In a statement that has been widely interpreted as signifying Chinese support for the Russian position on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on March 3 that the foreign ministers of the two countries had expressed “broadly coinciding views” in a telephone conversation (South China Morning Post (SCMP), March 4). While we do not know what Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterpart on the phone, China has studiously avoided endorsing Russia’s views in public, and rather appears to be pursuing a neutrality that will permit it to deal easily with any government that establishes power in Kiev. Nor has Chinese media coverage been favorable to Russia.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s terse official description of the call says only that “The two sides believed that properly handling the Ukrainian crisis is very important to safeguarding regional peace and stability”—a sentiment with which Washington and Kiev no doubt agree (Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website (MoFA), March 3).
At the Foreign Ministry’s daily press briefings, Chinese spokespeople have repeatedly described the change in government as a legitimate choice made by the Ukrainian people. Two days after deposed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych fled Kiev, spokesperson Hua Chunying said that China “respects the independent choice made by the Ukrainian people in keeping with Ukraine’s national conditions and stands ready to foster strategic partnership with the Ukrainian side on an equal footing for win-win progress” (MoFA daily briefing, February 24).
The speed with which China came to accept the revolution in Ukraine stands in sharp contrast to its handling of the events of the Arab Spring, in which Chinese spokespeople repeatedly endorsed the legitimacy of regimes even as they were collapsing, leading to a situation in which China had to scramble to establish relations with new governments in order to protect oil concessions and other economic interests in these countries.
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