Hours before Russia began invading Ukraine in late February, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement that was clear and stern and didn’t really deal with Russia or Ukraine.
“Taiwan is not Ukraine,” the ministry’s spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told reporters in Beijing. “Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact.”
But with the bloody war in Ukraine coming to an end and tensions significantly rising in the Taiwan Strait, the two geopolitical challenges are intersecting in complex and unpredictable ways.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov wasted no time on Wednesday connecting the two, saying Chairman Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week was a “manifestation of the same course” that the United States had taken. struck in Ukraine. Although it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, he blamed the West for the conflict.
The fear since the start of the war in Ukraine has been that Moscow and Beijing will be drawn closer together, as the United States portrays both issues as a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy – as Mrs. Pelosi did in the spring during her visit to Ukraine. Ukraine and on Wednesday in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.
Our coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine
There are many differences between Ukraine and Taiwan, including history and geography. But both embattled democracies sit side by side with much larger, nuclear-armed military powers ruled by authoritarian leaders who have made it clear that they do not see their neighbors as sovereign states.
One big difference, of course, is that the United States and its allies support an independent Ukraine, but America’s “One China” policy does not support Taiwan’s independence, while it remains deliberately unclear whether Washington would defend Taiwan if Beijing attacks it.
As the nervousness, rhetoric and military attitude surrounding Ms. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan showed, many are wondering which path China will take and when.
The White House urged Ms. Pelosi not to visit Taiwan, reflecting Washington’s delicate balancing act as it plays a central role in both dramas, in an effort to strengthen the international order around Western values and start a wider conflagration. to avoid.
While Washington has now offered Ukraine more than $8 billion in direct military aid — part of more than $54 billion in aid that has proved a vital lifeline for Kiev — President Biden has repeatedly said he will not take action that could lead to a direct confrontation with Russia. So far, despite the mutual turmoil, Moscow has ensured that NATO is not drawn into the war.
The Biden administration has also worked to help maintain solidarity with and among Europe’s allies.
But a conflict with China over Taiwan would most likely divide the United States’ allies, especially in Europe.
“No one knows at this stage what the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict will be, but relations between Europe and Russia will never be the same,” wrote Philippe Le Corre, a French Chinese scholar and senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. in the Ouest-France newspaper. “With Asia, its remoteness – heightened by the absence of human contact and international travel for two years – is not favorable for a possible European involvement in a conflict in Taiwan or in the China Sea.”
And while China has offered rhetorical support to Moscow, it has avoided getting directly embroiled in the conflict. Beijing has not offered military aid to the Kremlin and has ensured that Western sanctions were not visibly undermined.
Both Russia and China are united in opposing what they view as US hegemony and the affirmation of global leadership. But China, aware that it is not ready for a major war and needs open world trade, has always been careful not to push its confrontation with Washington or its Pacific allies too far.
“I don’t think provoking the US over the Ukraine issue would be a response they would take,” said Steven Goldstein, an associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the director of the Taiwan Studies Workshop at Harvard University. . “If China gets mad at the US because of Taiwan, they punish Taiwan.”
“The biggest danger,” he said in an interview, “is that we run into something.”
The deeper the United States and China fall into a cycle of provocation, the greater the chance of a wrong move that could turn an abstract threat into war.