China wants the United States to yield to Russia’s demands for a NATO rollback, a senior diplomat told Secretary of State Antony Blinken just as trans-Atlantic officials offered a written proposal to avert a wider war in Ukraine without complying with Moscow’s ultimatum.
“The security of one country cannot be at the expense of the security of other countries, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by strengthening or expanding military blocs,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Blinken in a late Wednesday call, according to local media. “Russia’s reasonable security concerns should be taken seriously and resolved.”
Wang’s statement echoed Russian justifications for mobilizing forces near Ukrainian borders and publishing a “draft treaty” that would require NATO to close the door to any new members and ban U.S. and Western European militaries from operating on the territory of Eastern European allies. Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected those demands on Wednesday, while offering a written proposal to launch talks on a series of other subjects that they hope Russian President Vladimir Putin might accept as an opportunity to defuse the threat of a major assault on Ukraine.
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“There are important things to work with if Russia is serious about working with them,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that if Russia were to approach this seriously and in a spirit of reciprocity, with the determination to enhance collective security for all of us, there are very positive things in this document that should be pursued. We can’t make that decision for President Putin.”
Western officials have hoped that China would discourage Putin from sending the amassed Russian forces over the border, if only to preserve the appearance of peace during the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Chinese officials have sent mixed signals on that point, disputing a report that Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping encouraged Putin to avoid such an outburst of violence, only to issue a peace-minded statement.
“The Beijing Winter Olympics is around the corner,” Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said Tuesday. “China also strongly calls on all countries and parties to conflict to earnestly follow the tradition of truce and … seize the opportunity of the Beijing Winter Olympics to bridge differences through dialogue, and replace confrontation with cooperation, thus demonstrating the firm resolve of the international community to achieve peace, unity, and solidarity together for a shared future.”
“It’s my strong wish that all countries, parties to existing conflicts, will abide by the Olympic truce resolution,” Zhang said Wednesday. “Concerning the situation in Ukraine, we have heard from Russia that it is not their intention to launch any war. What we should do at this moment is to call on all parties to come to the negotiation table and to find the solution through dialogue.”
In the hours after the Western responses to the Russian proposals, Wang’s team hinted at their willingness to expand support for Moscow.
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“There is no ceiling to China-Russia mutual trust, no forbidden zone in our strategic cooperation, and no limit on how far our long-standing friendship can go,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday. “China and Russia see each other as a priority in our respective diplomacy, which is a strategic choice based on our respective long-term development. … We take no interest in and will not create the so-called alliances and small cliques put together out of selfish interests with the Cold War mentality featuring a binary thinking of seeing others either as a friend or an enemy.”
