Why China’s Foreign Policy Remains Neutral (?) in Regard to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine? A Grand Strategy Analysis through an Offensive Realist Prism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the problem of China’s ambiguous neutral stance towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For around a two-month period (i.e., between February and April) since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24th 2022, there has been no clear diplomatic message from Beijing concerning its final choice of position between Ukraine and its quasi-ally Russia. Parallel to this obscurity in China’s foreign policy, there are numerous arguments (this paper lists eight of them) that attempt to speculate Beijing’s next move based on their respective rationales that might prompt China to aid Russia’s military venture or abandon support for its quasi-ally. In this paper, the researcher tries to study China’s neutrality through an offensive realist prism and frame these arguments into two major underlying raison d’état: 1) to immediately rebalance the power equilibrium in the system by aiding Russia and soliciting it into China’s coalition—namely, to change the configuration of the units in the system; 2) to sustain the positive relat`ive gains in long-term until China surpasses the USA by abandoning Russia, thereby buying time as a diplomatic détente with United States—namely, to change the systemic capability distribution among its units. By comparing the weight of the two raison d’états through an examination of the eight major arguments respectively, the researcher concludes that the inextricable uncertainty of gains/losses between the two antinomic grand strategy approaches is exactly the reason that causes Beijing’s obscure attitude of neutrality between the two belligerents.