Days before Russia’s unprovoked 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) top foreign policy official claimed that Beijing respects the sovereignty and independence of all nations, including Ukraine. Days afterward, the PRC abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote demanding Russia stop its attack on Kyiv.
A decade earlier, the PRC pledged “to provide corresponding security assurances to Ukraine in the event of aggression or threat of aggression against Ukraine using nuclear weapons.” When those threats came, the PRC sided with the aggressor, amplifying Russian propaganda that attempted to justify the invasion and criticizing economic sanctions intended to stop the attack.
More than 50 years ago, Beijing became a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with the attendant commitment to help maintain international peace. Today, world leaders denounce the PRC as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war effort.
The PRC is Russia’s largest supplier of commercial goods and dual-use parts used in weapons such as missiles, drones and tanks, according to the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a Berlin-based think tank.
NATO Allies in early July 2024 condemned Beijing’s military support for Moscow, warning in a declaration approved by the security alliance’s 32 leaders that “the PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without negatively impacting its interests and reputation.”
Their statement called on the PRC to cease support for Russian efforts to end Ukrainian democracy, including “the transfer of dual-use materials, such as weapons components, equipment and raw materials that serve as inputs for Russia’s defense sector.”
Although the PRC “has heeded warnings not to supply Russia with full weapons systems, it has done everything short of that, providing computer chips, advanced software and the components needed for Russia to rebuild a defense industrial base that churned out faulty and outdated equipment,” The New York Times newspaper reported.
IMAGE CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
NATO’s declaration did not specify consequences for the PRC’s actions, although the United States has suggested expanded sanctions could block Beijing from global markets.
“If this PRC support continues, it will degrade its relations across Europe, and the United States will continue to impose sanctions on PRC entities involved in this activity, in coordination with our European allies,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told The New York Times.
The PRC denies providing military assistance to Russia, but the authoritarian neighbors maintain close ties, with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting most recently in Beijing in May 2024. The regimes also have abandoned work with Europe to limit North Korea’s illegal nuclear arsenal while increasing military exercises and other engagements, according to media reports.
In June 2024, the PRC refused to attend a peace summit for Ukraine, partly because the talks did not include Russia.
NATO’s statement also criticized the PRC’s sustained international cyberattacks, information manipulation and coercive tactics.
Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea joined the 2024 NATO talks, the third year in a row that the Indo-Pacific nations attended the summit.
