8 April 2023

China’s ‘Peace Plan’ for Ukraine Isn’t About Peace

Jo Inge Bekkevold

China’s peace proposal for Ukraine has come to nothing—if, that is, peace in Ukraine was actually Beijing’s main motivation. The 12 points outlined in “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis” are clearly too abstract to be a road map to end the war. Instead, the Chinese initiative should be viewed as a piece in China’s intensified informational and diplomatic rivalry with the United States. After running its diplomatic activity at reduced speed for almost three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has recently launched a number of foreign-policy initiatives. The most prominent of these is the so-called peace proposal on Ukraine, with which China aims to strengthen its position vis-à-vis the United States among three specific audiences: the global south, Europe, and postwar Ukraine.

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