Why Trump is unlikely to get Xi's help in making peace in Ukraine
Keeping the war in Ukraine going is the more rational choice for Beijing to make.
By Tetyana Malyarenko and Stefan Wolff
US president-elect Donald Trump has invited China’s president Xi Jinping to his inauguration on January 20 in a surprise move which appears to be part of a plan to involve Beijing in ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine.
Just after his recent meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris, Trump posted, “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” and “China can help.” That latter remark has suddenly gained more significance after Trump extended his unusual invitation to Xi.
Leaving aside that Xi actually turning up was always a long-shot and has now officially turned down Trump’s offer to attend, the more important question is whether he would indeed help Trump end the Russian war against Ukraine. While China is not a direct party in the war, it is a major stakeholder, including in any future settlement.
China has had a strong economic and trading relationship with Russia throughout the war, and has refrained from criticising Putin. While it has denied providing Moscow with military assistance, reports suggest that China has allowed some goods that have battlefield use to be sent to Russia.
On the surface, what we know of Trump’s initiative and what China has most recently put on the table together with Brazil look like two reasonably well-aligned peace proposals.
Both call for a ceasefire along the current frontlines, followed by negotiations on a permanent settlement. Both seem to accept the Russian demand for a recognition of facts on the ground, that is, the freezing of territorial status quo in which Ukraine loses around 20% of its territory that Russia has illegally occupied since 2014.
Ukraine and most of its western partners so far continue to reject this as unacceptable. Before Trump’s election victory, this was a sustainable position because the west was able to prevent Ukraine from being militarily defeated on the battlefield. This position may be slowly changing among the Ukrainian elites, including the idea of (temporary) territorial concessions, and population but it is not clear that this would suddenly make China a welcome partner for the west in any peace negotiations, least of all for Ukraine.
Kyiv has always been wary of China and its international policies, from the economic and trade Belt and Road Initiative to the recent peace proposal. Zelensky called the China-Brazil peace initiative “destructive”. He also accused China and Brazil of being “pro-Russian”.
Zelensky is personally deeply invested in his own peace plan, particularly as Ukrainians have made enormous sacrifices in the war so far. This does not rule out compromises, but it makes concessions to China, widely seen by Ukrainians as one of Russia’s main supporters in the war, very unlikely.
Even if there was a sudden change of heart in Kyiv, it is highly doubtful that a Trump-brokered deal would serve Beijing’s interests. In relation to the war in Ukraine, as in other foreign policy challenges that China has to navigate, for Xi it is always and above all about strengthening China’s role and influence as a global power. China will be concerned if the war is over, the US may become even more focused on its trade war with Beijing—a realistic assumption given Trump’s and his team’s combative stance on China.
So far, without having to do much, the war in Ukraine has allowed China to benefit from the strain that it has put on the west. Critical shortcomings in the defence industrial base, looming overstretch for US alliance commitments in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, and pre-existing domestic polarization, which has been further exacerbated over whether and how much support the west should give to Ukraine, have raised doubts over the dependability of the US as an ally, particularly in Europe and particularly in light of Trump’s to the White House.
The longer the war in Ukraine continues in this way, the longer China will reap the benefits from the reduction of the relative weight of the United States as its main geopolitical and geo-economic rival.
A carefully managed continuation of the war against Ukraine, therefore, benefits China in asserting its global leadership. China's crisis management, as reiterated by Xi at the recent BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, and in a meeting with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Beijing on December 12, 2024, is focused on "three key principles: no expansion of the battlefields, no escalation of hostilities, and no fanning flames, and strive for swift de-escalation of the situation."
This is a far cry from an end to the war as envisaged by Trump. A Trump-brokered deal would likely lift sanctions and provide a pathway for renewed, more cooperative relations between the west and Russia. It would significantly strengthen Putin’s position, contribute to Russia's international rehabilitation, reduce his country’s dependence on China, and potentially rekindle historical Russia-China rivalries. Trump’s claim that he wants to “un-unite” Russia and China will not have gone un-noticed in Beijing.
And even if Trump would not succeed with his intention to drive a wedge between Russia and China, a stronger Kremlin would mean a shift of the power dynamic in the partnership between Moscow and Beijing, potentially elevating Putin from a junior partner to Xi’s peer.
From a Chinese perspective, helping Trump to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine thus offers few incentives, except potentially toning down the US trade and tariffs war against it. Draining western resources in defending Ukraine keeps them away from the Indo-Pacific theatre in which most of the competition between China and the US will play out.
Xi has no interest in seeing Putin being strategically defeated in Ukraine, but keeping Russia bogged down in its aggression against Ukraine will ensure that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow will endure on its current terms with the balance of power tilted towards China.
Keeping the war in Ukraine going, rather than helping Trump to end it, therefore is the most likely choice that Beijing will make.
An earlier version of this article was published by The Conversation on 13 December 2024.
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