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Opinion | Ukraine war: why China’s peace road map is the only one on the table
- State information campaigns are driving escalation, as are increased losses on both sides
- Normalisation will require neutral arbiters who highlight common ground, such as that offered by trade in key commodities. Currently, China is the sole remaining neutral superpower
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Why you can trust SCMP
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War is always a tragedy. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine shows no signs of winding down. On the contrary, it is stuck in an escalatory spiral. Nato is supplying Ukraine with increasingly powerful weapons, including tanks, and Russia is not idly waiting for a Ukrainian offensive.
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Against this backdrop, the sole remaining neutral superpower entered as peacemaker. China offered an “off-ramp” in its peace proposal, and President Xi Jinping reiterated some of the points in his op-ed in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday. Russia’s government welcomed the road map. Western leaders have rejected it.
It is important to recall that early attempts at a settlement in March and April last year failed. Since then, successive attempts at peace have not achieved results due to a mutual lack of trust.
To understand why Beijing offered the only peace road map on the table, two factors driving escalation need to be considered, as do the risks of continuing down this path for China and Asia.
First, the information campaign that began in February 2022 makes normalisation a distant prospect. As most Western institutions – from governments to business and even academia – raced to break away from Russia, the prospect of finding common ground has been significantly reduced.
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With streets and social media covered in Ukrainian flags, the political will needed to “explain away” the conflict becomes unattainable. Escalation remains the politically acceptable option and thus sets the direction.
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