Why China’s role as a peacemaker in Ukraine may be limited
- Beijing has claimed a mediation success with an agreement between Tehran and Riyadh
- But China has a lot of reason to be cautious about leading from the front in interventions elsewhere, analysts say
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Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Washington-based Stimson Centre, said China had become more active in conflict mediation in recent years, but the Saudi Arabia-Iran deal was the only one that had borne fruit.
“Saudi Arabia and Iran had wanted to improve their relations and had been talking for some time,” she said. “China was at the right place at the right time with the right relations.”
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China hosted a multilateral dialogue on Afghanistan last year that featured the participation of both the United States and Russia – a rare occasion for the three world powers to come together. It also offered to broker peace in the Horn of Africa when it hosted a peace conference last year, although no specific conflict was discussed, and was recently asked by Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups to mediate a ceasefire following the 2021 coup.
There was also the four-point peace plan it proposed for Palestine and Israel in 2013, which was followed by a few rounds of peace talks arranged by China that failed to yield substantial results.
Such efforts were interpreted by many as Beijing seeking to boost its image as a global peacemaker as a contrast with the US.
In a speech this month, President Xi Jinping said hegemony and ideological confrontation had hampered human development and proposed that building on China’s global development and security initiatives would be a better path – presenting an alternative to the US-led global order.
“Beijing may not think it is actively competing with the US in the global narrative or the global leadership domain, but it will have that effect no matter what Beijing states its intentions are,” Sun said.
While China has repeatedly said it has no intention of filling the power vacuum left by the US in the Middle East, it is strengthening all-round cooperation with countries in the region, including some of Washington’s traditional allies, who now see Beijing as more than a trade partner.
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Pang Zhongying, an international relations professor at Sichuan University, said brokering the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran – the latest sign China had departed from the non-interventionist foreign policy advocated by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping – had helped boost China’s international image amid strained relations with the West, but its intervention in regional conflicts had to be carefully weighed.
“Having brokered the Iran-Saudi deal may encourage it to continue pursuing such an intervention policy, but it has to be cautious,” he said. “There are a lot of things Iran and Saudi Arabia need to do in their next step. If China needs to play a role, it still has a lot to do, which means it needs to carry a lot of extra burden.”
He said Beijing also needed to exercise the same caution in its approach to the Ukraine war.
Xi is believed to have offered to serve as a mediator between Riyadh and Tehran when he attended the first summit meetings between China and the Gulf countries, which were held in Saudi Arabia in December. Saudi officials said a few subsequent discussions were arranged, including one during Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Beijing in February, which then led to the four days of secret talks in Beijing before the deal was announced.
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Guy Burton, a Middle East specialist at the Brussels School of Governance, said a lot of the hard work had been done for China before the actual deal, as negotiations facilitated by Oman and Iraq had started long ago.
Tehran and Riyadh had also shown their intention to restore ties in recent years, with Saudi Arabia shifting towards a less confrontational foreign policy and Iran aiming to rebuild relations with the region after being isolated for years due to its nuclear programme and alleged support for militant groups.
“I think that’s what you’re going to see more of, when it comes to the Middle East,” Burton said. “When there is something potentially happening there is scope for the Chinese, but maybe not in the way that we usually think of, leading from the front or setting an agenda, but more so trying to be supportive … so in a sense it doesn’t mean the resolution of conflict – it is more management of conflict.”
Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, said China’s ties with Russia and its limited record as an international peace mediator would make it “very difficult” for it to gain trust as a peacemaker.
“China never condemned Russia – which is overwhelmingly considered as the aggressor in Ukraine,” he said. “This is difficult to understand for Europeans, who see evidence of missile attacks and massive brutality on a daily basis.”
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Le Corre said it would be a “good start” if China was able to talk to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky simultaneously, but he did not think China could go any further in its mediation, which would allow Russia to remain in occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, a condition Kyiv would not accept.
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, emeritus professor of political science at Baptist University, also questioned whether China could play a brokering role in solving the Ukraine crisis.
“It will very much depend on Zelensky’s own take on Xi’s offer, and on the possibility for the Europeans, if not the Americans, to find common ground with China on the future of Ukraine, its sovereignty and its territorial integrity,” he said.
On Tuesday, when Xi was in Russia, Zelensky asked Beijing to adopt his 10-point peace plan, which demands restoration of Ukraine’s borders with Russia. Following its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia announced last year that it had annexed four provinces in eastern Ukraine.
Russia rejected Zelensky’s plan, but Ukraine said it was a precondition for any peace talks.
“What I believe is that eventually the USA and Russia will sit down and make a deal that will be imposed on the Ukrainians and the Europeans,” Cabestan said. “The Chinese will be left out, precisely because of the growing cold war between Washington and Beijing.”
The US and the European Union have kept a wary eye on Xi and Putin’s meetings, with Washington pressing Beijing to urge Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, and Poland calling China and Russia’s ties “dangerous”.
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Wang Yiwei, a European affairs expert at Renmin University in Beijing, said Ukraine and the rest of Europe had high expectations of China’s influence on Russia. But he said China was not a direct party, and the goal of its peace proposal was to seek consensus among relevant parties.
“But China will be a guarantor, whether it is in an armistice or a peace agreement,” he said, adding that China and other permanent members of the UN Security Council would have a role in that process.
Pang agreed that China’s role as a peacemaker in Ukraine was limited.
“China isn’t allied with Russia, and it doesn’t want to offend Ukraine or Europe at the same time,” he said. “It is a neutral party. Being neutral means your role is very limited.
“What can be delivered beyond the 12-point peace plan has not been seen yet.”
