BEIJING — In Beijing and Kyiv, the divide between China and Europe over the war in Ukraine was on display this week.
As a Chinese envoy crisscrossed Europe for talks on ending the war, his boss, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, trumpeted a sharp rise in China-Russia trade — which the West sees as providing an economic lifeline to Moscow that undermines the sanctions it has imposed to try to pressure Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
“Russian natural gas has entered thousands of households in China, and Chinese cars are driving in the streets of Russia, which fully demonstrates the strong resilience and broad prospects of mutually beneficial cooperation,” Wang said at an annual news conference on Thursday.
Hours later, Chinese envoy Li Hui was given a rundown of the horrors of the war by Ukrainian officials in Kyiv. It wasn’t clear how Li reacted. China released a terse statement on Friday saying only that Li arrived by train at noon, held candid and friendly talks, and departed by train the same evening.
The war has created a deep division between the West and China that threatens Beijing’s relations with Europe, a major trading partner, and further strained ties with the United States.
The U.S. and Europe have asked China and its leader, Xi Jinping, to use their close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to persuade him to end the war. That seems unlikely based on China’s official statements and state media coverage.
“We are opposed to any attempt to blame China or to shift the responsibility of resolving the Ukraine crisis to China,” Wang, the foreign minister, said last month at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
China has criticized sanctions on Russia rather than joining them and has accused the West of fueling the fighting by providing Ukraine with weaponry for its defense. It avoids the words “war” and “invasion” to describe the conflict and cites NATO expansion as a root cause.
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