China Trolls the World: ‘Everyone Is to Blame for the Ukraine Crisis—Except Us’

A man reads the Chinese state-run newspaper with coverage of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which supports Russia’s invasion, on a street in Beijing, China, on Feb. 24, 2022. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

As the U.S.-led Western world continues to fail in pressuring China to condemn Russia and its military operations in Ukraine, one is left to wonder: Are our policymakers just going through the political motions, repeating talking points that are passed down through think-tanks and academia, or are they truly just downright naïve?

China won’t condemn Russia. It wasn’t going to do it before, it’s not doing it now, and it will never do it in the future. The seeming inability for our leaders to comprehend—again, purposefully or not—this fact leads to deaf-mute policy responses that allow Beijing to falsely represent itself as the responsible actor in various scenarios.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has resolutely presented itself as the intermediary between the Western world and Russia, pretending to be the facilitator of peace. Its pronouncements refuse to condemn Moscow while simultaneously denouncing NATO expansion and careless U.S. foreign policy, claiming to somehow still support Ukraine’s absolute sovereignty; in other words, every party involved is to blame except for China.

This stance has manifested in Beijing’s role in major world events throughout the previous week.

While purporting to stand for compromise and peace, the CCP condemns all U.S.-led sanction attempts on Russia or other third parties (especially itself) as being contrary to international law. Instead, Beijing claims that it is the true champion of peace and human rights.

“The U.S. statement [on placing sanctions on China] is full of ideological bias and political lies, discrediting China and suppressing Chinese officials for no reason. What the United States has done violates international law and norms and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

In other words, the fact that the United States is even attempting to respond to Russia’s aggression is in bad faith because the United States does not live up to the standard it professes to represent.

This same sentiment was captured in Chinese state-controlled media’s coverage of the March 18 video call between CCP leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden.

Whereas Xi approached the talks in good faith and the hope for peace, Biden represents an “aggressive mode” of U.S. foreign policy that is “not a civilized manner of conducting international affairs,” according to Beijing’s mouthpiece People’s Daily.

The People’s Daily published other articles on the issue that discuss how the United States is “adding fuel” to the conflict, “reestablishing a new [geopolitical] inquisition,” and how its response is just thinly veiled racism!

(That latter point may play well for those American citizens who still pay attention to U.S. legacy media.)

This is compared to China, which is instead “peace-loving and accommodative.” One article states that “peace is a hallmark of China’s foreign policy.” Indeed, China has not overtly engaged in many overseas military engagements; however, do the same principles apply in Beijing’s domestic policies?

It would be hard to argue that peace is a hallmark of China’s internal governance for those who have dissenting opinions, belong to persecuted minority groups such as the Tibetans or Uyghurs, or wish to freely and openly engage in organized religion.

Supporters of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement rally in front of the British Embassy in Washington on April 16, 2021. The group calls for Uyghurs and other Turkic people fleeing Xinjiang to be granted refugee status and calls for an international boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Russian state media has been happy for a partner who is willing to stand up and say that the United States’ past foreign policy follies negate it from having the ability to condemn anything in the international arena. Their headlines proudly report that Washington was unable “to pit China against Moscow.”

Well, of course, it couldn’t. Again, are our leaders that naïve to believe that Beijing would have ever acquiesced to Western demands for it to denounce a situation from which it can gain a geopolitical advantage?

Instead, we have once again provided the CCP with the opportunity to assume the undeserved moral high ground. Beijing loves to play the nonjudgmental, more responsible older sibling watching over the international situation that has ensued because of the misbehavior of those miscreant, toddler-like Western democracies.

One of the other Chinese articles alluded to as much: “[Beijing’s maturity] is due to the fact that China is an ancient civilization, which has passed through many ups and downs in its long history, having learned in the process that peace ought to be the ultimate goal of humankind.”

Another article: “In the face of nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths, over 40,000 gun violence victims each year, and tens of thousands of victims of racial discrimination, the United States should reflect on its own human rights deficit.”

In other words, those silly Americans with their notions of natural rights, liberty, and personal autonomy rather than collective devotion to the centralized state and party. Better to live in total lockdown and constant government oversight over the CCP virus rather than undergo a personal cost-benefit analysis of one’s risks to the negligence-derived pandemic.

As for the issue of gun violence, misrepresented by the article, the notion of having a God-given right to self-preservation and duty to oppose tyrannical governance is enough to cause an involuntary outburst of hysterical laughter in a CCP Politburo meeting.

The last point about victims of racial discrimination, while also significantly exaggerated, is another line that would likely gain some head-nodding approval from those few still watching U.S. mainstream media, though.

The rupturing of ties between Western-aligned nations and Russia also provides plenty of room for China to step in as the ostensible peacemaker. This past week additionally saw the termination of negotiations between Russia and Japan for a peace treaty between the two over World War II. Once again, Beijing was one of the first nations to step in and denounce Tokyo’s acquiescence to the U.S.-led sanction regime against Moscow and urge all sides to mend ties and seek peace.

Still, treating China like another Western nation on the world stage is our own mistake. Even Beijing would agree with such an assessment. Instead, our pleas for the CCP to follow the U.S. lead and denounce Russia not only allows it to then look solid and firm in its conviction when it says no, but also allows China to pretend to be the cooler head urging restraint from all parties involved.

Standing up to the United States also wins applause from other rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea. “Russia stuck it to the United States, and economic heavyweight China came to their defense. Maybe if we also cause revisionist trouble in our neighborhood, Beijing will come to our aid as well.”

A realistic assessment of the geopolitical situation would lead the United States to expect less from China. Why our policymakers continuously fail to reach the appropriate conclusion from the given circumstances begs the same question as that asked at the beginning of this article: Do they even really believe what they are saying anyway, or are they just plain naïve?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.