China’s footprint in Ukraine: a breathing space between Russia and the West

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Beijing, for its part, views Ukraine as a nexus between the European Union and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Under the BRI, Beijing has developed relations with Central and Eastern European members of the EU via the so-called “17+1” format, which facilitates Beijing’s economic penetration into the European Union market as a whole. Although not a member of the 17+1, Ukraine still comprises an important geographic entry point into the European continent, as exemplified by the launching of a freight train line running from Wuhan to Kyiv in June this year. 

Regional hedging

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in particular has expressed positive sentiments on China’s increasingly-salient place in Ukrainian foreign policy. Zelenskyy has stated, for example, that he intends to pay a state visit to China once the current global health crisis subsides. Indeed, even as countries have tended towards restricting the movement of non-citizens into their borders throughout 2020, Ukraine has taken a different approach by allowing Chinese citizens visa-free access to Ukraine for 30-day periods within a six-month time frame starting from August 1st of this year.

The loosening of travel restrictions for citizens of China wishing to enter Ukraine, in part a bid to boost tourism, corresponds to a significant rise in bilateral trade between the two countries. In the years immediately prior to Zelenskyy’s presidential victory, Ukraine’s economic relations with China grew significantly, particularly in light of a decline in Ukraine’s economic relations with Russia. The volume of Ukraine’s imports and exports to China, in fact, have comprised one of the sharpest increases in Ukraine’s external trade in the past few years. The dollar amount of Ukrainian exports to China rose by nearly two billion US dollars between 2018-2019, while Ukrainian imports of Chinese goods increased by nearly four billion dollars between 2017 and 2019, according to figures made available by the Ukrainian Think Tanks Liaison Office in Brussels. 

Yet in spite of the mutual benefits that China and Ukraine derive from their partnership, Beijing’s most important strategic partner – the Russian Federation – has proven to be a vexing factor in China and Ukraine’s pursuit of their mutual bilateral interests in recent years. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its conduct of hybrid warfare in eastern Ukraine have had negative implications for Beijing-Kyiv ties, as well as other aspects of Chinese foreign and even domestic policy. Furthermore, China’s rise as an increasingly important player in Ukrainian foreign policy may impede the Kremlin’s ability to exert influence in a country it sees as being part of its own strategic neighbourhood.     

To be sure, one of the overarching goals Beijing and Moscow have come to share in the development of their strategic partnership over the past two decades is undermining the US-led unipolar global order. Given the West’s collective negative reaction toward Russia in light of the Crimea annexation, it may seem intuitive that China would support the Kremlin in its standoff with the West. The 2014 annexation of Crimea and the West’s subsequent reaction against Russia, in fact, has been frequently, albeit simplistically, held up as a watershed moment for the development of the much-touted Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Nevertheless, the Kremlin’s policies toward Ukraine have actually caused frustration for Beijing’s interests toward Kyiv. Indeed, as Alexander Korolev of the University of New South Wales has noted, even while Beijing and Moscow’s policies are largely compatible on a global level, the China and Russia engage in a great deal of hedging at the regional and sub-regional levels of global affairs. While a large portion of the Sino-Russian regional hedging occurs in Central Asia, and to a much lesser extent in East Asia, a significant deepening of Beijing-Kyiv ties means that China and Russia will potentially find their interests in Eastern Europe increasingly at odds.

Ukraine, for its part, welcomes increased Chinese participation in a diplomatic and geopolitical space sandwiched between Russia and the West. According to Serhiy Korsunskiy, head of Ukraine’s Hennady Udovenko Diplomatic Academy, China’s interest in Ukraine as a geographic nexus between the Belt and Road Initiative and participating European states has prompted China’s interest in a peaceful and stable Ukraine, a goal that contrasts with Russia’s aggressive activities in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, to be sure, was greeted largely with silence on China’s part at the official level. Yet even while Beijing largely refrained from overtly criticising Russian activities in Ukraine, based on views expressed in media outlets affiliated with the Chinese state, Beijing may have actually been frustrated by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its hybrid warfare activities in Donetsk and Luhansk. Indeed, in light of the Crimea annexation and subsequent instability in eastern Ukraine, China cancelled several economic projects with Ukraine, in what was perhaps the first sign that political instability in Eastern Europe would negatively affect Beijing’s economic interests vis-à-vis the BRI and the European continent. Among the most recent insinuations that China has been less than pleased with Russian activities in Ukraine are reports that during a meeting between Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister, Emine Dzhaparova, and officials from the Chinese embassy in Kyiv in this August , Dzhaparova briefed Chinese officials on the current situation on the Crimea peninsula while expressing gratitude to the Chinese government for its position on the Crimea crisis. 

Diplomatic dilemmas

Aside from the negative economic implications the Crimea annexation and continued instability in eastern Ukraine have had for China, developments in Ukraine over the past six years have also placed broader Chinese foreign policy interests and principles under stress. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have forced China to balance between standing by its Russian strategic partner while maintaining its professed policy of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries (and demanding that other states refrain from involving themselves in China’s internal affairs). The explicit violation of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty – any historic and linguistic connection between Crimea and the Russian Federation notwithstanding – not only stands in contrast to China’s professed respect for the sovereignty of other states, but also had indirect implications for its own territorial sovereignty. In particular, the annexation of Crimea, as Bloomsburg University scholar Sheng Ding noted in a 2014 report for the East West Center, raised questions over what implications the Kremlin’s territorial acquisition would have for Beijing’s claim to an inviolable grip on areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. 

From the outset, Beijing has urged all parties to pursue a diplomatic, non-military solution to armed conflict in Donbass and Luhansk. For China to explicitly call on its Russian partner to abide by peaceful norms in conflict resolution demonstrates a difference in views over Ukraine that, while certainly not indicative of any major fissure in Sino-Russian ties, are hard to ignore in the context of both China-Ukraine ties and the Sino-Russian relationship. To be sure, even as Beijing has taken up a more active mantle regarding conflict and diplomacy in Eastern Europe, Ukraine will likely remain firmly divided between the Euro-Atlantic and Russian spheres of influence. With limited influence in Eastern Europe, China will likely remain, to a large extent, in the background of overt geopolitical tensions, while Moscow’s undertakings in Ukraine are hardly enough to place significant stress on the Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Nevertheless, China’s pursuit of its interests in Ukraine is an issue that the Kremlin cannot afford to ignore, particularly as Kyiv strives to sidle up to Beijing more so as to create some breathing space for itself between Brussels and Moscow. Awareness of how the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine affect Beijing’s interests adds extra dimensions of understanding not only to the dynamics of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, but also the wider international (as opposed to merely regional) implications of the Crimea annexation and the continued conflict in Ukraine’s easternmost regions. 

Whereas China’s position on Russian activities in Ukraine has caused complications for Beijing in terms of its strategic partnership with Russia as well as other aspects of Chinese foreign and domestic policies, Kyiv’s desire to shore up ties with China has also presented its own unique set of obstacles in light of Ukraine’s perpetual need to balance between opposing poles. With so much of Ukraine’s foreign policy dominated by the theme of pursuing a multi-vector balance between Russia and the West, China’s rise as a player in Eastern Europe, modest as it is, has not been without implications for Kyiv’s political orientation. The Ukrainian government has, for example, inked agreements with Beijing in the context of the BRI, yet has been reluctant to fully endorse China’s far-reaching economic initiative, in no small part due to uncertainty over how full-fledged Ukrainian participation in the BRI would affect Kyiv’s relations with the West.

Delicate approach

Moscow, for its part, is eying the trajectory of China-Ukraine ties with interest, especially in terms of how a more prominent Chinese position in Ukrainian foreign policy would affect the Russian Federation’s ability to exert influence in Ukraine. Despite a shared desire to undermine the western-led unipolar global order between China and Russia, Beijing is not entirely disposed to a Ukraine that takes an overtly pro-Russian orientation at the expense of closer ties with the West. Rather, it is more likely to be in Beijing’s best interests that Ukraine maintains a relatively neutral position between Russia and the West, in no small part due to the geopolitical instability that stems from constant wrangling for Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation. 

Aside from the fact that a Ukraine that maintains balance between Moscow and the West while developing closer ties with China directly contradicts the Kremlin’s interests in a staunchly pro-Russian Ukraine, any significant rise in Beijing’s influence in Ukraine would constitute a potential Chinese encroachment in Russia’s strategic neighbourhood. Both Beijing and Moscow have diligently sought to avoid situations in their bilateral relationship whereby one party has been seen as violating the other’s strategic space, be it the Sino-Russian tango in Central Asia or Moscow’s caution about stepping on Beijing’s toes in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has come to perceive the development of stronger relations with Ukraine as a sufficiently significant threat so as to warrant attempts to undermine the China-Ukraine partnership. As Sergiy Gerasymchuk and Yurii Poita have noted in a 2018 report for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Russian government has actively attempted to discredit Ukraine as a stable and reliable partner for China by, among other things, engaging in information activities in the Chinese media space aimed at undermining China Ukraine ties. 

Though China-Ukraine relations were slow to take off following the establishment of official ties between Beijing and Kyiv in the early 1990’s, China’s bid to connect the better part of the entire Eurasian landmass under its economic vision has brought Ukraine into the fold of Chinese interests. It remains doubtful, however, to what extent Kyiv can rely on Beijing as a source of diplomatic and geopolitical breathing space between the European and Russian spheres of influence. Nevertheless, developments over the past six years underscore the fact that China is a rising player in Ukraine’s foreign policy interests. For policymakers in Kyiv, the greatest challenge will be maintaining Chinese interest in Ukraine to the extent that China continues to serve as a stable and consistent source of investment while remaining cognisant of the effects that growing closer to China will have on Kyiv’s relations with the West as well as the Russian Federation. In a similar vein, China will certainly find itself in continual need of treading carefully in its Ukraine policy so as to not be seen as disrupting Moscow’s interests.

While it is unlikely that Beijing’s pursuit of its interests in Ukraine would raise significant tensions in the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, there is no denying that Russian activities in Ukraine have highlighted differences between Moscow and Beijing at the regional level in Eastern Europe. Aside from mutual economic interests, the need to monitor how Russia perceives – and reacts towards – the rise in China-Ukraine ties is perhaps one of the most salient diplomatic issues that Beijing and Kyiv have in common.   

Anthony Rinna is a senior editor at the Sino-NK research group. He currently resides in South Korea.

China, geopolitics, Russia, Sino-Russian relations, Ukraine