While US President Donald Trump is doing everything he can to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin into his orbit, China is facing a foreign policy catastrophe, writes Focus.de.
Author Alexander Görlach points out that Xi Jinping is investing heavily in the strategic partnership with Russia. If Putin were to now move even closer to the US without Beijing having received sufficient compensation for its support for the Kremlin (for the war in Ukraine), it would be a disaster for Xi's foreign policy and would make him look weak. The Chinese president would not accept such a development without resistance.
Moscow and Washington held a historic meeting in Riyadh - the first of its kind since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. Moscow even seems to have managed to convince Donald Trump of the Russian view of the war. Trump called Ukrainian President Zelensky a "dictator" who started a war against Russia with US money. Trump also said that NATO was responsible for the outbreak of the war, not the aggressor in the Kremlin. The common foreign and security policy of the past seven decades lies in ruins, and NATO's future is in question. That should make Beijing happy, right?
Not quite: in Beijing, officials are deliberately trying to appear impartial and simply comment that China welcomes any initiative that can lead to peace. But behind the scenes, nerves are frayed. If Trump manages to drive a wedge between Putin and Xi Jinping, Beijing will no longer be able to benefit from Russia's isolation.
Since Putin began his war, Beijing has been supporting the Russian military machine and economy. In return, Beijing wanted to reap a certain dividend in the end. Just as the Trump administration is interested in natural reserves of rare earth minerals, Beijing may also be interested in them. The People's Republic dreams of a technology transfer from Moscow to Beijing, because Moscow is still ahead in some areas of defense technology. All of this is now in question.
Although Beijing has been radically supportive of Russia in recent years, the official statement has always been that the People's Republic is neutral. The fact that the superpowers the United States and Russia are only talking to each other is galling Xi. Because, as he has said more than once, he wants to return China to the ranks of world powers.
Some commentators in Beijing even say that Trump and his administration are trying (and succeeding) in dividing Russia and China. Trump always wants to negotiate only with individual players, never as a group. In this one-on-one situation, he calculates, he will have the upper hand, because the United States as a whole has many levers of influence. This is especially true when it comes to two world powers like Russia and China. Now China is facing a foreign policy catastrophe.