The people of Ukraine have thrown their president out, and the Russians have replied by occupying the Crimean peninsula. The EU, U.S. and NATO are all weighing in. Foreign ministers are meeting, and the U.N. is in on the act. The one country you haven’t heard much from is China. Surely a great power like the People’s Republic of China must have an opinion and interests in the matter. In fact, they have several, and they conflict with each other. So, China is quiet because it is conflicted about the conflict.
First off, the Communist Party in China is not terribly happy with the Ukrainian people throwing out a president just because they didn’t like him. The Chicoms (I do so love certain Cold War terms) have a rule — whoever is in power should get to stay in power. The reason is simple — they are in power, and communists always create a self-perpetuating regime that will sacrifice all principles to stay in power. That’s why in “communist” China you have billionaires and stock exchanges.
Second, though, China doesn’t like the fact that Russia has taken territory that is Ukrainian under international law with its military. China is a die-hard supporter of territorial integrity. And if your country had been sliced and diced as often as China has been in the last couple of centuries, you’d have the same view. China opposes the idea of conquest — Tibet was “liberated.” Another reason for this is the secessionist movements in China. Last week, a few men wielding knives stabbed a few dozen people at a train station in China. The perpetrators were Uighurs (pronounced more or less “wiggers”), a Muslim people culturally and racially distinct from the Han Chinese. The Uighurs would like to run their own show, and Beijing really doesn’t want that.
Third, the EU and the Americans have gotten in on the act, and China really doesn’t like it when the imperialist powers start flexing their imperialist muscles. China has been on the receiving end of that too often. As a matter of principle, China prefers to oppose the U.S. and EU. Chinese grandeur and prestige rest largely these days on standing up to the West, and you can’t stand up to anyone if you’re on their side.
As a result, the Chinese government is trying to avoid saying anything that might indicate that it supports anything any other party does. The Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement over the weekend that said it “respect[s] the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” and then called for “dialogue and negotiation based on respect for international law and norms governing international relations in order to uphold regional peace and stability.” I think that means it would like Ukraine to negotiate on Ukrainian independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
When the ministry’s spokesman Qin Gang gave a press briefing last night, part of it went like this:
Q: The Russian Parliament approved the use of force against Ukraine. Does China offer diplomatic support to Russia? Does China recognize the new Ukrainian government?
A: On your first question, please refer to the remarks I made yesterday [the quotations from the statement above]. With respect to the Ukrainian issue, we uphold China’s long-standing diplomatic principles and basic norms governing international relations, and also take into account the history and complexity of the issue. It is fair to say that our position, which is objective, fair, just and peaceful, follows both principles and facts. On the second question, judgment needs to be made based on laws of Ukraine.”
To translate from diplomatese to English — please stop asking me questions.
There is a further consideration, and this is one that Mr. Putin ought to consider carefully. There are roughly 140 million Russians, 77% of whom live in European Russia. That means all that space east of the Urals has only about 30 million Russians in it. Of that 30 million, only 7.4 million live in the Far East of Russia. Moreover, Russia is having trouble maintaining its population at current levels, and Russia is aging as a society.
China has millions of young citizens, thousands upon thousands of whom have crossed the border (illegally usually). ABC News said, “The Moscow Carnegie Center, the only organization to launch an independent study, claimed that there were about 250,000 Chinese in Russia in 1997. The Interior Ministry has claimed that there are 2 million. Other estimates place the Chinese population at 5 million.”
The same ABC report said, “Police in Russian cities are responding with aggressive ethnic profiling. Law enforcement personnel check the documentation of foreigners, and they actively target ethnic Asians.”
Russia is setting a dangerous precedent with its Crimean adventure. If those Chinese citizens are being mistreated in Russia, I don’t see how the Russians can stop the People’s Liberation Army from doing around Vladivostok what the Russian Army is now doing around Sevastopol — coming in to protect Chinese citizens, and then, forgetting to leave.
China doesn’t know quite what to do about the Ukraine-Russia dispute. It has problems with all sides in the dispute. By the same token, the way this plays out could be to China’s advantage in the Far East in a decade or two. Best to say nothing meaningful for now.
