President Xi Jinping said goodbye to President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, telling him that “a change unseen in a hundred years is coming, and we are leading it.” “I agree”, Putin replied, shaking his hand and wishing him a good trip back to Beijing.
Xi has met Putin some 40 times over the past ten years, more than any other world leader, and in February 2022 they sealed a “boundless” alliance. Together they form an authoritarian axis opposed to the anti-Chinese alliance led by the United States. Xi hopes to prevail; that is to say, to replace the liberal order, with its rules and human rights, for an order based simply on the exchange of economic goods, an order that prioritizes the national interest of each State and in which no one is forced to respect universal values.
This new order, which rewards the strongest, was presented again on the 15th in Beijing. It has three “global initiatives”: a military one that protects China’s rearmament to counter US strength in the Pacific; another of economics that defends development on the margins of democracy, and a third, called “civilization”, that demands respect for the values ??of each country, even if they are contrary to human rights. Xi believes that only in this way can there be coexistence and cooperation between nations. The support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, the mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the ambition to recover Taiwan even if it is by force anticipate “the changes that have not been seen in a century” that Xi has been announcing for a long time.
After Xi’s visit to Moscow, Ukraine is no closer to peace. His peace plan rewards Russian aggression. It is no use for negotiation, as Ukraine and its allies have said.
China is not interested in a long war in Ukraine, because it damages its export economy, but the defeat of Russia would be much worse, since it would break the authoritarian axis and strengthen the United States.
“China has good reasons to break Russia’s isolation,” says Mikhaïl Korostikov, from the Carnegie Institute. He wants to see how it holds up under the sanctions and, at the same time, occupy the market that has been abandoned by Western companies. “Seeing first hand how Russia is disconnected from the financial, industrial and cultural sectors of the West – explains Korostikov – allows Xi to prepare for a similar shock, given the increased rivalry between China and the United States”.
US strategic neglect in the Middle East has provided China with another great opportunity. Twenty years after the invasion of Iraq – a war that Xi used to demonstrate the double standard of the US with international law and universal values ??– China has achieved a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. These two bitter rivals since the Islamic revolution of 1979 exchange ambassadors thanks to the mediation of Beijing. Iran and Saudi Arabia are its main partners in the region and it needs its oil at a good price, as much or more than the Russian one. The economy always marks the path of Chinese diplomacy.
Trade with the Middle East has soared. It has gone from $180 billion in 2019 to $259 billion in 2021. Chinese trade with the US, meanwhile, has shrunk, falling from $120 billion to $82 billion over the same period. However, pacifying the most turbulent region in the world will not be easy and will depend, to a large extent, on Iran. It is not clear that China can convince him to stop interfering in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Persian Gulf. Burma, North Korea and Afghanistan are countries where China has also tried to mediate in their favor, and has not succeeded. Xi believes that the ties he has established with the global south thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative allow him an advantageous position over the US, both on the ground and in international bodies; but this is not always the case. For example, it is true that in October, and thanks to the support of India, Brazil and Mexico, he got the UN Human Rights Council to analyze a report that says China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjinag, a province where, since 2007, it has sent a million Uyghurs to re-education camps; but he could not prevent the report from seeing the light, as was his intention.
In any case, few countries have echoed the tragedy of the Uyghurs. The United States is one of the few countries that has banned the import of products from Xinjiang made with forced labor. The European Union, for example, has not done so. China needs the European Union and here it walks a very thin line. The plan for Ukraine has not been a gesture in favor of peace, but to attract the favor of the EU. Sanctions between Brussels and Beijing over the Uyghurs remain, but the two sides have resumed dialogue on human rights. Behind this facade of good intentions appear, once again, economic interests. Exports from Xinjiang to the EU grew by 30% last year. Beijing talks about “looking to the future” and not to the past. He wants the European Parliament to ratify the trade agreement closed in 2020 but blocked until China restores the rights of the Uyghurs.
Ultimately, China considers that human rights are a colonizing instrument and that, after the “humiliations” suffered since the 19th century, it is a moral imperative not to bow any further to the West. China has stopped trusting the US, the great ally that provided it with the financial and technological resources to be a great power today. Having suffered the conquest of Hong Kong, it now aspires to occupy Taiwan, but the US is prepared to defend the island, not because it considers it to be sovereign, but because if it loses its position in the Pacific will be seriously compromised. In the end, the national interest is always above the universal.