China’s Seat at the Table

Why Beijing may hold the cards to resolving the Crimean crisis

Amidst heightened tensions in the European Union over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, President Obama visit to the continent this week has sought to reassure wary allies of Washington’s commitment to resolving the crisis. The president successfully pressured European allies, as well as Canada and Japan, to suspend Russia from the Group of Eight nations, who was scheduled to hold the group’s annual summit in June in Sochi.

But, it was a meeting with President Xi Jinping of China at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in The Hague that may prove to be the key to breaking the deadlock. Despite its historically strong alliance with Russia, China abstained from the UN Security Council vote condemning the Crimean referendum, which analysts interpreted as Beijing’s own fear for the precedent that a legitimized separatist undertaking based on ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences could set for a number of embattled regions in the country from Xinjiang to Tibet to Hong Kong to, even, Taiwan. Similarly, Beijing refused to recognize South Ossetia after it declared independence from Georgia in 2008, following a Russia military campaign to re-claim the region.

The meeting, which the White House hastily arranged last week upon announcing the First Lady’s trip to China as a means of exhibiting “soft power”, took place on the sidelines of a summit on combatting nuclear terrorism. The White House did not discuss details of what was covered, but it was clear that the gathering was organized for the sole purpose of pressuring Beijing to further isolate Moscow. The official White House statement read:

“The two leaders agreed on the importance of upholding principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, both in the context of Ukraine and also for the broader functioning of the international system.”

In Beijing, Washington’s hawkish approach to punishing Russia for breaching international law is seen as dismissive, if not hypocritical. After more than a decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a US-supported NATO-led military invasion of Libya and consistent meddling in China’s own territorial disputes with her neighbors over the Senkaku Islands, there remains little patience for a lesson on international law from an ally who is consistently breaking it.

But, Russia is different.

China remains the only global power that can bring Putin to the negotiating table. They are crucial allies on the Council, where they have been instrumental in resisting Western aggression in Syria.

In recent years, the two nations have built ties on their vision of a bi-polar international system to challenge the American hegemonic governance of international affairs.

They lead the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Central Asian security and economic bloc that have sought to counterweigh American interests in the region and their diplomatic clout was instrumental last year in helping bring Iran to nuclear talks with the West, which Russia has threatened to de-rail if economic sanctions against the country continue.

At a press conference at the National People’s Congress earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi boasted that the “China-Russian relationship is currently in the best phase of our mutual history.” He added that the two countries were connected by a “deep friendship” and that both were steadfast allies against Western aggression.

But, in reality, the relationship is at its most tense moment in years. China’s commitment to non-interference in any nation’s domestic affairs is paramount to its foreign policy and Moscow’s violation of that principle has caused a lapse in relations, according to experts. The ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, however, has similarly rattled Beijing and left its foreign ministry to carefully tread a fine line between upsetting its crucial ally in Moscow and remaining neutral before the West.

“We call on all parties to properly handle the rights and interests of all ethic communities in Ukraine, to restore social order and uphold peace and stability in the region as soon as possible,” said the spokesman, Qin Giang, on Crimea.

The statement clearly supported Moscow’s stated argument that the invasion and referendum was necessary for protecting the rights of the peninsula’s majority ethnic Russian population. For the moment, Beijing is unlikely to further challenge Moscow over Crimea but if Russian forces move further into Eastern Ukraine, that support could begin to slowly erode, a possibility that could potentially weaken the Kremlin’s leverage faster than any draconian economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union.

Though China, who receives the vast majority of its oil imports from Russia, stands to gain, economically, from Moscow’s tilt ward East; it is doubtful that President Jinping will value short-term economic gains over long-term geopolitical strategy. But, the crisis presents an opening for Beijing to assert itself as the chief actor in the biggest political and military crisis in Europe since the Cold War.

That, in and of itself, may signal the re-emergence of a new global power structure decades in the making.