China Eyes Two Wins on Ukraine: Ending Russia's War and NATO's Expansion

China is eyeing a potential double victory for the country's national interests in achieving a resolution for the crisis in Ukraine, one that puts an end to Russia's war against the neighboring country while also addressing the expansion of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry quoted its leader as offering a dual approach to not only bringing an end to the war but addressing core concerns that both China and Russia see as having helped stoke the conflict launched one month ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"All sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace," Xi was cited as saying during the highly anticipated conversation. "The U.S. and NATO should also have dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine."

Asked Wednesday by Newsweek about what Beijing's ideal outcome for ending the ongoing hostilities looks like, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told a virtual press briefing that "the immediate outcome" must be "to solve the crisis now, because we have to stop the loss as soon as possible because we don't want to have the situation escalate to the extent that we cannot control."

"This crisis should be ended in a way of negotiation, those two sides coming to the middle way through negotiation," Liu said.

"They have their concerns," he added. "If the concerns have been addressed, I think they could end the military action, and then they go back to the negotiating table, like what has been done during the Minsk-II agreements many years ago. So I think that will be the roadmap for the solution."

In the longer term, however, when it comes to outstanding issues regarding NATO's post-Cold War expansion and growing U.S. military activities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, including the Asia-Pacific region near both Russia and China, Liu said "that concern should be addressed" as well.

"China stands for peace, importance of law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine, should be respected and upheld. The purpose and principles of the U.N. Charter should also be jointly upheld," Liu said. "And at the same time, there is a complexity in the history of the Ukraine issue and the legitimate security demands of every party, including Russia, ought to be taken seriously."

And while Liu said China was willing to play a supportive role in ongoing talks between Russia and Ukraine, he noted that it was up to the U.S. and NATO to also make decisions to help bring about an end to the war.

"The key for the solution of this crisis is in the hands of NATO and the U.S., not in the hands of China," Liu said. "But anyway, China, as I said, has already been making efforts to promote those dialogues. So we would also like to encourage the U.S., the NATO members, to all be engaged in the peace talks, and also engaging in the negotiation, which is undergoing now between Russia and Ukraine."

China has long voiced its opposition to NATO's expansion, a stance encoded in the joint statement released following Xi and Putin's summit early last month at the beginning of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, which ended just a day before Russia's incursion into Ukraine began.

While Beijing's negative views toward NATO date back decades, including the notable 1999 incident in which the U.S. bombed China's embassy in Belgrade as part of an allied campaign against Yugoslavia, killing three and injuring at least 20 more, concerns toward the bloc's expansion have been amplified in recent years as Washington turned its focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Here, the U.S. has formed a new alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom and has expanded cooperation with another coalition known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comprised also of Australia, India and Japan.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng linked the two issues during an address delivered Saturday, a day after Biden and Xi's talk, at a security forum hosted by the Tsinghua University's Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing, where he said that "the root cause" of the war in Ukraine "lies in the Cold War mentality and power politics."

"First, one should not seek its own absolute security," Le said. "Since NATO made a promise back then, it should not renege on its word and keep pushing its boundary eastward. The pursuit of absolute security actually leads to absolute insecurity."

"Second, bloc politics and group confrontation should be rejected," he continued. "Military bloc is a Cold War vestige. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO should have been consigned to history alongside the Warsaw Pact. However, rather than breaking up, NATO has kept strengthening and expanding."

Closer to China's own borders, he called out the Quad's "Indo-Pacific strategy" specifically, warning such moves "provoke trouble, put together closed and exclusive small circles or groups, and get the region off course toward fragmentation and bloc-based division," something he argued "is as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in Europe."

"If allowed to go on unchecked, it would bring unimaginable consequences, and ultimately push the Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss," Le warned.

The conflict in Ukraine was precipitated by failed negotiations between the U.S. and its NATO allies on side and Russia on the other on the future Eastern European security as Putin sought to roll back the Western bloc's military presence and activities in what was the former Soviet sphere of influence while at the same time building up troops near Ukraine's borders.

Since the war erupted, NATO has only doubled down on its military assistance to Ukraine and the deployment of troops and equipment to the eastern flank.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced Wednesday that multinational battlegroups formed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in 2014 after pro-Moscow separatists first rose up in eastern Ukraine and Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula amid a political uprising that brought to power a pro-West government in Kyiv would be expanded to include Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as well.

The U.S. and its allies have also rallied an international wave of broad sanctions against Russia, a campaign that China has refused to join, citing its opposition to measures of economic coercion.

Washington's impasse with Beijing comes after years of souring relations over other issues, including U.S. allegations that China has committed human rights abuses and repression in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, and overgrowing U.S. ties with Taiwan, a self-ruling island claimed by Beijing but backed by Washington. These areas of contention, especially over Taiwan, featured prominently in the Chinese readouts of talks between Biden and Xi and between White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi days earlier in Rome but were largely absent from the U.S. account.

Speaking during Wednesday's press briefing, Liu said that there was no direct link between the situations in Taiwan and Ukraine, but China's position was resolute on both nonetheless.

"China's position on the Taiwan issue has not changed, and we always request that the U.S. administration abide by the One China policy whether there is Ukraine crisis or not," Liu said. "So that is not to be connected with the Ukraine crisis."

And on sanctions, he added that "we firmly oppose the sanction, whether there's a Taiwan issue, or it's in the Ukraine crisis," citing Beijing's own experience with such restrictions.

"We have been imposed by the U.S. side with many, many, I mean, countless sanctions, already we have 1,000 entities on the sanction list in the U.S. administrations," Liu said. "So, I mean, our position is very clear. We oppose sanctions because sanctions cannot solve the problem."

The Biden administration has also threatened Beijing with unspecified "consequences" should it move to support Moscow economically or militarily, a threat the U.S. leader was said to have outlined in detail to Xi during their phone call.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price reiterated this warning during a press conference Wednesday.

Citing earlier warnings by Sullivan, Price said U.S. officials "will be watching closely" and asserted "that any effort on the part of the PRC to help Russia escape the worst consequences of the economic and financial measures that the international community has been has imposed on it would be a great concern and would be met with severe implications."

He acknowledged, however, that "we haven't seen any indication that the PRC has provided that support."

And while Price said the Biden administration felt it was "irresponsible" for China to back on Russia's concerns regarding U.S.-tied biological researching facilities that Moscow has alleged may host biological or chemical weapons, a claim roundly rejected by Washington, he also acknowledged that China and Russia enjoy a unique bond that the U.S. was not in a place to break.

"The PRC and Russia have a relationship that is distinct, certainly, from the relationship that we have with Russia or that most countries around the world have with Russia," Price said. "It is not for us to tell any country how its relationship with Russia or the PRC or any other country, for that matter, must look."

Rather, he added, "it is for us to lay out very clearly the implications on decisions that would have a bearing on our national security, on the safety and security of our allies and partners, including our NATO Allies."

Liu, for his part, stated Wednesday that China had neither been asked for military support nor was it inclined to provide it.

"Russia has not sought for China's military support, and we have not provided military support to any of the parties related," Liu said. "And I don't think that position will be changed in the future because at the very beginning of this crisis we did not agree with the U.S. sending weapons to Ukraine."

What Beijing has been sending, Liu stated, is humanitarian aid to Ukraine, including in the form of food, baby formula and sleeping bags as part of a six-point initiative earlier introduced by Chinese officials to address the crisis.

Now, he argued, it was up to the U.S. and others to take serious steps toward support a diplomatic resolution to a conflict he said China too stood against.

"We oppose the war," Liu said. "This is the basic position and the other position then, as I said, we have to stop the loss as soon as possible before it's too late before it will escalate. This is why we are calling for all the parties to engage immediately into the negotiation peace talks."