Xi’s losing bet on Putin is backfiring

Since Xi Jinping rose to power in 2013, China has pursued an increasingly self-isolating diplomacy of jut-jawed belligerence. Nothing better illustrates the damage done to Beijing’s global standing than Xi’s declaration of a “no limits” partnership with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. 

For starters, it was spectacularly mistimed. Xi announced the new Sino-Russian alliance during the Beijing Olympics in February 2022, just 20 days before Russia invaded Ukraine.  

There’s no indication that Putin gave Xi a heads up about the attack, though President Biden had repeatedly warned the world it was coming. The invasion put the Chinese leader on the spot because it brazenly violated two principles Beijing supposedly holds sacred — territorial integrity and non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.  

Nonetheless, China refused to support the United Nations resolution condemning Putin’s unprovoked aggression. Instead, Xi parroted the Kremlin line that NATO expansion poses a mortal threat to Russia’s security.  

Things didn’t go as the chummy autocrats expected. Putin thought Russia’s much bigger army would quickly crush his weaker neighbor; instead, Ukrainians rose up and hurled the invaders back. And having illegally “annexed” Crimea in 2014 to only perfunctory protests from the West, he wasn’t prepared for the furious global backlash to his attempt to erase Ukraine from the map.     

Putin’s “special military operation” has become a strategic debacle, making Xi’s embrace of his “best, most intimate friend” look like a bad bet.  

No doubt Xi had hoped to present the new Beijing-Moscow axis as a formidable rival to the United States and its democratic allies for global power and influence. But Russia’s surprising military stumbles in Ukraine have marked down its value as a potent ally.  

Even more shocking was the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenary force. Their June 24 march on Moscow demolished what was left of Putin’s image of ruthless competence. That Prigozhin has gone unpunished is probably seen in Beijing as a worrisome sign that Putin’s “power vertical” is less solid than it appears.  

Meanwhile, Russians are paying a stiff price for Putin’s neo-imperial dreams: Nearly 50,000 soldiers killed and tens of thousands more maimed. Their heavily sanctioned economy has contracted. Their leaders are shunned as pariahs by other great powers, and Putin himself can’t travel freely abroad lest he be arrested for war crimes.  

Mired in an illicit war he can’t win but can’t afford to completely lose, Putin seems likely to angle for a military standoff in Ukraine, adding yet another “frozen conflict” to his bloody legacy.  

Of course, Beijing derives some short-term benefits from the Xi-Putin pact. The West is preoccupied with supplying Ukraine with arms and economic aid, and China gets Russian gas and oil at a discount. 

In geopolitical terms, however, Xi is incurring large and growing losses from his gamble on the Russian warlord.  

Most consequential is the dramatic revival of Western unity and resolve. Skillfully led by Biden, the United States, Europe and key Asian democracies have rallied to Ukraine’s defense. NATO is recharged and expanded, and the logic of collective security is spreading to Asia. 

In fact, Chinese officials are loudly complaining about NATO’s strengthening ties with Asia countries. “We don’t want to see expansion of NATO’s role in our region,” Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to Washington, warned at a recent conference in Singapore. 

Like Putin, Xi is a security-obsessed despot who is trying to bully his country’s neighbors into acquiescence in an expansive Chinese sphere of influence in Asia. Instead, many are working with Washington and its allies to build a new network of security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific.  

Across Europe, Xi’s tacit backing for Putin’s war policy is a major contributor to deteriorating relations with China. In the Philippines, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently called out China for failing to assume its responsibility as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council “to uphold the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”  

On a recent visit to the South Pacific, French President Emmanuel Macron drew parallels between Russia and China in decrying a “new imperialism” in the Indo-Pacific: “The global order is completely disturbed by the willingness of new world powers to jeopardize the world order and invade other countries, like Russia invading Ukraine.”  

Germany, belatedly acknowledging that “China has changed,” released a new China Strategy last month. It calls for economic “de-risking” by reducing Germany’s heavy reliance on Chinese investment and trade. It slams China’s human rights abuses and demands more cooperation on climate change. It also says China’s alliance with Russia has “direct security implications for Germany” and cautions Beijing against threatening Taiwan.  

Xi’s untimely pact with Putin has clearly backfired. It’s an inauspicious start to Xi’s vision of replacing the liberal world order with a multipolar system more congenial to China and its junior partners in an emerging bloc of truculent dictatorships — Russia, Iran, North Korea and Syria. 

Instead of winning Beijing the global respect and deference it craves, Xi’s imperious diplomacy is dissipating China’s soft power. A recent Pew Research Center poll of 24 countries, for example, finds that only 28 percent of them view China in a favorable light.  

Perhaps the best news here is that Putin’s failure in Ukraine dramatically raises the risks to Xi of “pulling a Putin” by attacking Taiwan. Like Ukrainians, the Taiwanese won’t give up their freedom without a fight, and with robust support from the liberal democracies, they just might win too.  

Will Marshall is founder and CEO of the Progressive Policy Institute.