Beijing entirely, giving it ammunition for the
next time it is accused of quietly abetting Putin’s aggression. With
respect to the developing world, it allows China to present itself as
the only permanent member of the UN Security Council working
toward peace: Russia has invaded Ukraine, the U.S., UK and
France are providing weapons to a party of war, and Beijing alone
has not only developed a peace proposal, but almost convinced the

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Kremlin to start talks. If the diplomatic effort has collapsed before
it even started, the world has only the West to blame. When urged
to force Putin to the table in future, Beijing may demand that the
West instead press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to
accept its plan.

Certainly, it will not be easy for Beijing to claim the mantle of

peacemaker. Already, the United States and its allies have
publicly accused the Chinese leadership of discussing potential
weapons deliveries to Russia. Recent disclosures in Western media
show that not only has China bought oil and gas from Russia,
thereby filling Putin’s war chest, it has also continued to supply it
with arms components and even contemplated providing it with
armed drones and other weapons. Such calculated
disclosures suggest that for Beijing, the title of peacemaker will not
come without a fight, even as its leaders do their best to stay out of
a bigger, bloodier one in Ukraine.