“Beijing has repeatedly formulated its position on the Ukrainian crisis,” says Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Alexey Maslov. – In the statements of both Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the idea was expressed that any conflict should be resolved in an absolutely peaceful way. That is, Beijing has never officially spoken out in support of the military part of the Russian operation and all the time talks about the need for a peaceful resolution.
Moreover, at the session of the National People’s Congress of China (NPC), which closed a few days ago in Beijing, Xi Jinping spoke about the responsibility of all peoples for the collapse of world trade – something on which China is heavily dependent.
But at the same time, Beijing is rather harshly using this situation to retaliate against the United States. Firstly, China demanded that Washington publish a list of all American laboratories where biological weapons are being developed (and, apparently, including in Ukraine) – because the Americans blamed China for this. And secondly, anti-American rhetoric has noticeably increased in China. Moreover, both official articles and even Chinese bloggers, describing the events in Ukraine, say that the United States is behind all this. All publications on the Ukrainian conflict are connected with accusations against the United States that they stimulated this situation, that they tried to take away the independence of the country, and so on.
Thus, now China is solving its problems. First of all, the task of responding to America. Because the Chinese are extremely offended by the fact that the United States for at least the past two and a half years has not only criticized China very harshly, but also restricted it on all world trade.
If we talk about China’s position in relation to Russia, then, of course, we understand that now Beijing will not speak in any obvious way in favor of Russian policy on Ukraine. But he won’t speak out against it either. That is, China will be sure to remain silent. Because for him Russia is a strategic ally in terms of confronting the United States.
Plus, we must understand that, on the one hand, the Chinese are technically ready to supply us with a range of products (for example, high-tech products, household appliances, consumer electronics, cars, car parts, textiles, etc.). But on the other hand, it should be borne in mind that today China will not bring down its mass of commodities on Russia until the ruble stabilizes. And China will not allocate serious loans until there is clarity with the Russian internal situation.
In addition, many goods are contracted – if they come in small batches, they can be delivered, but large batches will be reassembled and Chinese production capacities will need to be expanded for Russia. There may also be issues with payment for goods already delivered from Russia, because many contracts were concluded according to the old ruble-dollar-yuan ratio, now the ratio is different. So China is taking a break.
But the most important thing we are interested in is not only the purchase of some Chinese goods, the problem is to create high-tech joint ventures with China on Russian territory. That is, not to buy, roughly speaking, Chinese machines or printed circuit boards, but to create joint production. Moreover, our factories near Zelenograd, near Tula, near Kaluga are, in principle, ready to accept such enterprises, but for a long time this whole thing was in a situation of eternal negotiations and good declarations.
Summing up, we must be aware that China is obviously not taking an anti-Russian position, but very carefully speaking out on political issues.
– That is, you can’t really count on the fact that China will provide a strong shoulder to help Russia cope with the problems arising from sanctions?
– Now it is not necessary. But China will not interfere. The main issue now is the creation of a Russian-Chinese unified settlement system. And many Russian banks have already joined this system, but so far we do not see that it is actively working. Plus, China, most likely, will not object to the accession of Russian banks to the UnionPay system and the creation of co-branded Mir and UnionPay cards. But UnionPay is not accepted for all electronic payments, but rather for personal purchases. Therefore, some issues related to the withdrawal of Visa and Mastercard will be resolved, but not all.
Ahead of a March 14 meeting in Rome between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi, the US politician made unequivocal threats to the media about the serious consequences China risks if it helps Russia circumvent sanctions. What “consequences” are we talking about?
– All the consequences that can be discussed are the consequences not only for China alone, but for all world trade at least. Including for the USA. Most likely, we will talk about raising tariff rates for the supply of goods from China. The United States will show that the American market is more capacious than the Russian one, and there is no need to switch to it.
Last year, China traded almost $750 billion with the US and $146 billion with Russia. In addition, we can talk about restricting the Chinese’ access to American technologies, blocking a number of Chinese goods on the American market, and banning the purchase of food products in the United States (which is very important for China). And the most important thing, of course, is the revocation of a number of licenses and the use of patents by China. But I repeat, this will generally be a blow to the entire world trade.
– If relations between our countries deepen and expand in the future, does this threaten the emergence of dependence of the Russian economy on China?
– Of course, such a possibility exists. Because a certain antithesis for oil and gas trade is disappearing in our country, and most importantly, of course, linking all commodity and financial flows to China is an extremely ambiguous thing.
But we have no other solution. Moreover, today Russia does not depend on Chinese investments, they are still extremely small, for various reasons, China was simply not interested in investing in Russian enterprises. I suppose that we need to develop other mechanisms, that is, not rely only on China, but expand cooperation with other countries in every possible way.
No one will replace China, but collectively we must diversify our interaction – this is, of course, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, of course, India, African countries. That is, here we must understand that China is an important partner, but it should not be the only one.
– In China, they have recently been talking about the prospects for the transition to “green energy”. Doesn’t this pose a threat to the export of Russian oil and gas to this country?
– No, the fact is that, in principle, when China says that by 2060 it must switch entirely to a carbon-free economy, the point is not that the country is giving up oil and gas, but that the Chinese are creating technologies that do not produce harmful emissions into the environment. And, although China is quite actively producing alternative energy sources (for example, solar panels, etc.), they will not be enough to supply China as a whole. Moreover, we see that the Chinese have increased rather than decreased purchases of Kuzbass and Yakut coal. So it’s not the biggest threat.