The Morning: China’s Russia problem

View in browser|nytimes.com

March 8, 2022

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. Things were going very well for China, until the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces with a captured Russian tank.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Why Beijing likes stability

As China has emerged as a power over the past decade, it has benefited from the political disarray among its global rivals.

The United States organized a Pacific trade pact meant to counter China's rise — and then refused to ratify that very pact, because of domestic politics. The U.S. also alienated longtime allies in Europe with Donald Trump's "America First" policy. The European Union has been even more chaotic, with the departure of one of its biggest members, Britain.

China, all the while, has been strengthening its economic ties with countries around the world. Chinese leaders have been thrilled by the contrast between their own apparent competence and the West's disorganization. It seemed to augur a new international order, in which China would compete with the U.S. for supremacy.

That scenario still seems likely. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine has complicated it. The war is arguably the most problematic international development for China in years.

It has unified much of the rest of the world — including the U.S., the E.U., Britain and Japan — in support of Ukraine, with a diplomatic boldness that these countries have often lacked in recent years. China's leaders, on the other hand, are in a partnership with the world's new villain, Vladimir Putin. "This is both a crisis and an opportunity," Ryan Hass, who oversaw China policy on the National Security Council in the Obama administration, told me.

The crisis part is obvious: A brutal invasion is killing Ukrainians and Russian soldiers and potentially destroying Ukraine as a country. As horrible as the war is, the opportunity is real: The relative isolation of Russia and China offers a chance to help defeat Russia in the short term — and to check the rise of an authoritarian China in the longer term.

Ten times as large

China and Russia share some major interests. They both would like American influence to wane, so that they have a freer hand to dominate their regions and exert global influence. These shared interests help explain why Xi Jinping and Putin released a joint statement last month, professing their countries' friendship and harshly criticizing the U.S.

"Both share in the belief that the United States is determined to hobble the ascent of their countries," Amy Qin, who covers China for The Times, told me. "And they have signaled a desire to see a world order in which Washington's influence is far diminished."

But the China-Russia relationship also has its limits and tensions. The two countries compete for influence, in Asia and elsewhere, and have fundamentally different diplomatic strategies.

China is trying to shape and lead the existing world order. "It benefits enormously from international stability," Fareed Zakaria, the foreign-policy journalist, has pointed out. As The Times's Thomas Friedman wrote, "Peace has been very good for China."

Russia is both weaker and less satisfied with the recent developments. "Putin may dream of restoring Soviet-era greatness," Paul Krugman wrote yesterday, "but China's economy, which was roughly the same size as Russia's 30 years ago, is now 10 times as large." Today, Russia's economy largely revolves around energy exports, giving it an incentive to foment political instability; oil prices often go up when the world is unstable.

"Putin is sort of an arsonist of the system," Hass said. "China's interests are not advanced by that."

Refugees from Ukraine waiting for a bus.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

The war in Ukraine evidently surprised Chinese officials, at least in its scope. "They did not anticipate a full-scale invasion," said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank. That helps explain why China has edged away from Russia over the past two weeks, as my colleagues Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers write:

It has softened its tone, expressing grief over civilian casualties. It has cast itself as an impartial party, calling for peace talks and for the war to stop as soon as possible.

These subtle changes are a sign that China is not fully comfortable with Putin's mayhem. It risks solidifying the "alliance of democracies" that President Biden has called for. It risks reminding the U.S. and its allies that they have more similarities than differences.

"Xi's growing alignment with Moscow presents something of a Catch-22 for China," Jude Blanchette and Bonny Lin wrote in Foreign Affairs. "As it competes with the West over global order, Russia becomes a more attractive security partner. But by elevating the relationship with Russia — and choosing to do so in the middle of a Putin-provoked crisis — Beijing is inviting pushback it can ill afford."

Xi's leverage

And how might this help Ukraine?

The recent sanctions on Russia's economy have damaged it and left it dependent on China — to buy Russian goods, to sell goods to Russian consumers and businesses, to give loans to Russian banks and more. If Xi came to believe that the war in Ukraine was hurting China, he could do something about it.

"China doesn't need to loudly condemn Russia," Hass said. "They can just choose to be judicious about what they trade in and invest in." Xi is one of the few people in the world with leverage over Putin. Xi also has reason to be wary of the uncertainty and disarray that Putin's war has created.

After a Russian strike in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

State of the war

The Ukrainian military and civilian soldiers are continuing to halt Russian forces.
Ukrainians defended two crucial cities yesterday, shooting down three Russian fighter jets over Kyiv and preventing troops from entering Mykolaiv, on the Black Sea coast.
The humanitarian crisis keeps getting worse. Nearly 1,000 towns and villages in Ukraine are without electricity, water and heat, and some areas lack medicine.
Two million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Hollywood loves bad entrepreneurs

Tales of tech titans and corporate greed often get the Hollywood treatment — the 2010 Facebook movie "The Social Network" could be the poster child of the genre. Now, it seems as if every streaming service has its own ripped-from-the-headlines take on a troubled entrepreneur, Amanda Hess writes in the Times.

There is Showtime's "Super Pumped," which documents the rise and fall of the Uber founder Travis Kalanick. Hulu's "The Dropout" stars Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, the turtleneck-wearing Theranos founder, and Apple TV+'s "WeCrashed" follows WeWork's often shoeless founder Adam Neumann, played by Jared Leto.

The shows' central figures share rise-and-fall trajectories and "self-aggrandizing comparisons to Steve Jobs," Hess writes. Often, the companies cross over onscreen. In "WeCrashed," for example, Neumann watches on TV as Kalanick is ousted from Uber's board.

The appetite for tech disaster stories goes beyond streaming: Holmes's case has been recreated in a book, multiple podcasts and an HBO documentary. A movie starring Jennifer Lawrence is in the works.

"Even as these shows cast skepticism on speculative tech bubbles, they work to inflate a bubble of their own," Hess writes. They, too, follow a formula: "Secure tested intellectual property on a recent scandal, recruit very famous people to impersonate the players … then hope subscribers don't cancel after the finale."

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

Baked Thai curry risotto with squash is an easy weeknight meal.

What to Watch

In the thoughtful sci-fi movie "After Yang," Colin Farrell plays a father who tries to repair the family's caretaker-android.

World Through a Lens

Snowfall in Vermont looks dreamy from above.

Late Night

The hosts mocked Trump.

Now Time to Play

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was pituitary. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Wordle. Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Take a breather (four letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Pamela Paul, the editor of The Times Book Review, is joining Opinion as a columnist.

Here's today's front page.

"The Daily" is about Volodymyr Zelensky. "The Ezra Klein Show" features Fiona Hill.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.