“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off” and “It takes two hands to clap.” With these simple dictums, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday rejected US President Joe Biden’s efforts to pressure Beijing into abandoning Russia on the Ukraine issue, while implicitly blaming Washington and its Nato allies for the crisis.
The two aphorisms were cited in a 1030-word Chinese foreign ministry statement on a video call between the two leaders that was an unalloyed take-down of US policies on both the Russia and China fronts. While nearly half the statement dealt with Beijing’s unhappiness about what it sees as Washington’s shifting sentiment on Taiwan, China also pushed back at the western narrative on blaming only Russia for the crisis, flagging the need to address Russia’s security concerns vis-a-vis NATO, which is the prime rationale advanced by Moscow for its action against Ukraine.
“All sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace. The US and NATO should also have a dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine,” the Chinese statement said.
Both in its censorious tone and length, the statement offered a sharp contrast to the White House’s brief 165-word readout on the call which said “President Biden detailed our efforts to prevent and then respond to the invasion, including by imposing costs on Russia.”
“He (Biden) described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,” the White House statement said, without elaborating on what consequences China would suffer. In an apparent rebuff to this threat, which was aired by Washington even before the talks, the Chinese statement cautioned that “sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions would only make the people suffer.”
“If further escalated, they could trigger serious crises in global economy and trade, finance, energy, food, and industrial and supply chains, crippling the already languishing world economy and causing irrevocable losses,” it warned.
“The more complex the situation, the greater the need to remain cool-headed and rational. Whatever the circumstances, there is always a need for political courage to create space for peace and leave room for a political settlement,” the statement added, going out to quote the two “Chinese sayings” which are actually quite universal.
The statement then lectured the US saying, “an enduring solution would be for major countries to respect each other, reject the Cold War mentality, refrain from bloc confrontation, and build step by step a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture for the region and for the world,” even as it positioned China as a major player on equal footing with the US.
“As permanent members of the UN Security Council and the world’s two leading economies, China and the US must not only guide their relations forward along the right track but also shoulder their share of international responsibilities and work for world peace and tranquillity,” the statement said, implicitly invoking a G-2 scenario.
In an apparent reference to Beijing’s disquiet over US utterances on Taiwan amid apprehensions in some quarters that China would do a Ukraine on Taiwan, the White House readout said Biden reiterated that U.S. policy on Taiwan has not changed, and he emphasized that the United States continues to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo.
Later, in a background briefing on the approximately two-hour video call, a Senior US administration official reiterated that Biden made clear to Xi “the implication and consequences of China providing material support — if China were to provide material support — to Russia as it prosecutes its brutal war in Ukraine” but declined to comment on specifics or “publicly lay out our options from here.”