China at Jeddah peace talks was self-promotion and Putin knows it, Plus Beijing running out of options on economy & PLA's water cannon makes new waves in SCS -- China Boss News 8.11.23
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What happened.
“As diplomats from over 40 nations floated appeals for peace at a Saudi-sponsored conference in Jeddah, Russian drones and missiles battered targets across Ukraine — including an aerial guided bomb that slammed into a blood transfusion center in the eastern city of Kupiansk,” Nicholas Vinocur at Politico reported last week.
Although many countries eagerly participated in the Jeddah peace talks, Russia had not been invited. Its deputy foreign minister called the event "futile" and "doomed to failure,” as the Russian military bombed the hell out of Ukrainian targets.
In stark contrast, China’s rsvp was highly coveted. Beijing had declined the invitation to participate in last year's Copenhagen talks, and a senior European official told reporters that “[m]ost of the participants last time around regretted” it.
Confirmation that Beijing would send its envoy on Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, was heralded as a political coup for Kiev who, after the conference, called attention to the fact that “‘China did not object’” when participants “agreed that any peace treaty to end Russia’s war against Ukraine” required “respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the U.N. Charter.”
One analyst said Ukraine had “hopes” of China's endorsement for its peace plan, while Vinocur and others framed Beijing’s willingness to put in face time during talks as “a prize for the Jeddah huddle” on the understanding that “Moscow needs its big brother, Beijing, for everything from drones to helmets and bulletproof vests to a semblance of international support for its aggression.”
But few took a closer look at why China changed its “regrets” to “yes” this year, preferring, instead, to detect “a hint of static in Moscow and Beijing’s ‘no limits’ friendship” - one that, somehow, sparked again when PRC “diplomats leaned in to the event” and “backed the idea of a third peace gathering.”
If only the affairs of the world’s most consequential Marxist-Leninist state could be so simple. Unfortunately, there’s more to Beijing’s position - and positioning - here, as there so often is.
Why it matters.
China’s Global Security Initiative
Under Xi Jinping, a more powerful and assertive China has tried to etch its leadership on certain parts of the globe, especially those in development. But in April 2022, Chinese envoys were given a new mission when, at the Boao Forum Asia conference in China, their leader announced his “Global Security Initiative” (GSI), which aims to promote China as a global power, not simply a regional one.
According to Michael Schuman, Jonathan Fulton, and Tuvia Gering at the Atlantic Council, the GSI is a “manifesto” that has become “Xi’s first attempt to present a more comprehensive vision of a new world order and formulate the ideological backbone for a global governance system that elevates Chinese influence at the expense of American power.”
Coupled with its unimaginatively named “twin” - the Global Development Initiative (GDI) - Xi has given his governance model a new look and better branding.
Atlantic Council:
But just as the GSI aims to guide discourse on global governance, the GDI’s goal is to usurp the international dialogue on the global development agenda, place it under Chinese tutelage, and infuse it with (supposed) Chinese principles. The GDI has gained traction in the development sphere and within the UN system.
China’s Ukraine "peace plan" released in February brimmed with GSI doctrine. In March, chief diplomat Wang Yi used Beijing’s hosting of Saudi-Iran detente talks as a prime occasion to hawk it.
Attending last year’s talks in NATO-member Denmark would have been incompatible with Xi’s new GSI principles, but joining a similar gathering of global peacemakers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lends considerable heft to them.
Exploiting US-Saudi tensions
For Saudi Arabia, who "played a 'very active role' in the Copenhagen meeting," hosting the peace talks was a chance "to revamp its image in the wake of the Khashoggi murder, which took place at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul” in 2018, Politico said.
The CIA has since concluded that the well-known Saudi journalist was assassinated at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But that shocking revelation doesn’t seem to have fazed Xi - who ended “more than two years of self-imposed in-person diplomatic isolation” last December to visit the monarch in his homeland, according to Politico’s Phelim Kine.
“The visit not only affirms China’s growing global influence, but it lets MBS signal to the Biden administration that the U.S. has a serious rival as Riyadh’s superpower patron of choice,” Kine said.
When all was said and done, China and Saudi Arabia had signed more than 40 deals in technology, energy and climate sectors, as well as a Strategic Partnership. But that was just a taste of things to come, Saudi officials said at the June opening of a two-day Arab-China Business Conference in Riyadh.
Deals announced during the forum included pacts for Chinese companies to invest in copper mining and renewable energy in the kingdom, as well as a $5.6 billion agreement between the Saudi investment ministry and a Chinese electric vehicle company to create a joint venture for research, manufacturing and sales.
Among the Chinese companies invited were several that have landed on American government blacklists for allegations that their activities contribute to the surveillance of Chinese ethnic minorities — limiting their ability to do business with American firms.
CC Putin nothing’s changed
As recently as last month, China gathered another group of “peacemakers” in Beijing at the World Peace Forum - an annual event that began in 2012.
At those talks, some observers “were surprised to find Ukraine had instead been relegated to the forum’s marginalia, and were disappointed that the only guests talking about Ukraine were Russians,” said Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition to attending the WPF, we spent the last 18 months conducting dozens of interviews with Chinese thinkers and strategists from top universities, think tanks and party-affiliated organizations, trying to understand the country’s thinking on the war in Ukraine. And what we found is that although there’s lively debate on the matter — more than one would perhaps expect — the Chinese are thinking about it very differently from the West.
Yes, there is that possibility. But at least one Western observer, however, is clear on Beijing’s mindset.
On LinkedIn, Berlin-based journalist and writer Michael Radunski dismissed positive spins on China’s participation at the Jeddah conference. “It's about its international reputation, its interests in the Middle East and about pushing back US influence,” he said.
The day after China huddled tight and sang Kumbaya with hopeful doves in a country where torture is frequently used as punishment, executions are on the rise, women are widely discriminated against, and an insecure crown prince can order the assassination of a world-famous journalist abroad, China’s foreign minister rang his Russian counterpart.
“On the Ukraine crisis, China will uphold an independent and impartial position, sound an objective and rational voice, actively promote peace talks, and strive to seek a political solution on any international multilateral occasion,” Wang Yi said, according to a readout of the call.
That reassuring statement was darn near identical, in language, to a July 2022 MOFA communiqué released just after Wang met Lavrov on the sidelines of the G20 Bali summit, some four and a half months into Russia’s unprovoked invasion.
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