Beijing initially appeared to be caught off guard by invasion but soon adapted its rhetoric to absolve Russia of blame
Few analysts expected China’s peace plan for Ukraine, which officials trailed all week, to have any concrete measures for solving the crisis. Their suspicions were correct. The position paper published by China’s foreign ministry on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion called for the “sovereignty of all countries” to be respected, without detailing what this meant for Ukraine. In each of the 12 points, the plan reiterated Chinese talking points about the conflict without offering a solution.
The Chinese peace plan is the culmination of a flurry of diplomatic meetings that kicked off at the Munich security conference on 17 February. There Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, presented a bullish front to western officials, denying claims made by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, that China was on the verge of sending weapons to Russia. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said such a move would be a “red line” for the bloc. Wang insisted that China wanted peace.
