Front Burner - Can China help bring peace to Ukraine?

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

For more than a year the possibility of peace in Ukraine has seemed out of reach. But this week, a new world leader stepped in with an offer to mediate. After months of waiting, this week Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone. Zelensky described the call as "meaningful" and as a potential step toward the elusive goal of peace. China says it plans to help facilitate communication between Russia and Ukraine. Emma Graham-Harrison is the senior international affairs correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer. She has lived in China and is currently reporting from Ukraine. Today, she takes us through what Xi Jinping is proposing, whether China could bring peace to Ukraine and whether there is reason to be skeptical.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Alex Panetta. We are now more than a year into this brutal war in Ukraine. And all this time, the chance for peace has seemed remote.

But could that maybe, possibly, be changing? Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has been wanting for months to get China's President Xi Jinping on the phone. And I want to speak with him because I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn't have. And I really wait when our teams will find a solution. You'd like to, but no plans at the moment. Yes, yes. Would you invite him here? It's finally happened. They talked this week for almost an hour.

Zelensky described the call as meaningful and as a potential step toward that elusive goal, peace. And China has a proposal for peace talks. So what does it all mean? Today I'm joined by a person with a great perspective on this, Emma Graham Harrison. She's spent a lot of time in China and in Ukraine. She's the senior international affairs correspondent for The

Guardian and The Observer. She's going to take us through what Xi Jinping is proposing, talk about whether China could bring peace to Ukraine, and whether there's reason to be maybe a bit skeptical. maybe a bit sceptical. Hi, Emma. Hello. I want to get into China's peace proposal. But first, did any concrete action come out of this phone call? No, and I think the sort of concrete action really was the phone call itself. I mean, we've had months of Zelensky asking politely, obviously, to speak to Xi, multiple meetings, conversations between

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And you had, to me, quite an extraordinary scenario where Xi Jinping had put forward or China had put forward a peace plan for Ukraine without even having a conversation with Ukraine's leader. That's something. Well, Xi said he wants to send a peace delegation to Ukraine, if I understand correctly. So do we know who's in this delegation? So, I mean, Xi Jinping did indeed say that he would send a delegation with senior officials. I think it's interesting that while this was a focus of the Chinese side's summary of this conversation, of course, it was a private conversation. Zelensky's summary of the conversation had a very different focus. He didn't really talk about negotiation or the delegation. He just said he hoped China would have an active participation

in efforts to restore peace. So in the call, President Xi reportedly said Beijing will neither watch the fire nor add fuel to the fire nor take advantage of the crisis to profit. Now, what do you make of those remarks? Who might he be talking about there? I mean, I think you can see those comments as a fairly thinly veiled dig at the West, really. It's China trying to sort of differentiate itself essentially from the US and Europe, criticising them for providing weapons to Ukraine, and sort of trying to underline that China isn't providing weapons to Russia. There's certainly been talk that they are considering doing so. We've had warnings from the White House that they're sort of considering that. They've also been transferring to Russia, selling to Russia some

dual use technology, the type of stuff that's not specifically for military use, but can be used for military purposes. So yeah, I think that should really be seen as a very thinly veiled criticism of the US and Europe in an attempt to sort of cast China as being a more neutral country, perhaps with more of a moral high ground in this conflict. Well, on the question of moral high grounds, I would imagine that the view in some Western capitals might be, well, that's pretty rich. I mean, China's described its no-lim limits alliance with Russia, the invading country. Putin and Xi recently met for days, you talked about dual use technology. So what is the state of the Russia-China alliance? So Russia is incredibly important to China. You know, if you

look at sort of China's vision for itself on the world stage, particularly under Xi, who's made China much more sort of globally assertive, you know, who's who sort of changed China's attitude to diplomacy, we've had things like, you know, both economically, politically, China getting much more involved, being much more assertive and aggressive. And, and China's allies, its staunch allies, don't really include many geopolitical heavyweights. You know, there's countries like Pakistan, certainly, it's a large country, the large population, nuclear arms, but you know, it's not a geopolitical heavyweight. And really, the only country that is lined up firmly beside

China, that is a sort of global power with, you know, military, energy, economic reach, even in its current state diminished after military failures in Ukraine, the economic impact of sanctions. They really only have Russia. And I think you can see the importance of Russia to China. They've got a long history of mutual suspicion. Obviously, when both were communist states that came out very strongly in the Sino-Soviet split. But just before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we saw this commitment from China to a no-limits partnership with Russia. And I think that really sums up how important Russia is to China.

So let's talk a bit about this peace plan. It has 12 points. It's called China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis. So let's talk a bit about this peace plan. It has 12 points. It's called China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis. It was actually published by the Chinese government back in February. And some things it outlines are stopping sanctions, prioritizing humanitarian operations, and abandoning the quote-unquote Cold War mentality. So where did China come up with all this, And did it actually consult with Ukraine and Russia first? So certainly, there will have been consultations. But I would just come back

to the point that, you know, drawing up a peace plan for conflict in which you've spoken repeatedly to the leader of one country, the country that invaded the other country, and you have not had a conversation with the leader of the country that has been invaded, I think is a pretty clear statement of where your priorities lie, frankly. China's talking also about limiting the expansion of weapons in this conflict, specifically nuclear weapons. China is talking about not having that nuclear saber being brandished. What do you make of that, the points from Beijing about nuclear weapons? Well, you know, I think that's very interesting, because there's a very clear

sort of point to be made here, which is that there's only one party to this war that has nuclear weapons. So there's only one party that can decide to deploy them. So, you know, China may have been talking to Zelensky, you know, the leader of Ukraine, but if they're talking about concerns about nuclear escalation, that to me reads more like a warning to Putin, you know, a way of China saying this is something we really, really don't want to see. And also China being seen on the world stage to be acting as a responsible partner, you know, pushing back against what is certainly a major concern of people and governments around the world, the possibility of nuclear escalation. So I think China is both concerned about it as everyone else

is and obviously wants to be seen to be making that point as well in public. Okay, just one last question about the plan. And there's a potential sticking point in there about territorial integrity. China wants the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries to be upheld. What's the problem with that? Do you see an issue there? You know, the problem is Russian forces now still, despite impressive Ukrainian military gains over the first year of the war, Russia still occupies nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory. And it doesn't just occupy it. It's held these sham referendums to try and legitimize its presence and claim that it has popular support for those parts of Ukraine to become instead parts of Russia.

So it's claiming those as its territory. So there's an argument, you have two countries both claiming the same area as part of their territory. Russia's is not recognized internationally, but China is a close ally. So it's unclear where they stand on that. Is there anything in there that you think is likely to lead to peace? Anything in there you think is problematic? I think rather than talking about what's in the peace plan, you have to consider whether or not the two sides are ready to come to the table at the moment. And particularly when it comes to Russia, you know, Putin invaded Ukraine without provocation, although, of course, he and to a degree China would argue that there was provocation.

And, you know, he's despite military setbacks, he's continued on that path. And we've seen, you know, he's doubled down, we've seen Wagner emptying Russia's prisons to sort of send badly trained fighters to the front lines. And so I mean, I think to come to the negotiating table, you have to, it's a truism, but you have to be at a point where both parties consider that they have not got very much left to gain through military action, or at least that the cost of military action might be outweighed by the benefits. And I just think we're so far off from that point that going through the Chinese proposal as a sort of roadmap for negotiations is just a bit premature. Vladimir Zelensky himself, his reaction has been less than exceptionally enthusiastic, right? So how's he kind of greeting this, especially the questions about territorial sovereignty that China's raised?

Well, you know, I think Zelensky's in a really interesting and that it's not going to abandon Russia as an ally and suddenly start sort of moving towards Ukraine. That said, China's support for Russia could range from very proactive material support of weapons to a more broad political support. And we've seen already from Xi that he's clearly had some unhappiness about how the invasion has played out. We had Putin last September saying that Xi had questions and concerns about the war. And so I think what Zelensky seems to be trying to do is basically courting Beijing through the conflict. He said in February, Zelensky said to De Veldt, I'd like Beijing to be on our side. At the moment, however, I don't think it's possible. So I think Zelensky is very realistic about the fact that China is not suddenly going to become an ally of Ukraine. However, I think what they do consider realistic,

and this is the sort of general thrust of Ukrainian foreign policy and policy towards China, is to at least curb the extent to which China is politically supportive of Moscow, continues an alliance that's quite close in terms of a lot of their trading relationship, but doesn't actively get involved in the war in terms of supplying arms and other things like that to Russia. Now, let's talk about who holds what territory. Ukraine's supposedly gearing up for this spring counter-offensive and Ukrainian officials are desperate to make some gains. Do you think the results of that operation could potentially dictate Ukraine's willingness to negotiate? if Russia is humiliated again militarily as it was, you know, when it failed to take Kiev, when it was pushed out of thousands of square kilometers around Kharkiv last spring, when the Ukrainians took back Kherson, the only regional capital that the Russians have managed to seize in this full-scale invasion, that it could push, perhaps not Putin, but people close to him to

consider more seriously some kind of peace talk. So yes, there has been some discussion among Ukraine's allies that this is sort of a key moment setting up for talks. I would say that in Ukraine, that is very much not how this is seen. You know, there's still a strong commitment within Ukraine, both from the government and from ordinary Ukrainians to reclaiming all the territory that Russia has taken it at least publicly. And that's somewhere where I'd say, you know, Ukraine and its allies aren't aligned. There's concerns that this is going to be much more difficult for Ukraine than, you know, even the pretty impressive military feats of defending Kyiv, of liberating parts of Kharkiv, because Russia's troops have had so long to dig in

defensive lines in the areas where Ukraine might try to attack. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people,

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Couples. Does China even want peace? I mean, in this war, China's getting cheaper Russian gas. It's watching its nemesis, the United States, exhaust its weapons stockpiles. The U.S. weapons industry now has a major backlog in supplying Taiwan. So on a strategic level, I mean, isn't this great for China? I mean, do you think Beijing really even wants peace? I mean, I think if you look at this conflict from another perspective, you see a West which appeared very weak and very divided after, for instance, you know, the Taliban took Afghanistan after, you know, Assad managed to reassert his position in the Syrian civil war. Suddenly incredibly unified, backing a country which is militarily humiliating a bigger, richer and better armed neighbour. Everybody's very aware that that has

required Western support. But still, it's Ukrainians on the ground who have done it, defying everybody's expectations, except perhaps their own. And, you know, I think ultimately, were Ukraine to emerge from this 100% victorious with everything it wanted to achieve, and Russia, you know, would be extremely, extremely badly damaged by that outcome, it would leave China without its biggest and most important ally in a world in which it is effectively challenging US geopolitical leadership. And certainly there are advantages to China for what's happening now. And as we've discussed, its relationship with Moscow is certainly not one that's entirely based on mutual trust or affection. It's a marriage of convenience, a strategic alliance. So it's not to say that

China isn't happy to see both Russia and the US take a hit. But I think ultimately, Beijing would not want to see, would not be happy seeing Russia badly unilaterally defeated in this war. So yes, I think China does have an incentive to both push for negotiations and try to do as it seems to be doing carefully calibrated support for Russia, and perhaps the advice it's giving Moscow about how it carries out this war. It's been a big month. China's on this international charm offensive. She meeting with the President of France, meeting with the EU Commissioner, war. It's been a big month. China's on this international charm offensive. You know, she meeting with the president of France, meeting with the EU commissioner, but it's diplomatic initiatives go way beyond Europe. China's ramped up its peacekeeping profile through the UN

Security Council. Last month, it helped Saudi Arabia and Iran reach a deal to restore diplomatic relations. There's also this new leak from the Pentagon saying that China's secretly building military facilities in the Middle East. What's China's big global strategy here? What's it trying to do in the world? You know, I think China sees itself as a competitor to the US in the world order. And it's not entirely clear whether Xi Jinping thinks that, you know, an American superpower and a Chinese superpower can coexist, or whether he thinks that they're locked in competition. Certainly, he's made clear that he thinks that the US is threatened by China's rise and is trying to contain it, to undermine it, to limit it. And so I think a lot of what he's doing is aimed at trying to break free of that,

to undermine the US, the European constraints on China, growing its economy, growing its ability to project both military and political power around the world. Okay, now we've gone through a bunch of potential pitfalls in this Zelensky call. But you know, is it in any way encouraging? Should we be encouraged by the fact that you know, finally, people are talking even preliminarily about peace? Absolutely. It's very important. You know, I think we can just take Zelensky's lead on that in a way, you know, the fact that he's been publicly pushing for this call for so long is a clear sign of how important it is. There's no question that China is going to abandon Russia, move away from its alliance

with Russia. The question is, how does it support Russia? To what extent does it support Russia? And the answers to those questions really potentially have a very strong bearing on how this war plays out. So the fact that, you know, Xi spoke to Zelensky, that he heard the Ukrainian position, which is what a lot of Western allies of Zelensky, European countries have been sort of urging China to do, you know, speak to Zelensky, hear the Ukrainian position firsthand, is really important. And, you know, speak to Zelensky, hear the Ukrainian position firsthand, is really important. And, you know, it is worth noting that China and Ukraine did, before this full-scale invasion, did have a good relationship. I think Zelensky and Xi had spoken

in early 2022 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of bilateral ties, you know, after they'd established diplomatic ties after Ukraine's independence. So there is a strong economic relationship that precedes this current war for Zelensky to build on. So absolutely, it's really an important moment. And you know, that's the reason why Zelensky and his allies had been pushing for it. That feels like a perfect place to end. It's almost the weekend. Why don't we let this optimistic note linger for a little while longer?

Thank you very much, Alex. Thank you, Emma. Appreciate it. That's all for today. FrontBurner was produced this week by Lauren Donnelly, Rafferty Baker, Matt Amah, Jodie Martinson, Derek Vanderwyk, and Imogen Burchard.

Our sound design was by Sam McNulty and Mackenzie Cameron. Our intern is Constantino Varlokostas. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Alex Panetta. Thank you for listening to FrontBurner.