(Bloomberg) — Chinese President Xi Jinping has an opportunity to make history in pushing for a resolution to the war in Ukraine, the United Nations’ most senior official in China said, encouraging Beijing to take a more active part in ending the bloodshed.
“I see China as a country which can play an important role in mediating the crisis,” Siddharth Chatterjee, the UN’s resident coordinator in China told Bloomberg News. “China has the ability, it has the bandwidth. It has the sensitivity. It has the understanding of the complexity of the geopolitics.”
“To me, this is China’s Nobel Prize moment,” he added. “A real Nobel Peace Prize moment.”
Since Russia’s invasion, Beijing has sought to portray itself as neutral: Issuing statements supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and expressing concern about civilian casualties, while supporting Vladimir Putin at the UN and blaming the U.S. for provoking the war by encouraging the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Chatterjee said it was in “China’s interest” to see an immediate end to the conflict. “The Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative may start to falter,” he said, referencing Xi’s two flagship international investment and infrastructure projects. “We need peace and development for all these important initiatives that China has ongoing to be successful,” he added.
While China has said it’s pushing for a diplomatic solution, there are few signs Beijing is deeply involved in facilitating any talks with Ukraine and Russia, one of its main diplomatic partners. Xi has failed to speak yet with Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, unlike other potential arbiters including Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Israel’s Naftali Bennett.
China has also hampered UN efforts to put pressure on Moscow, abstaining from three actions at the UN condemning Moscow’s actions. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the abstenstions were meant “to give peace a chance” and oppose the use of “sanctions to address disputes.”
China has tried to use the UN as a vehicle to counter U.S. influence, with Xi last year telling the UN General Assembly that “there is only one international system” with “the United Nations at its core.”
This week, in a sign Beijing was calibrating its relationship with Moscow, China’s envoy to the U.S. said Xi’s “no limits” friendship with Putin did have a “bottom line” that included “the tenets and principles of the United Nations Charter, the recognized basic norms of international law and international relations.”
China’s support for Russia has also been largely in line with its own conflict with the U.S. stemming from the trade war. Chatterjee implored the world’s biggest economies to also improve ties, following a recent phone call between Xi and President Joe Biden that failed to achieve any concrete breakthroughs.
“This is perhaps a moment even more that we need the leadership of China of the United States to come together and look at how do we find solutions to some of these intractable problems,” he said. “No problem is impossible to overcome.”
The UN Security Council’s veto rules have historically prevented the global body from success at conflict or crisis resolution, according to Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University.
“But the UN still has an important bully pulpit function,” he said. “Imploring China to lead is another aspect of pressure that can and should be brought to bear on Beijing.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
