Brussels: China has offered the European Union assurances that it will seek peace in Ukraine but says it will be on its own terms, deflecting pressure for a tougher stance towards Russia.
Premier Li Keqiang told EU leaders that Beijing would push for peace in “its own way”, while President Xi Jinping said he hoped the EU would treat China “independently”, in a nod to Europe’s close ties with the United States.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during a video meeting with European Union leaders on Saturday.Credit:Xinhua/AP
The EU told Beijing during the virtual summit with Li and Xi that ended in the early hours of Saturday not to allow Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We called on China to help end the war in Ukraine. China cannot turn a blind eye to Russia’s violation of international law,” European Council President Charles Michel told a news briefing with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after the first EU-China summit since December 30, 2020.
“Any attempts to circumvent sanctions or provide aid to Russia would prolong the war,” he said.
Shortly after the video meeting ended, a senior Chinese diplomat said his country wasn’t deliberately circumventing sanctions on Russia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, top, speaks during a video meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, lower left, and European Council President Charles Michel, lower right.Credit:Xinhua/AP
Wang Lutong, director-general of European affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters that China was contributing to the global economy by conducting normal trade with Russia.
“China is not a related party on the crisis of Ukraine. We don’t think our normal trade with any other country should be affected,” he said.
Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine or call it an invasion and has repeatedly criticised what it calls illegal and unilateral Western sanctions.
“We oppose sanctions, and the effects of these sanctions also risk spilling to the rest of the world, leading to wars of the currency, wars of trade and finance and also risk jeopardising the supply chain and industrial chain and globalisatiom and even the economic order,” Wang said.
China is forging closer energy, trade and security ties with Moscow, positioning itself as a global force that can stand up to the United States. Several weeks before the February 24 invasion, China and Russia declared a “no-limits” strategic partnership.
Li told the EU leaders that China has always sought peace and promoted negotiations and was willing to continue to play a constructive role with the international community, state broadcaster CCTV reported. CCTV also reported Xi’s comments on an independent EU policy.
Michel said the two sides agreed that the war was threatening global security and the global economy.
Europe is trying to strike a difficult balance: giving China a stern warning over Ukraine, human rights and trade issues, while still trying to maintain the EU’s objective of re-engaging with the Asian giant.
“We called on China to help end the war in Ukraine,” Michel said. “China cannot turn a blind eye to Russia’s violation of international law.”
China’s Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.Credit:AP
Von der Leyen said leaders from both sides “exchanged very clearly opposing views” on many topics but hoped China would use its influence as a major power and permanent member of the UN Security Council to convince Russia it should put an end to the war.
She said trade between the world’s biggest economies was far greater than China’s economic ties with Russia.
More than a quarter of China’s global trade was with the bloc and the US last year, against just 2.4 per cent with Russia, an EU official said.
Ukrainian rescue workers carry an elderly woman under a destroyed bridge in Irpin, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, on FridayCredit:AP
China has concerns that European countries are taking harder-line foreign policy cues from Washington and has called for the EU to “exclude external interference” from its relations with China. In 2019, the EU abruptly switched from soft diplomatic language to label China a systemic rival.
The EU, Britain and the US have sanctioned Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, which prompted Beijing to retaliate in kind, freezing an already-negotiated EU-China investment deal.
China has since also suspended imports from Lithuania after the Baltic EU nation allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in its capital, angering Beijing which regards the democratically ruled island as its own territory.
Von der Leyen said Beijing needed to defend the international order that has made China the world’s second-largest economy. The West says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the United Nations charter.
“It is a defining moment because nothing will be like it was before the war. It’s now a question to take a very clear stance to support and defend the rules-based order,” she said.
Reuters, AP
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