Xi and Putin's 'No Limits' Bond Leaves China Few Options on Ukraine - The New York Times - 0 views
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They had just finalized a statement declaring their vision of a new international order with Moscow and Beijing at its core, untethered from American power.
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Over dinner, according to China’s official readout, they discussed “major hot-spot issues of mutual concern.”
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Publicly, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin had vowed that their countries’ friendship had “no limits.” The Chinese leader also declared that there would be “no wavering” in their partnership, and he added his weight to Mr. Putin’s accusations of Western betrayal in Europe.
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“He’s damned if he did know, and damned if he didn’t,” Paul Haenle, a former director for China on the National Security Council, said of whether Mr. Xi had been aware of Russia’s plans to invade. “If he did know and he didn’t tell people, he’s complicit; if he wasn’t told by Putin, it’s an affront.”
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Mr. Xi’s statement with Mr. Putin on Feb. 4 endorsed a Russian security proposal that would exclude Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
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Even so, as Mr. Putin became determined to reverse Ukraine’s turn to Western security protections, Chinese officials began to echo Russian arguments. Beijing also saw a growing threat from American-led military blocs.
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“Putin may have done this anyway, but also it was unquestionably an enabling backdrop that was provided by the joint statement, the visit and Xi’s association with all of these things,”
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“He owns that relationship with Putin,” Mr. Haenle said. “If you’re suggesting in the Chinese system right now that it was not smart to get that close to Russia, you’re in effect criticizing the leader.”
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Over the past years, as growing numbers of Ukrainians supported joining NATO, Chinese diplomats did not raise objections with Kyiv, said Sergiy Gerasymchuk, an analyst with Ukrainian Prism, a foreign policy research organization in Kyiv.
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For both leaders, their partnership was an answer to Mr. Biden’s effort to forge an “alliance of democracies.”
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Before and shortly after the invasion, Beijing sounded sympathetic to Moscow’s security demands, mocking Western warnings of war and accusing the United States of goading Russia. Over the past two weeks, though, China has sought to edge slightly away from Russia. It has softened its tone, expressing grief over civilian casualties. It has cast itself as an impartial party, calling for peace talks and for the war to stop as soon as possible.
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Beijing had its own complaints with NATO, rooted in the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, during NATO’s war in 1999 to protect a breakaway region, Kosovo. Those suspicions deepened when NATO in 2021 began to describe China as an emerging challenge to the alliance.
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n Feb. 23, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, accused Washington of “manufacturing panic.”
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Chinese officials tweaked their calls to heed Russia’s security, stressing that “any country’s legitimate security concerns should be respected.” They still did not use the word “invasion,” but have acknowledged a “conflict between Ukraine and Russia.”
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“Many decision makers in China began to perceive relations in black and white: either you are a Chinese ally or an American one,”