China also loses in Ukraine

Countries, as well as individuals, aspire to be at the centre of the story. Realistically and symbolically, the centre controls the battle. It is very difficult to escape its symbolism. It is not for nothing that China calls itself Zhōngguó, The Country of the Centre.

Russia, for one reason or another, feels it has lost it, and wants it back. Everything suggests, however, that it has chosen the thorniest path and, in the process, has left China in an awkward position. Everyone is asking the same question: did China know that Russia would invade Ukraine? The question is very pertinent, because its answer will determine the very nature of future international relations.

Two facts seem to tip the balance on the side of those who think that China was aware of Russia's plans to invade Ukraine. The first is that in the preceding months, the US secret services repeatedly warned the Chinese authorities of Russian invasion intentions. These warnings were systematically rejected as unfounded by all levels of the Chinese government.

Even hours before the invasion took place on 24 February, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accused the White House of unnecessarily tensing the noose, creating panic and hype about the possibility of war. Truth be told, the Chinese were well within their rights, for who believes the Americans these days, bent as they are in the 21st century on seeing wars where there are none, and then withdrawing, once they have created them, and sold the relevant weapons in the process?

The second fact is that the Sino-Russian joint statement of 4 February announced to the world, to great fanfare, just before the invasion took place on 24 February, a firm alliance between two major nuclear powers, to the detriment of a third, the United States, and a stone's throw away, the European Community.

A key part of the declaration was its staging. The respective foreign ministers did not take centre stage. It was the two top leaders, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in person, following a trip to Beijing by the challenger to the sceptre, who staged a kind of new rules of the game that all international actors should take into account.

All this suggests that Beijing knew what the Americans sensed and the rest of us refused to acknowledge: that Putin would invade Ukraine.

However, something does not add up. There is a certain hand of Moscow (Рука Москвы), the one the Russians refer to, when the explanation of the story is so far-fetched that it seems it cannot be true, but that is why it is true, because that is the KGB's way of complicating things to make things their way and make it look as if they did not do it.

Moscow's hand, they say, was in the election of Trump in 2016. And some of that hand must have intervened in this episode to make that grandiose and firm staging and for Putin to simultaneously pass on the message that he would make a big military deployment short of invasion.
Before, unconditional support; now, just plain support.

The immediate consequence of this strategy has been that the Chinese, unfriendly to unexpected policy changes, have shifted from unconditional support to outright support, because they have felt somewhat betrayed. The Chinese press described the Russian intervention as a special military operation, avoiding calling it an invasion, which in principle runs counter to its principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.

How else can it be interpreted that while other countries were preparing their diplomatic corps and nationals resident in Ukraine to evacuate the country, the Chinese government was urging its 6. 6,000 residents to stay in their homes or to display a Chinese flag on their vehicles to make it clear that they were Chinese citizens, only to advise them two days later not to display any symbols that would reveal their origin in order to avoid retaliation by the Ukrainians against them, as China was being perceived as Moscow's ally in the invasion? Is it plausible to think that the Chinese government would leave its own citizens in the hands of God if it thought there was any risk to their lives?

What happened then? Each person tells what happened with the pieces they have of the puzzle, and places them according to their own perceptions and subjectivities to finish composing it, giving rise to a plausible story, neither completely true, nor completely false, in the purest style of the Rashomon effect.

What happens is that there are pieces, or cornerstones, around which everything is built. In the puzzle at hand, the cornerstone, which means that only one of the actors had that piece of the puzzle, was that no one was counting on Russia invading Ukraine, except Russia itself. Everyone else was playing a different puzzle, based on a different cornerstone, except for the aforementioned Americans.

To be sure, Chinese intelligence services, through their own satellites, had evidence of the massive concentration of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, apart from repeated warnings from their US counterparts. But what matters is never the data, or the evidence, but how one interprets it. Chinese history and philosophy has, by and large, been oblivious to encroachments beyond its borders.

The Land of the Centre is so called because what it had around it were states that paid tribute to it in exchange for peace. Rarely did they break this entente with their neighbours. It is therefore not unreasonable to think that the same attitude is assumed by other international actors, especially when they have just made a joint declaration of mutual understanding, however naïve this might seem at first glance. It should be noted, moreover, that there is a tendency to rule out far-fetched solutions, such as the option of invasion.

On the other hand, Sun Zi's view that it is better to win without fighting is deeply rooted in Chinese politics. From the Chinese point of view, the mere concentration of troops on the border is already a sufficiently decisive and coercive measure to achieve certain objectives, so it would not be necessary to go a step further and engage in battle. In Sun Zi's words, it is best to undermine the enemy's plans. Secondly, to activate diplomacy, and finally, if there is no other option, to engage in battle.

For these reasons, it is more plausible to think that those most surprised by the course of events are the Chinese themselves, who at no time thought that things would develop the way they have. Among Chinese political scientists, the dominant view was that there would be no invasion.

Even one of the best-known political scientists, Jin Canrong, from Renmin University, which happens to be the most knowledgeable in Beijing's political circles, publicly retracted his prediction on social media, apologising to internet users for misjudging the situation in Ukraine. My prediction (of a non-invasion) was wrong - I'll give myself a three-drink self-punishment," she joked.

On 25 February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself pointed out in a telephone conversation with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell and a French presidential adviser, in the first of the so-called five points, that China advocates respecting and safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and earnestly abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. This position is consistent and clear, and applies equally to Ukraine.

To think that the Chinese are the first to be surprised is not without naivety, but welcome, for it is true that China gains in principle in its alliance with Russia, but loses if Russia adopts, as it has adopted, the path of invasion. In fact, instead of vetoing the issue at the UN, its vote has been one of neutrality, along with India's, which is a way of saying that it does not agree with everything that has happened.

There have always been problems of a global nature that concerned humanity as a whole, but never have they been so blatantly brought to light as in this media age. There is the COVID-19 pandemic, and now this new conflict, also of a global nature, not to mention others, which concern us all.

The fabulous Greeks and the no less legendary Chinese fought for the centre, as have all peoples throughout history. Russia seems to be no different. Its cosmogony is later, but it obeys the same principle, that of trying to explain the birth of the world and thus to place itself at the centre of it.

The Greeks said that Zeus released two eagles at the extremes of the universe, East and West, so that one would go to meet the other, and that where they met, in that centre, a sacred stone would be erected, the omphalos or navel of the world, which would serve to communicate with the gods.

On the other hand, the Chinese make the birth of the universe coincide with the birth of Pan Gu, in the middle of the sky and the earth, which were together and mixed as if they were an egg... The Yang, which was clear, became the sky, and the Yin, which was cloudy, became the earth, and in the middle Pan Gu changed endlessly until his wisdom became as much as that of the sky and his strength as much as that of the earth. In all the stories the centre is in dispute.

In what has happened so far there are, of course, bad performances, bad actors, bad calculations and overacting, as in bad films. "Politics is like bad cinema. People overact," said the current Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelenski, in an interview with the New Yorker long before these events, in October 2019. "The big empires have always used small countries for their own interests, but in this chess game I will not let Ukraine be a pawn," he concluded.

It would be good if we could start acting differently, not worrying about selfishly placing the centre where it suits us best, and consider, for example, that the centre is our own planet. Perhaps then, great causes such as space exploration or sustainability - in short, the fate of humanity - could be approached differently. Is the country that bears the name of the centre the one called to lead this shift?

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.