Wang Xiangwei

China Briefing | Ukraine-Russia crisis: China benefits if the US pivots back to Europe, but it won’t want full-blown war – and would rather Taiwan doesn’t get mentioned

With Putin’s moves likely to hold the West’s attention for years yet, US attempts to contain China will take the back seat and Beijing will gain room to manoeuvre

But Beijing’s top foreign priority is a stable environment to develop its economy. Meanwhile, comparisons to Taiwan’s situation are the last thing it wants

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Russian armoured vehicles in the Rostov region, near to the border with Ukraine. Photo: EPA

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 9:30am, 26 Feb 2022Updated: 1:53pm, 9 Mar 2022

As one Chinese saying goes, no matter how much one plans things out, life always intervenes.

Back in 2000 and 2001, George W Bush, in his presidential campaign and in the first six months of his presidency, sharply criticised his predecessor Bill Clinton’s notion of “strategic partnership” with China and instead labelled Beijing as a “strategic competitor”, seeing China as a long-term threat.

Among other things, he pledged to do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan as his administration signalled it would enhance arms sales to the self-governing island.

His administration’s initial emphasis on an adversarial outlook on its relations with China deepened in April 2001 when a US navy spy plane accidentally collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea, sending bilateral ties into a tailspin.

Then everything changed on September 11 when the United States suffered its worst terrorist attack in history, prompting the Bush administration to focus on fighting terrorism worldwide as its overarching priority. Relations between the two countries were later to improve so much that Bush and his family attended the Beijing Summer Olympic Games in 2008 and at that time Chinese officials labelled his presidency as the best for US-China relations.

Now back to the present time. Just as US President Joe Biden has inherited Donald Trump’s chaotic but adversarial policies towards China and has gone one better by rallying America’s Western partners in a united front to contain Beijing (“the most serious competitor”), the Ukraine situation has exploded.