China Sends Xi Jinping’s #2 to Russia as Ukraine Counter-Invasion Rages

China's Premier Li Qiang waves as he walks back with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz after t
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty
Frances Martel

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, dictator Xi Jinping’s second-in-command in charge of implementing his policy ideas, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for a visit arriving amid a surprise Ukrainian invasion of uncontested Russian territory that could dramatically change the battlefield landscape in the ongoing invasion.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry depicted the trip as a pre-planned meeting, part of an annual tradition to discuss bilateral relations with top Russian officials, including strongman Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Official government statements did not mention the status of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a topic in Li’s itinerary. Yet the timing coincides with a significant change in the dynamic of that invasion, one that Chinese state media outlets have condemned Ukraine for bringing about.

The Chinese state outlet Xinhua confirmed on Tuesday that Li was in Moscow to “exchange in-depth views on bilateral relations, practical cooperation and key issues of common interest.” The Russian news agency Tass offered a similar report with little detail, other than to say that the Russian government requested the visit and Russian leaders expect to discuss “developing the comprehensive partnership and expanding cooperation in several spheres, including energy and automotive industry.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning similarly described Li’s presence in Moscow on Monday as part of a tradition of annual meetings between the premier and prime minister, describing the current one as the 29th “meeting of the mechanism.”

“Under the strategic guidance of the two presidents, the China-Russia relations have overcome external disturbances and maintained sound and stable growth,” Mao told reporters. The regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government is an important mechanism for delivering on the common understandings between the two presidents and promoting practical cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges in a coordinated way.”

Mao added that Li would travel to Belarus, a Marxist dictatorship that essentially functions as a subordinate of Russia, after departing Moscow.

The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper, citing regime-approved “experts,” predicted that much of the discussion in Moscow would revolve around the economy, not geopolitical issues.

“The heads of government of China and Russia are more in charge of economic affairs and the implementation of practical cooperation projects,” one such expert, scholar Cui Heng, was quoted as saying.

Both China and Russia are struggling to address languishing economies, though Russia’s has built up significant momentum through oil sales – a blow to Western attempts to sanction Russia’s top industries. Russian officials have avoided the damage sanctions can cause largely by selling oil outside of the European market, to large clients such as China and India.

The Chinese economy, meanwhile, has struggled mightily in the aftermath of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, during which Xi imprisoned millions in their homes in the country’s largest cities. China’s National Bureau of Statistics revealed a prodigious 17.1 percent youth unemployment rate in the country, fueling discontent among Chinese college students and recent graduates promised a welcoming market but left with no meaningful options for building a full adult life. The dire economic situation for young Chinese has exacerbated a birth rate collapse, as many feel they cannot afford to get married and have children, that will in the long term also decimate the Chinese workforce and further hurt the economy.

Li is believed to have been tasked with the job of premier, which bears the burden of blame when the economy falters, because of his prior role in implementing Xi Jinping’s savage coronavirus lockdowns. Li was in charge of the lockdowns in Shanghai, China’s largest city and economic hub, where 26 million people were trapped in their homes, many without access to food or critical medicine. The Shanghai lockdown was especially controversial within China because the city is home to so many of the Communist Party elite and their allies in the business world, who believed they could escape the policy.

While reports on Li’s visit to Russia in Chinese state media have studiously avoided the topic of Ukraine, regime outlets have made clear their interest in the ongoing counter-invasion. The first reports of Ukrainian troops entering uncontested Russian territory, in the region of Kursk, surfaced on August 6. The Russian government has declared a state of emergency in Kursk and neighboring Belgorod since then, choosing not to hide the speed at which Ukrainian forces appeared to seize border villages in the area.

On Sunday, the Global Times condemned the Kursk operation as an obstacle to authentic peace talks with Russia, which Moscow has aggressively avoided participating in since its decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Ukraine’s surprise attack and incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week appears to have derailed the schedule and thrown potential partial cease-fire talks into doubt in the short term,” the state newspaper said, citing “observers.”

“Ukraine’s surprise attack on Kursk has added a new variable to the planned negotiations and increased the possibility of conflict escalation,” the Chinese outlet claimed disapprovingly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who initially avoided even confirming the operations in Kursk directly, stated on Sunday that the reason he ordered his troops into Russia was to create a “buffer zone” that would prevent the Russian military from flooding eastern Ukraine with more soldiers.

“All this is more than just defense for Ukraine; it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions,” Zelensky said in a national address. “This includes creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory – our operation in the Kursk region.”

“Everything that inflicts losses on the Russian army, Russian state, their military-industrial complex, and their economy,” the president continued, “helps prevent the war from expanding and brings us closer to a just end to this aggression – a just peace for Ukraine.”

China is Ukraine’s largest trade parter and has resisted cutting ties with Kyiv despite its much closer relationship with Russia. Ukraine is a member of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure scam in which China offers predatory loans to poor countries, and Zelensky has attempted to capitalize on that by inviting Chinese businesses to rebuild parts of the country destroyed in the war. Beijing has resisted any form of support for Ukraine during the invasion, however, instead presenting itself as a potential mediator without plainly stating that the cause of the conflict was Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. As a result, the Ukrainian government has accused China of playing both sides of the war.

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