Xi’s bet on Putin to counter US risks leaving China isolated

Bloomberg

Xi Jinping bet that establishing a “no limits” friendship with Vladimir Putin could prevent the US from containing China. Now that agreement threatens to leave Beijing more isolated and alone.
A phone call between Xi and US President Joe Biden appeared to achieve no major breakthroughs. The US continued to threaten unspecified consequences if China provides support to Russia, and Beijing insisted it was supporting peace talks while blaming the US for triggering the conflict.
That dynamic so far appears to be pushing more countries to the US camp, with the European Union set to reinforce the American warning to Beijing at a virtual summit planned for April 1. China, meanwhile, is struggling to convince the world it’s a neutral player, as assurances to international audiences are undermined by messages at home affirming the China-Russia partnership.
The Communist Party’s reluctance to abandon Russia contains several key risks both for China and Xi personally.
In the near term, it could hurt Beijing’s relations with key trading partners when it still needs investment and key technologies to meet its development goals. Perhaps more significantly, it could heap pressure on Xi and the Communist Party if the war ends up backfiring on Putin.
“Xi seems to feel it’s very important to have Russia as a strategic counterweight to the US, both diplomatically and militarily,” said Julian G Ku, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University, who studies China and international law.
“But if Putin is unseated, or if Russia is dramatically weakened, this undercuts Xi’s basic foreign policy strategy of aggressively asserting China’s interests against the US and other countries.”
For now, Beijing is effectively supporting Russia’s rationale for the war as it distances itself from the fighting, a position
designed to support Russia
while avoiding any US sanctions that could hurt the Chinese economy.
China’s envoy to the US, Qin Gang, said China “will do everything” to de-escalate the war and said Beijing hadn’t sent any “weapons and ammunition” to any side.
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Communist Party backed Global Times newspaper, made the case for why China should stick with Russia in a post on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, where he has some 24 million followers. Hu didn’t post the comments to his Twitter account, where he often defends China’s policies to an international audience, suggesting they were intended for domestic consumption.
Hu Xijin called Russia the “most important partner” for China to use its strength to force the US to accept “peaceful coexistence” with the world’s second-biggest economy.