Xi’s trip to Moscow: The weird, the bad, and the ugly -- China Boss update 3.24.23
Update
What happened.
The weird
Xi’s visit in Moscow on Monday had barely begun when the Chinese leader declared "China was ready [to join Russia and] resolutely defend the UN-centric international system, [while] stand[ing] guard over the world order based on international law.” His statement was ridiculous to international observers, of course, especially coming just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin and his cold-blooded Children’s Rights minister for kidnapping Ukrainian children and trafficking them back to the “homeland” for adoptions.
Weirder still to see Putin fawn over the Chinese dictator, quickly telling Xi that “Russia envied China's economic development,” whilst the two posed as peacemakers and promoted a ceasefire that would, essentially, hand Russia large swathes of eastern Ukraine. Not that any of it was unexpected - as, ahead of his trip, western officials and analysts (and more than a few political cartoonists) had belabored their doubts in Xi’s dovish qualities with a caricature of Putin as the junior partner to Xi Dada who had other aims. Then there was that odd news coming out of Central African Republic where local rebels blamed the killing of nine Chinese workers on Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group right as Xi left for Moscow. China Boss is still unclear if the timing of the statement by French broadcaster RFI’s “unnamed sources” was a coincidence, or if war-chested Russian and Chinese propagandists were out-maneuvered in PR spin by a local band of predatory armed “patriots.”
But that’s how the trip began and it only got more interesting - or worse, depending on the perspective. That said, although Xi's meeting with Putin in Moscow (unsurprisingly) "failed to move the needle" on peace in Ukraine, there are a couple of major takeaways that reveal how China and Russia's relationship is changing.
Why it matters.
The bad
Xi gives tacit support for Putin’s land grab and war crimes
Despite recent attempts to portray Xi Jinping as a global statesman and peace mediator as Chinese media tried to do when he hosted the final signing of a rapprochement agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing a few weeks ago, the Chinese leader failed to live up to the hype in Moscow. Instead, Xi and Putin jointly called for a "ceasefire" in Ukraine under terms that were an absolute non-starter for Ukranians. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put it after the talks, according to CNN, Beijing and Moscow’s proposal "would 'simply freeze' the conflict, giving Russia time to 'prepare and come back again with their single wish, the wish of their leader - that is to occupy our country.'"
Worse, China and Russia’s ceasefire-peace gibberish could not obscure the fact that Chinese firms, almost certainly with the knowledge of Beijing, are crazy complicit in Putin’s unprovoked war. The New York Times last week reported that China "has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it invaded Ukraine," and maintains "a steady supply of new drones … that make their way to the front lines."
NYT:
Some experts note that the flow of Chinese drones should be considered in the same way as more deadly weapons. Even the meager $12 million in shipments “will move the needle for what is happening on the front line,” said Cole Rosentreter, chief executive of the Canadian drone maker Pegasus, who has advised Ukrainians on the use of drones during the war.
“We’ve returned to warfare at industrial scale; both sides are treating drones the same as artillery shells now, because whoever has the logistical base to outproduce the other has a clear advantage on the battlefield,” he added.
On Wednesday, as Xi was leaving Moscow, the Russian military "stepped up its missile and drone attacks against Ukraine," according to the Associated Press. Several residential areas were hit, "killing students and other civilians," news staff reported. A Telegram post written by Zelenskyy claimed that Russia was shelling the city of Zaporizhzhia “with bestial savagery.”
The ugly
China and Russia are deepening their alliance
Xi was greeted at the airport in Moscow on Monday with a full military brass band that would rival any ceremonial display put on for important heads of state, and, that evening, Putin is said to have “wooed him with a dinner of luxuries.” But the meeting’s motif had been set the week prior in two “synchronized opinion pieces” published in Chinese and Russian state media: Xi offered his meager assessment that “China’s ‘friendship’ with Russia [was] ‘growing day by day,’” while Putin crowed that Sino-Russia relations were at the “highest level” in history. By Tuesday, the two nations had signed fourteen bilateral investment deals in trade, tech, energy, and media communications - the latter will most likely include better coordination of anti-western propaganda campaigns and influence operations.
Yet, even before new Russian commitments to increase China’s oil supply were made last week, Russia had overtaken Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier in the first two months of this year, according to Reuters.
Reuters:
Western sanctions and a price cap on seaborne Russian crude following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have limited the buyer pool for Russian supply, leading it to trade at deep discounts to international benchmarks.
Independent Chinese refiners, many of them based in Shandong province, have been among the main beneficiaries of this shift in pricing power.
Put differently, as Ian Williams did in the Spectator, China is “already in effect bankrolling Putin’s war.”
Last week, Xi and Putin agreed to boost that support with new “multi-year economic cooperation”. A statement from the Kremlin, seen by CNBC, said Moscow and China had “compiled a package of 80 important and promising bilateral projects in various fields worth around $165 billion.”
Prominent on the list was increasing the use of “local” currency, Chinese state media said. The Kremlin was more explicit in stating that the yuan and ruble already account for two-thirds of trade deal payments between the two countries.
Other areas the agreement covered included: expanding bilateral trade, cooperating in energy and food security and developing rail and other cross-border logistics infrastructure.
The Chinese side, however, was mum on details, CNBC staff said.
Finally, China Boss’s summary of the highlights of Xi’s Moscow trip would be amiss if she failed to mention the Chairman’s parting words to his child-snatching “dear friend,” Vladimir Putin. In a separate Spectator piece, Ian Williams described them as “chilling.”
Williams, Spectator:
It was perhaps the most intriguing moment of their Moscow summit. As Xi Jinping left the Kremlin last night, he stood face to face with Vladimir Putin and told the Russian leader, ‘Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together’. The two men clasped hands, smiling. ‘I agree,’ Putin said, briefly bringing up his free hand to hold Xi’s arm. The Chinese leader then added, ‘Please take care, dear friend’.
The scene, so intimate, emanating from two, stiff old totalitarians - what was Xi referring to in his farewell and what did Putin think he meant by it?
In another compelling human piece for the New York Times, Li Yuan wrote that “the prospect of international isolation unnerves many people in China.” They are afraid that the country “has landed itself in the ‘wrong’ camp, just as it did after the Communist Party took over the country in 1949 and joined the Soviet bloc, only to have a falling-out, and then a border clash, with the Soviet Union,” she added.
With Mr. Xi’s visit, China has made it clear to the world which side it has chosen. It has also made it much easier for the United States to persuade American allies to join efforts in containing China.
“The fault line between the two camps is becoming increasingly sharper,” Hu Wei, a political scholar in Shanghai, said in an interview. “I have long said that if China cannot make a flexible choice in the Russia-Ukraine war, it will be further isolated.”
Immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Mr. Hu, in a commentary, criticized China’s position on the war. He predicted that the West would be more united, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would continue to expand and China could become an international pariah if it didn’t distance itself from Russia. His article was censored within China.
Watch on YouTube.
****
Have a great weekend.
