Why is the Ukraine War becoming a debating battleground in China?

Hemant Adlakha, Vice Chairperson, ICS and Associate Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Very few Beijingers are aware that most Western embassies in the capital’s “Embassy Alley” have put up Ukrainian solidarity signs near their entrances. No, not because the area is “no entry zone” for everyday strollers, but because as they say, the area is “far from the madding crowd.” Yet the Ukraine war has attracted the country’s netizens and citizens’ so much attention that a Beijing-based foreign commentator says “a rupture has taken place.” Furthermore, a leading Chinese newspaper has even equated the unprecedented “rupture” with as if China is participating in the war.


To believe what most foreign affairs experts in China tell us, Chinese people usually do not pay attention to international news, or for that matter to world events unless of course China is directly involved. However, the degree and the passion with which a large number of Chinese have come out to express their views and opinion, even take sides, has surprised one and all. Part of the reason why the Russia-Ukraine war has opened up “a new battlefield” of public opinion in China is Beijing’s pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia friendly image in the Chinese media in recent years. Thanks largely to wide media coverage as recently as January this year when Xi-Zelensky pictures were flashed in various media in China as the two presidents exchanged congratulatory messages celebrating thirty years of diplomatic ties between Beijing and Kyiv.


A more significant factor why most Chinese do not see Ukraine as a country far away is, Ukraine is the hub of the Belt and Road Initiative, or “One Belt, One Road” strategy – interestingly, in the Chinese media the BRI is generally referred to as Yidai yilu, or OBOR. Many Chinese see OBOR, President Xi’s favourite and China’s important infrastructure and overseas investment project, as a major casualty of the Ukrainian war. According to Professor Wang Yiliang of Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University, “Europe is a crucial market for China’s ‘Belt and Road’ land projects. China’s “Belt and Road” land projects may either face “blockade” or “OBOR” connectivity in the region may become increasingly dependent on Russian “protection. Therefore, the war between Russia and Ukraine has made Beijing’s decisions to be cautious.”

A far more important or perhaps equally controversial reason which is creating near vertical split between China’s pro-Ukraine/pro-Russia public opinion is the absence of a clear “party line” on the situation from above. As Tom Clifford, a seasoned foreign affairs analyst who has been living and writing from Beijing for long, has observed recently: “China’s wait-and-see-inaction seems sclerotic. Chinese officials have sent out confusing and frankly incoherent statements. They stress, parrot like, the importance of territorial integrity but blame the US for the crisis.” As a result of the Chinese leaderships’ sclerosis, the country’s all powerful censorship agencies too seemed clueless and floundered on the issue.

At another level, a huge controversy was created when a blogger on China’s largest social media platform, Weibo – China’s equivalent to Twitter etc., labelled those pro-Ukraine as “rightists” with a similar view as the position taken by the Western media and most liberal democracies; while calling all those who support Russia in the ongoing war as “leftists” with no independent thinking of their own. Reacting angrily to the blogger’s “bogus” claim, Zhang Zhikun, a veteran and widely influential current affairs analyst wrote thus: “The debate caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine refuses to stop. Unlike at the beginning of the war, the debate is now no more about the war itself but has been extended into investigating the ideological roots of those taking part in it. This also explains why the debate is acquiring a high degree of polarization.”

A no less pertinent dimension of the growing sharp divide in China over the Russian invasion in Ukraine is the shocking degree of cynical hype as manifested among China’s hardened “left” (aka orthodox leftists). In a signed commentary, a Mao-faction ultra-left scholar, Wen Anjun, has named and accused several leading intellectuals from China’s topmost universities of parroting “western speak.” Anjun blames them for condemning Russia but not speaking a word of criticism against the US and Nato. To Wen Anjun and others of his ilk, what is most worrying about the people mentioned above is their worldview, their view of the US, and above all their perception of the CPC-led China. “Once China’s re-unification war [with Taiwan] is launched in the future, all these people may endanger China by siding with the US and Taiwan independence,” wrote Wen Anjun.

It is indeed true that the Ukraine war has shocked the world, aroused strong reactions in all corners of the world, and led to fierce debates. But it is also true that the degree of polarization in public opinion in China has not been witnessed in most countries. In addition to what is highlighted above, other bizarre public reactions to the ongoing war include a section of Chinese netizens unashamedly displaying misogynist attitudes by writing blogs with a flurry of tone-deaf jokes. What outraged many within China and abroad was surfacing of ham-handed humour such as calls for “willing to shelter 18- to 24-year-old Ukrainian beauties.” On the other hand, some Chinese observers sounded alarm bells, warning that China’s “filthy wealthy” rich – such as “comprador capitalists” Jack Ma, Pony Ma and others – along with all those who are backing Ukraine are all anti-China, anti-Chinese motherland, and anti-CPC.

Finally, no one in China denies, just like no one in the world is in doubt, as far as China is concerned the Russia-Ukraine war is not a good war. It is understandable the Chinese leadership must have been regretting now what it said during Xi-Putin summit on February 4 in Beijing: “China’s Russia friendship has no limits.” But given the country’s political system and the political culture, not at all surprising that no one in the leadership will openly admit “of being caught wrong-footed by a world that is rapidly changing.”

The views expressed here are those of the author(s), and not necessarily of the Institute of Chinese Studies.

Year 2022 and Xi Jinping’s Third Term: Is Xi Riding a Tiger He Cannot Get Off?

Hemant Adlakha, Vice Chairperson, ICS and Associate Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Image: Xi Jinping riding a tiger
Source: twitter.com

A Chinese idiom says: If you ride a tiger, it’s hard to get off! Since being handed over China’s reign by the CPC a decade ago, Xi Jinping hasn’t experienced “the year of the tiger.” He will be riding into the tiger year this Chinese zodiac year – a crucial year for him. Speculations are high in the People’s Republic as everyone is asking: does Xi know how to get off a tiger?

It is well-known that the tiger occupies a unique position in traditional Chinese mythology. Of the twelve Chinese zodiac animals, tigers are known to have potent personalities. They are considered to be strong, brash, impetuous and, above all, self-assured. However, while they are potent personalities, at the same time they are fundamentally dangerous. Xi Jinping emerged as the top communist party leader in China in November 2012 – two years after the last year of the tiger in 2010. Remember, in 2010 China edged out Japan and became the world’s second largest economy after the US. This year will be the first time Xi Jinping will be leading China into the year of the tiger. In fact, as observers tell us, Xi will usher China “riding a tiger” as the leader of the world’s largest economy.   

But does he know how to get off a tiger? For, in recent years, Chinese politics has increasingly become too “hot” at the top and is not for someone with a weak heart – especially when compared with the days of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, respectively. Of course, no one can disagree, Xi Jinping has been under mounting pressure since the last CPC Party Congress in 2017, when he forced his “Thoughts” into the party constitution and got rid of the 2-term limit to his leadership of the party and of the PRC. Hence, it is the mounting political pressure he has put himself under to succeed for the “unprecedented” third term at the top that explains Xi’s uncharacteristic and yet distinct shift towards populism during the entire past one year.

Image: Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Tiger
Source: studycli.org

Some say it is the widening social inequality – and Xi did not do anything for the first eight years – the biggest driving force behind Xi’s emphasis last year on “common prosperity.” Last August, Xi’s call for “prosperity of all” at the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs stands out as the most populist of his series of “populism” measures announced last year. Other populist announcements include massive national propaganda that China has abolished “absolute poverty”; steps to rein-in China’s monopoly capitalists such as big and large “fin-tech” entrepreneurs Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, among others; shutting down of highly profitable private online coaching shops that dominate the education industry; and last but not least is the state cracking down on Didi online cab service and on the real estate businesses.

Furthermore, just like Xi did not, or could not, do anything substantive to bridge yawning inequality during his two terms as the top leader, he also failed to carry it through to the end the campaign against corruption. Remember the great enthusiasm with which the new leader had launched the “anti-corruption” movement on coming to office in 2012. However, soon the common people in China could see through the hollow slogan Xi had coined at the time: we must uphold the fighting of “tigers” and “flies” at the same time. Though anti-corruption rhetoric has been maintained at a high pitch, yet it remained a mere propaganda and failed to “destabilize the rotten bureaucratic apparatus on which the CPC relies to rule.” At the end of Xi’s ten years of rule, likewise, calls for “common prosperity” – the so-called philanthropy from the super-rich and the need to reduce social inequality, are seen as mere “populism” aimed at deflecting rising discontent and resentment mostly among rural migrant workers and vast majority of marginalized rural youth.    

Image: The Year of the Tiger 2010: Before Xi became the CPC top leader
Source: wgm8.com

Ever since the CPC general secretary Xi declared, or some say claimed, the party has apparently extended its full support and endorsed Xi as the “core” leader and abandoned the principle of collective leadership. The global media as well as scholars abroad have been critical of the PRC president for “leading China away from the hybrid path taken by Deng Xiaoping and returning to a system of absolute rule by one individual without term limits, as under Mao Zedong.” Xi is also accused of returning China on “the road to disaster” by turning the CPC leadership back from authoritarianism towards one-person dictatorship. Moreover, serious doubts have been expressed over whether “unstoppable” Xi can end the world’s largest economy’s (in size) “Gilded Age” and lead China into “its own era of progressive reform.”

It is in this above backdrop, president Xi’s sudden, high-pitched “populism” in the past one year must be analysed, for political as well as for economic reasons. On the one hand, Xi’s populism actually relies upon “socialist nihilism” to quell ideological challenges from the Chinese left. On the other hand, Xi is using the state-led propaganda of “abolishing of absolute poverty” and “prosperity for all” as a political instrument to dupe the working people of China. As Joschka Fischer has explained in a Project Syndicate column recently, perhaps Xi may be right in thinking that for the CPC, a change in direction is clearly needed. “For Xi, the Chinese hybrid model that has developed since Deng now needs a fundamental readjustment and social reorientation to account for the escalating political confrontation with the US and the decline of the economy’s growth rate,” Fischer noted.

However, within China, in a nutshell, disregarding all the populist moves in the course of the year just gone by in which Xi has tried to drum up for consolidating his quest for the third term, his only claim to enjoying wider popularity within China is perhaps the manner in which Xi and his team managed to keep low the pandemic death toll. As according to Eric Li, a Shanghai-based venture capitalist and political scientist, once President Xi took charge of leading China’s counter fight against the epidemic – following Xi’s virtual meeting with the head of the WHO on January 28, 2020 – he has shown that “opportunism and shirking responsibility” are not in his leadership character. Li does not disagree that the Wuhan authorities had erred in the early stages of the virus outbreak about which very little was known. And the unexplained delay resulted in justified public anger – best manifested in Wuhan Diary written by the city-based well-known writer, Fang Fang – especially at the initial silencing of the whistleblowing Dr. Li. But Xi’s decision to lockdown Wuhan city and Hubei province turned out to be “the decision that saved the nation from a devastating catastrophe,” noted Eric Li.

Source: idlehearts.com

Finally, if Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping both could be credited to possess the required political skill to be able to both ride and get off a tiger – Mao for his extraordinary ability to lead China on the disastrous path to Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and yet he continues to enjoy god-like status today, while Deng having had emerged from “three lows and three downs” into “chief architect” of a strong, modern China. In comparison, Xi’s only claim to be endowed with the unique Chinese skill “to ride and get off a tiger” lies is his ability to act with unprecedented high degree of firmness and character to lead China’s “people’s war” against a once-in-a-generation pandemic crisis. The world is still fighting the war to contain the corona pandemic, with both the number of infected cases and death toll rising. So is China. But with a difference – China has a communist party and Xi Jinping. If Eric Li, advocate for communist China and for Xi Jinping, is to be believed, Xi seems to have successfully managed to both “ride and get off” the Chinese tiger.     This blog was earlier published by thinkchina.sg on 20 January, 2022  under the title “Can Xi Jinping ride the tiger year with success?”.