As Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week, he claimed to be working towards a “true multilateralism” in which nations treat each other as equals and avoid “hegemonism and power politics” – a vocabulary the Chinese president returns to with regularity.
China is officially neutral in Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Xi has presented himself as a mediator, inviting Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and United States President Donald Trump to Beijing in December for talks.But China is not equidistant from the neighbours at war.
Xi’s “no limits” alliance with Putin, pronounced just before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, puts him in the camp of an aggressor bent on “hegemonism”, experts tell Al Jazeera.
Three decades ago, however, China was Ukraine’s ally, not Russia’s.
