- China is becoming more involved in the Ukraine war, raising alarm in the West.
- As the West warns China could send weapons, experts are torn over Beijing's goals and endgame.
After largely staying on the sidelines during the first year of the Ukraine war, China is creeping toward increased involvement in the conflict. China offering full support to the Kremlin or providing Russia with weapons like drones and artillery could catalyze a wave of consequences on and off the stalemated battlefield.
Beijing doesn't want Russian President Vladimir Putin to fail in Ukraine, China experts say, but it's still unclear how far it will go to help the Kremlin in return for perks like buying Russian oil at steep discounts.
"China does not want to get too involved in the war and wants to continue to keep its options open," Susan Thornton, former acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department, told Insider.
"It doesn't want the war to drag on with all the attendant instability, but it doesn't want Russia to lose or the regime to collapse," Thornton added.
But other experts see few signs that China wants to see the conflict end soon, despite the long-term risks of being drawn into a more direct confrontation with Western powers.
China wants to see the war "prolonged without Russia being humiliated," June Teufel Dreyer, a China expert at the University of Miami, told Insider.
Prolonging the conflict "will further deplete Western arms inventories and cost it a lot of money, vis-à-vis China making money," Dreyer explained. "Both could be useful if China decides to move against Taiwan."
Western leaders and officials have repeatedly warned that China is closely observing Ukraine for lessons regarding Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province. There are worries that if Ukraine eventually falls — which appears unlikely as things stand — then China will view this as a signal that the time is right to follow Putin's lead and move to seize the self-governing island democracy by force.
Though China claims to be neutral in the war, it announced a "no limits" partnership with Russia last year and has refused to condemn the Kremlin over the invasion. Chinese state media has echoed the Kremlin's propaganda on the war and the Chinese government has slammed the West for sanctioning Russia. In a sign of the deepening ties between Moscow and Beijing, China's top diplomat traveled to the Russian capital last week — as US President Joe Biden visited Kyiv.
"Taking a neutral position in the Ukraine war has been a net negative for China, since it's not nearly the affirmative support that Russia wanted and is certainly not the genuine neutrality that would've at least placated NATO, given that it would be unrealistic for Beijing to side against its strategic partnership with Moscow," Dreyer said.
And China has a lot to gain from abandoning its purportedly neutral stance, including "accessibility to abundant supplies of Russian oil" and the potential for Moscow to become "even more of a junior partner" to Beijing than it already was, Dreyer said.
'We have to remain vigilant'
The US in recent days has warned that Beijing could send weapons to Russia, which would provide a much-needed boost to Moscow's fledgling war effort and depleted stockpile of munitions. The Biden administration has warned China there would be serious consequences for such a move.
Beijing has forcefully pushed back on suggestions it will send lethal aid to Moscow, but the US and its European allies are still on alert.
"China has always told us they are not providing arms to Russia and they don't plan to do it, very much explicitly," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told CNBC on Friday.
"But certainly, we have to remain vigilant," Borrell added.
Meanwhile, China recently unveiled a peace plan for Ukraine, which was effectively met with eye-rolling in Washington. "I've seen nothing in the plan that would indicate that there is something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia if the Chinese plan were followed," Biden said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 26, 2023
China's proposal called for the sovereignty of all countries to be respected, but didn't push for Russian troops to withdraw from the Ukrainian regions they are occupying.
Richard Lawless, former undersecretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that China's peace plan was designed to "distract from the obvious — a continuing Chinese lean-in to support Vladimir Putin."
"Xi Jinping and his team will continue to exploit this crisis to China's advantage, delivering just enough in the balancing act to play both sides," Lawless said.
Similarly, Dreyer dismissed the peace plan as a "performative utterance that would be believed by only the exceptionally gullible — sizeable numbers of whom do appear to exist — or those who hope for economic gain or fear Chinese economic sanctions if they don't back Beijing's peace plan."
It's "plausible" that China introduced the peace plan expecting the West to reject it, with the overall intention of using this as cover to provide weapons to Russia, Dreyer told Insider.
That said, Thornton is skeptical that China would send lethal weapons to Russia and become more entangled with the war because it would risk Beijing's ties with Europe.
"But there are a lot of Chinese companies and it's a big country — things can happen, and if there are shipments, they will be detected and things will get worse," Thornton added.