As US President Joe Biden touched down in Ukraine to meet with his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, China’s top diplomat was traveling in the opposite direction, on his way to Russia.
Wang Yi — who was promoted as Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy adviser last month — is due to arrive in Moscow this week for the final stop of his eight-day Europe tour, a trip that brings into focus China’s attempted diplomatic balancing act since Russia tanks rolled into Ukraine a year ago.
The Kremlin has said it does not “rule out” a meeting between Wang and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. If they do meet, the images of Wang and Putin shaking hands inside the fortified Kremlin will be a stark juxtaposition to Biden’s open-air stroll with Zelensky through Kyiv amid air raid sirens.
The optics of the two trips — taking place just days before the one-year anniversary of the brutal war on Friday — underscores the sharpening of geopolitical fault lines between the world’s two superpowers.While relations between the US and China continue to plummet — most recently due to the fallout from a suspected Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace, China and Russia are as close as ever since their leaders declared a “no-limits” friendship a year ago — partly driven by their shared animosity toward the United States.
And as the US and its allies reaffirm their support for Ukraine and step up military aid, Beijing’s deepening partnership with Moscow has raised alarms in Western capitals — despite China’s public charm offensive in Europe to present itself as a negotiator of peace.
At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Wang addressed a room of European officials as “dear friends” and touted China’s commitment to peace, while apparently attempting to drive a wedge between Europe and the US.
“We do not add fuel to the fire, and we’re against reaping benefits from this crisis,” Wang said in a thinly veiled dig at the US, echoing the propaganda messaging that regularly made China’s nightly prime-time news program — that the US is intentionally prolonging the war to advance its own geopolitical interests and increase the profits of its arms manufacturers.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize. They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, nor the harm on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue,” Wang said.
He urged European officials to think about “what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe, what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy.”
Wang also announced Beijing’s plan to release its proposition on a “political settlement of the Ukraine crisis” around the first anniversary.
Want to read more? Here
