China’s defense minister kicked off a three-day visit to Belarus this week amid mounting economic problems at home and tensions with the United States.
Defense Minister Li Shangfu met with Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin after arriving in Minsk on Aug. 16.
Gen. Li told his Belarusian counterpart that the relationship between Beijing and Minsk has been “continuously strengthening,” “steadily developing,” and “moving forward” in recent years, according to reports by Bleta, Belarus’s state-owned news agency.
Now, “we have truly fraternal relations,” said Gen. Li
He then said the bilateral trade increased by over 30 percent last year, noting China has become Belarus’s second-largest trade partner, Bleta reported.
Neither China’s defense ministry nor state media Xinhua mentioned those remarks. Beijing’s readout of the meeting briefly stated that the two defense ministers “exchanged views on the military relations between the two countries and the international security situation.”
The communist regime in Beijing has refused to join in international sanctions on Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine and has consistently taken the position that international financial actions against Russia are invalid, thus providing Russia with a vital economic lifeline in Chinese markets.
Minsk has historically enjoyed close ties with Moscow. A Kremlin spokesman has previously described Belarus as Russia’s “No. 1 ally.”
Since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, military cooperation between Russia and Belarus has gone into overdrive. Last fall, Russia sent troops and military hardware to Belarus under the aegis of the Union State treaty. Moscow upped the ante earlier this year, unveiling plans to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. In June, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said a number of Russian nuclear weapons had already arrived.
Meanwhile, the cooperation between Belarus and China has intensified. Mr. Lukashenko visited Beijing in March and was welcomed by Mr. Xi, China’s paramount leader.
Li’s Meeting With Lukashenko
On Thursday, Gen. Li sat down with Mr. Lukashenko, a close ally of Mr. Putin.“China and Belarus share the same main ideas of the current and future prospective world order,” Mr. Lukashenko said, according to Bleta. “We, together, have been demonstrating this for the past three decades.”
Gen. Li responded by praising the deepening bilateral ties, which he described as an “all-weather and comprehensive strategic partnership,” according to a summary of the meeting released by Xinhua.
Gen. Li also called for closer cooperation between Beijing and Minsk at the military level.
China’s Real Problem
In Russia, China’s defense chief took several veiled shots at the United States and reiterated Beijing’s stance on Taiwan. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, meanwhile, said bilateral ties with Beijing have “surpassed the level of strategic ties in all respects, becoming more than just allied.”But outside analysts say what drives them to deliver such messages appears to be the desire to shift attention from their real troubles at home.
“The show by the two defense chiefs was mainly for their domestic audience,” Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at Taiwan’s government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times on Wednesday.
Mr. Su said Russia is facing domestic troubles, and as the war in Ukraine drags on, the ruble has now hit a near 17-month low. He added that what complicates the situation is that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow is not as stable as it appears on the surface.
China, meanwhile, has “mounting problems at home, like what President Biden described, ‘a ticking time bomb,’” said Mr. Su.
He noted that U.S. imports from China have been falling, with the share of U.S. imports dropping to 13 percent in June, compared with a peak level of 21 percent in 2017.
Mexico replaced China to become the U.S. top trade partner, with its share of U.S. imports rising over 15 percent in June.
“That means Beijing’s position as the ‘world’s factory’ has been gradually replaced,” said Mr. Su.
Strained US-China Ties
The Chinese defense minister’s trip came as the Sino-U.S. relationship is strained over a range of issues, from the communist regime’s economic espionage to assertive military actions against Taiwan. The recent spat was sparked by a Chinese spy balloon that traversed over the United States for several days before being shot down.While the Biden administration is working to restart high-level dialogues with China—such as sending three cabinet officials to Beijing in a span of a month and inviting China’s new foreign minister to Washington—some China observers say there’s a small chance that bilateral ties will improve.
“To solve its economic problems at home, China needs the European and American markets,” said Mr. Su.
“But the deepening Sino-Russia partnership would nevertheless make the ties between China and the United States get worse,” he said. “So I think the CCP’s foreign policies are paradoxical.”
