2023-05-15 07:17:00
China is sending special envoys to warring parties such as Ukraine and Russia and to major European countries to engage in mediation diplomacy in earnest in the Ukraine war. There are still skeptics regarding China’s mediating role, which claims to be neutral but actually stands on Russia’s side, but there are also views that China is the only force that can bring Russia to the negotiating table.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Li Hui, special representative for Eurasia, will visit Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany and Russia from the 15th to communicate regarding the political resolution of the Ukraine crisis. This is a follow-up to a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month. On the 26th of last month, President Xi had his first phone call with President Zelensky since the outbreak of war in Ukraine and said that China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a responsible major country, would continue its efforts for an armistice and peace, and dispatched a special representative for Eurasia to Ukraine and elsewhere to communicate with all sides. He said he would communicate.
Speaking at a regular briefing on the 12th, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, “Since the Ukraine crisis, China has always maintained an objective and fair stance, actively advocating peace and promoting dialogue.” “The visit of the Chinese delegation to the relevant country sufficiently demonstrates that China is firmly on the side of peace,” he said.
After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine last year, China ostensibly expressed neutrality and took a wait-and-see attitude, but in February, marking the first year of the war, China announced its position on the political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis and began building an image as a mediator. China, which is close to Russia due to the protracted war, has been criticized, and relations with Europe have deteriorated further. This is in line with the trend in which China is making efforts to build a diplomatic image of a ‘great country’ in the international community, such as mediating the normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are enemies of China in the third term of President Xi’s presidency.
The international community’s view of China’s move is mixed. Since China did not condemn Russia’s invasion following the war in Ukraine, but instead showed a close relationship with Russia, there are still voices that doubt its sincerity. Alicia Bachuska, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) told CNBC, “It took 14 months for Xi to talk to President Zelensky, but during that time, China’s top leadership had regarding 20 high-level exchanges with Russian leadership. “There is a huge asymmetry in relations between China and Russia and between China and Ukraine,” she said.
On the other hand, there are also views that China needs to play a role in bringing Russia to the negotiating table. “China is perceived as too friendly to Russia to be truly ‘neutral’,” said Cheung Chen, a professor at the State University of New York. It has the ability to bring Russia to the negotiating table and influence Russia’s position in ending the conflict.”
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