Ukraine has had enough of China's 'neutrality,' Plus Italy pulls out of the Belt and Road Initiative -- China Boss News 12.08.23

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What happened

Last week the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blew up "the only serious railway connection between the Russian Federation and China," Politico said, citing a senior Ukrainian official.

Four explosions were detonated inside the Severomuysky tunnel of the Baikal-Amur (BAM) highway in Buryatia while a cargo train was passing through it, and another train was blown up in the same area following the first attack.

"Four carriages burned out, and two more were damaged by fire. According to preliminary data, aviation fuel on the second cargo train was spilled over an area of 150 square meters," news staff noted.

Ukraine's SBU would officially "neither confirm nor deny involvement" in the incident, but added that "death is the only prospect we can offer to the occupiers" who have "brought war, loss of life and violence to our land."

“Russian special services should get used to the fact that our people are everywhere. Even in distant Buryatia,” the Ukrainian official said.

As for China, the message - although unspoken - is equally direct.

The tunnel, 6,000 km east of Ukraine, deep inside Russian territory, is increasingly used by Chinese firms to get around Western sanctions.

"Over the first nine months of 2023, more than 128 million tons were transported via rail between the two countries. This signals a 51.5 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2022. To have a clearer picture, 120 million tons of goods were transported via rail for the whole of last year," according to a recent RailFreight.com report.

"[A]ll available data points to the fact that China is sending more trains to Russia and significantly less to other European destinations," to the point where "over 150,000 containers [were] stranded in Russia because empty ones [could not] be shipped back," it said.

Why it matters

Neutrality with Chinese characteristics

Of greater importance to Ukraine’s 43 million citizens, however, is that fact that the BAM rail is also used to ship Russia's military supplies. As Politico reported in July, "China secretly sends enough gear to Russia to equip an army."

''China, despite Beijing’s calls for peace, is pushing right up to a red line in delivering enough nonlethal, but militarily useful, equipment to Russia to have a material impact on President Vladimir Putin’s 17-month-old war on Ukraine. … These shipments point to a China-sized loophole in the West’s attempts to hobble Putin’s war machine," news staff said.

But aware that China's full-throttled support of Moscow would give Putin the upper-hand in attacks on Ukraine, Kyiv initially followed a policy of "cautious pragmatism" when dealing with Beijing.

Ukrainian officials also hoped China could be swayed, if not by Kyiv, then by the international community, to abandon purchases of Russian energy and supplies of key technologies that have, essentially, propped up the Russian economy amid Western sanctions.

But China's own diplomatic missteps have angered ordinary Ukrainians.

"Ukrainian officials have spent a lot of time trying to explain to a skeptical public why dialogue with China is in their country’s interests. In April, comments by China’s ambassador to France calling into question Ukraine’s borders sparked outrage in Kyiv. After Li’s visit, reports emerged that he had counseled European officials that Ukraine might have to trade some of its territory for peace. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba publicly refuted these, reassuring Ukrainians that the government would never compromise on the country’s borders. In a public opinion survey conducted in June, 34 percent of respondents saw China as definitely or rather hostile, a sharp increase from 9 percent before the full-scale invasion,” Maksym Skrypchenko, Carneigie Endowment fore International Peace researcher, said in July.

Now, nearly two years after Russia launched its land grab, it is readily apparent that Beijing is not turning away from its best friend in Moscow.

Earlier this year, Yurii Poita – at Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin and head of the Asia-Pacific Section at Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS) in Kyiv, told The Diplomat that "[t]he biggest contrast" in Kyiv's relations with Beijing since Russia's invasion were "the change in the perception."

"The expert environment and the media have become much more critical of China, illusions about the prospects for the development of relations with China have diminished, and discussions have begun about the need to recalibrate relations with China. This discussion gradually spread from the expert environment and the media to the parliament and the government," he said.

Fighting back

No one could call Ukraine's attack on Russia's BAM line that destroyed, reports say, large cargo trains carrying supplies to and from China, as well as the line, itself, in several places, random.

Ukrainian authorities have many times in the past emphasized their ability to strike Russia anywhere, and - on this occasion - they chose a main artery dominated by Chinese shipping.

And as the war drags into its 22nd month, it's become tougher for everyone to ignore China's support for Russia.

This week EU leaders are in Beijing to discuss how to improve strained relations.

According to Politico, European Council chief Charles Michel on Thursday put a "list"of Chinese firms suspected of "supplying Russia with dual-use goods" for its military on Xi Jinping's table.

"We have identified a list of companies which are suspected to play a role in circumventing our sanctions, and with the occasion ... during the summit, we agree that it's important to go more into the details. We sincerely hope that today we are heard, and then the appropriate action will be undertaken by China. We will also ... debrief our member state because the member states will have to decide what further action to be done," Michel told reporters after the summit.

But Ukraine, who has lost nearly 10,000 civilians and nearly half a million soldiers, cannot wait around for lengthy political debates, when China is the reason Russia can continue to lay waste inside its borders.

At China's recent so-called World Peace Forum, a yearly event launched in 2012, the "only guests talking about Ukraine were Russians," and "no Ukranians had been invited," Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.

Leonard, whose team spent the last year-and-a-half interviewing Chinese strategists about the country's relationship with Russia, said they see the war in Ukraine very differently from the West.

"Although there have been very critical voices — one scholar even claimed China has been a victim of a hybrid war waged by Russia, including attempts to manipulate its media and dupe its leaders into appearing more supportive than they want to be — the consensus is that the two countries are united by a shared vision of a post-Western world order," he said.

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