[Policy Report No. 133] Zheng Yongnian: How to Cooperate with Europe to Resolve the Russia-Ukraine Conflict and Crush the U.S. Grand Strategy of World Bipolarity to Encircle China
Authored on:2022-03-15
Keywords Russia-Ukraine situation China-Europe relations

Abstract

 

The Russia-Ukraine war is changing everything. Neutral states have abandoned neutrality, peaceful states have begun to re-initiate the development of military power, and non-nuclear states have amended their constitutions to develop nuclear weapons. All of this is not only changing Europe, but is having a profound impact on a global scale. While all of this is worthy of China's attention, what China urgently needs to do is to change the unfavorable situation in its diplomacy since the war in Ukraine. The U.S. has used the war in Ukraine to deepen its bipolarization of the world, kidnapping China and Russia together and shaping the international narrative of the "Russia-China axis" to effectively kidnap the European Union and bring about a confrontation between the EU and China. If we fail to completely shatter this bipolar grand strategy of the United States, our future diplomacy will be in a very passive situation.

China should seize the opportunity to use our enormous influence over Russia to fully cooperate and pull Europe together to control the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, seek a diplomatic outcome that is acceptable to the EU, Russia and Ukraine, and push Europe into a position of strategic autonomy. According to the current situation of all parties, as long as Ukraine can commit to not joining NATO, around this core point, Russia, Europe and China should be able to find a solution that is acceptable to all three parties. At the moment, the interests of Europe and the U.S. are vastly different. Once a peace proposal between China, Russia and Europe is reached, Europe will have independent strategic autonomy, and the U.S. strategic plot to contain China's rise through world bipolarity will fail completely.

Research Questions

  • How China cooperates with Europe to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
  • How China can reposition its role in European affairs