As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second week, with mounting casualties and little sign of an immediate ceasefire, many China watchers are scratching their heads about Beijing’s role in the lead-up to the assault. For China, which appears to have been caught off guard, a lot is at stake behind the question and there are few good answers. It remains unclear if – or how much – Beijing knew about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans, despite Washington claims that China was informed of Moscow’s intentions ahead of last week’s invasion. If the Chinese leadership did know of Putin’s coming aggression – which started immediately after the Winter Olympics in Beijing – and kept silent, some observers argue it could serve as evidence nailing China as Putin’s enabler. Others say that, if Beijing had no clue about Russia’s intentions, China is exonerated from any role in the havoc wreaked in Ukraine by the Kremlin. Either way, China is in an increasingly uneasy spot, with growing doubts about the competence of its intelligence gathering and strategic decision-making. China’s image as a responsible, peace-loving global power is taking a blow from perceptions that Beijing is siding with Putin’s Russia in a costly confrontation with the West, with real implications for Beijing’s global interests. Also under scrutiny is the depth of Beijing’s much-touted strategic alignment with Moscow – and whether Putin tricked his Chinese friends into forming the “no limits” Sino-Russian partnership during his visit to Beijing early last month. China has so far refused to frame Russia’s aggression as an “invasion” or denounce Moscow. It again abstained on a resolution – adopted by more than 140 countries – at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, reprimanding Russia’s invasion and demanding an immediate withdrawal of its troops. China’s links to Russia leave it exposed as Ukraine attack backfires, experts say Artyom Lukin, an associate professor at Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University, said he was “confident” Putin informed President Xi Jinping about his plan for a “special military operation” in Ukraine, a Kremlin term to which Beijing has also subscribed. “This probably happened during Putin’s visit to Beijing on February 4. The information was likely kept secret within a very narrow circle of China’s top leadership until the day of the attack, which helps explain why the news came as such a shock to many Chinese officials and experts,” he said. According to Lukin, China’s stance, including its reference to Moscow’s “‘legitimate security interests’ could be judged as Beijing’s tacit support for the actions of its main strategic partner at the initial stage of the conflict”. Lukin’s view appeared to be backed by White House security sources , who said a US intelligence report showed senior Chinese officials were briefed on February 4 – the same day Xi and Putin met in Beijing – about the impending Russian action and urged Moscow to hold off until the Games ended. Sources said the intelligence reports were unclear about whether Xi and Putin were directly involved in the claimed discussion, and the Chinese foreign ministry dismissed the story as “purely fake” and intended “to divert attention and shift blame, which is utterly despicable”. David Wolff, a Russian history professor at Hokkaido University in Japan, also believes there is little chance Putin did not tell Xi about his Ukraine plans during his short stay in Beijing, making the Chinese leader “part and parcel of this project”. “And the reason I think that, is because exactly the same thing happened at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, where Xi Jinping came to the Olympics and as soon as the Olympics ended, Putin invaded Ukraine and took the Crimea,” he told a seminar on Monday. Wolff also suggested that a new 30-year deal to supply Russian gas to China, signed during Putin’s visit “essentially bankrolls the operation”. Many other experts, mostly Chinese, pointed to possible scenarios in which a Beijing miscalculation allowed Putin to trick China’s leaders into believing the military option was not on the table. “The last thing Beijing wants is to be viewed as enabling Putin in his aggression against Ukraine, or even as an accomplice,” said Pang Zhongying, an international affairs specialist at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, who described the saga as “a set-up” by Putin. “Putin knew it and that’s why I don’t think he would divulge his war plans when there were risks that Beijing may oppose his operation, considering what happened in 2008,” he said. In Pang’s view, Putin took advantage of China’s desperate need for international support over the Olympics, along with Beijing’s distrust of Washington and its allies, and used his visit to rally support for his political and military manoeuvring. “Like the triangular diplomacy 50 years ago that saw the detente between the US and China against the Soviet Union, Putin knows too well that Beijing is vulnerable in the face of Washington’s encirclement strategy in the Indo-Pacific and has managed to make it an accomplice in his reckless adventure,” Pang said. Despite Russia’s massive military build-up and repeated warnings from the US and Europe as well as Nato, China appears to have been caught largely unprepared by the war. Unlike many Western countries, China did not warn its nearly 6,000 citizens – mostly students and businesspeople – to consider leaving Ukraine in the lead-up to the invasion, nor did it appear to have made plans to help them evacuate. According to The New York Times last week, Washington repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, sought Beijing’s help to prevent the invasion, presenting intelligence about Russian military movements, only for it to be shared with Moscow. How China’s dilemma over Ukraine may loom large at key political gathering Russia specialist Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University in the US, said the Joe Biden administration should not be surprised by Beijing’s response or its information sharing with Moscow. “I would not be surprised if Washington continues to share intelligence with Beijing – especially the sort emphasising how Russian actions are not succeeding – in the hope of persuading Beijing to keep its distance from Russian policy in Ukraine,” he said. But Katz rejected suggestions Putin would even feel the need to consult Xi on his invasion plans, which in retrospect should not have come as a surprise to the Chinese leader. “Putin’s waiting to attack until after the close of the 2022 Winter Games was his attempt to avoid a repeat of China being annoyed at his attack on Georgia during the 2008 Summer Games,” he said. “The Russians might say the timing of their attack had nothing to do with the Olympics, but I think that Putin did go out of his way not to offend Beijing here. “If Putin is successful in Ukraine, Beijing will not criticise him for being so. On the other hand, if Putin is not successful or becomes bogged down, I don’t think China will go out of its way to bail him out. “Either way, the Western focus on Russia and the conflict in Ukraine is useful for Beijing for distracting the West from its ‘pivot to Asia’ and focus on China,” Katz said. Unequal China-Russia partnership strives for balance against the West Danil Bochkov, from the Russian International Affairs Council, also cast doubt on suggestions of Beijing’s prior knowledge. Putin had initially thought Ukraine and its Western advocates would blink first and back-pedal in their negotiations, he said. “When Putin met Xi in Beijing, I guess he still hoped negotiations would work something out and the West would retreat from its extremely supportive rhetoric of Ukraine.” Instead, the situation escalated so quickly for Putin that discussing it with Beijing would not have been a top priority, Bochkov said. It also made little sense for Beijing to risk its well-established ties with Moscow by seeking to intervene in a military operation based on US intelligence, according to Bochkov, who pointed out that Ukraine is not a foreign policy priority for China. “Moscow would definitely interpret China’s advising on the Ukrainian issue as intrusion into its sphere of geopolitical interest,” he said. “It is not what allies or near-allied states should do. Similarly, Moscow has never lectured China on how it should behave in the Asia-Pacific, including the South China Sea.” Chinese state media avoid ‘invasion’ in reports on Russian moves in Ukraine For Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, the delayed efforts to evacuate Chinese nationals and the sweeping rejections by Chinese officials and academics of a possible invasion are signs China was played by Putin. According to Sun, the inclusion of the term “no limits” in the Xi-Putin statement of February 4 enabled the Russian leader to project an image of Chinese support, but was probably intended by Beijing to be limited by Russia’s “reasonable security concerns” and to an opposition to Nato expansion. The term grabbed international headlines and prompted the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell to warn last month about the formation of “a big alliance of two authoritarian regimes” that sought to “review the world order”. “The beauty of Putin’s play is that China cannot rebuff and clarify they didn’t know. If they do, it would be telling the world that China was played by Russia and their alignment is not nearly as solid as China wanted the US to believe,” she wrote on the think tank’s website this week. Putin is successfully ‘playing the China card’ against the US, analysts say Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of international relations at Bucknell University, does not believe Putin set out to deceive Xi, but also questioned the theory that China had prior knowledge of the war. “Putin did not trick Xi into forming a semi-alliance between China and Russia. The reality is both countries are having rocky relations with the US and other Western powers,” he said. “They need each other when confronting the US and resisting unipolarity in the international system. Russia, China seeking to ‘rewrite international rule book’: Nato chief But Beijing’s abstention in the UN General Assembly vote showed China will not stand by Russia unconditionally, according to Zhu. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violates some of the foreign policy principles China has long upheld, such as non-aggression and respecting a nation’s sovereignty, and it has put China in an awkward position,” he said. “So China will keep some distance from Russia and emphasise the importance of finding a diplomatic solution regarding the current crisis. Beijing’s efforts to strike a balance are out of its own national interests, not due to pressures from the US.” Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Beijing had made a strategic blunder over the Ukraine war. “As a result, it is mired in a difficult dilemma.” According to Li, Beijing must now balance several conflicting goals, including how to maintain strategic ties with Russia while avoiding the negative impact of its own stance on Ukraine. Beijing may also find it hard to stick to its long-standing commitment to international principles – such as non-interference, sovereignty and territorial integrity – while trying to minimise damage to its ties with the West and avoid isolation, he said. Additional reporting by Laura Zhou and Peter Langan