New foreign minister in the Chinese “Parliament”: Washington is a source of global instability. He reiterated his support for Russia, even if the invasion of Ukraine is contrary to the new international order that Beijing seeks. Saving Putin means continuing the war that threatens China’s economy: Chinese exports registered -6.8% in January-February.
Rome () – A long tirade against the United States. In his first press conference on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on Thursday that if Washington “doesn’t hit the brakes and continue on the wrong path, there will definitely be conflict.” and confrontation”.
In line with Xi Jinping’s thinking, Qin’s anti-US harangue was to be expected: there are too many points of contention between the two powers, from Ukraine to Taiwan to the technological and trade war.
In Qin’s conception, the United States is the “invisible hand” pressing to escalate the Ukraine crisis. The Biden administration is also guilty of wanting to create an “Asian NATO” and of having created a global “debt trap” by raising interest rates.
Qin has denied that China has supplied Russia with weapons, but opposes the US arming Taiwan while sanctioning other countries that do the same to Moscow. The most obvious answer is that Taiwan has not broken international law by invading a sovereign state and violating its territorial integrity.
International legality, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, sovereignty and territorial integrity are on paper the pillars of China’s foreign policy. Qin himself reiterated it today, referring to China’s “peace plan” for Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s “Global Security Initiative”, the two proposals that were put forward last week.
Instead of being consistent with the official guidelines of domestic diplomacy, Qin continued to cover Russia, noting that Beijing and Moscow have “set a good example for international relations.” In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China turns a blind eye and lets the Russians trample on the principles on which their “new multipolar world order” must be based.
Since the conflict a year ago, China has covertly shown its discontent with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on several occasions. Amid geopolitical competition with the US, however, Xi cannot afford for his “unlimited” partner Putin to lose the Ukraine war, risking a destabilized clay giant on his borders.
However, leaving the “Tsar of Russia” standing means accepting that the conflict continues. And despite economic advantages such as the ability to buy gas and oil at discount prices from Moscow, global instability following Russia’s armed attack threatens the Chinese economy.
In January and February, Chinese exports – the engine of the Chinese economic miracle – fell by 6.8% in one year, after the reduction of 9.9% that had already been registered in December. High energy prices, partly due to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, are pushing down global demand. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and US trade restrictions, Xi has targeted growth in domestic consumption to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign trade. However, domestic spending has not taken off, while the share of GDP covered by exports has gone from 19% in 2021 to 19.8% last year.
In real terms, per capita spending in China fell by 0.2% in 2022, after growing by 12.6% the previous year – the baseline, however, was very low, given the covid peak in 2020. This is the third fall since 1980, when the authorities began to publish this type of statistics. Retail sales, the measure of domestic consumption, also contracted 0.2%: the second worst number since 1968.
