The diplomacy dance: China and the Israel-Hamas war
'China wants to be seen as a principled actor, an actor standing on the side of peace,' says expert
Conflicts that are blazing around the world, in Sudan, in Ukraine and in Gaza, often become a kind of shorthand for the relationships between nations.
And despite challenges by autocratic power players such as Russia, China, and Iran, the United States remains the dominant superpower — meaning it still has to do the dance of diplomacy.
So what does that dance look like now, given the U.S.'s fragile, murky, and sometimes volatile, relationships with "the other side" — relationships that have implications for the entire world?
The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto hosted a panel in November 2023 with two experts on U.S. diplomacy from the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. to try to answer this question.
Suzanne Maloney is the vice-president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, where her colleague Ryan Haas directs the John L. Thornton China Center.
Their conversation was held in November of 2023, and was moderated by the Munk School's Diana Fu and Mark Manger. It began with China's stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Here is an excerpt:
Diana Fu: Beijing has tried to maintain a rather neutral stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict. And we know that China has had historical ties with Palestine. It was one of the first non-Arab countries to forge diplomatic relations with Palestine back in 1965 under Mao. And last month (November 20, 2023), China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, had received a number of his counterparts from Arab states and reaffirmed the friendship and the fact that China is a brother to the Arab states. But we also know that China has a lot of investments in Israel. So can it really afford to play this neutral dance – Ryan?
Ryan Haas: I want to first talk about the 'what' of China's response to events in Israel and then the 'why.' The 'what' is that China has not condemned Hamas's attack against Israel. China has broadly condemned attacks on civilians. China has broadly condemned Israel's response to the attack by Hamas. And China has indicated that the real crux of the problem is the lack of a two-state solution and that's where the focus and energies should be placed. So that's where China is.
The question is why. The first [dimension] is that China wants to be seen as a principled actor, an actor standing on the side of peace and principle in contrast to the framing that they want to use the United States as a provocateur, as a destabilizing actor, as the agent standing behind Israel and standing behind Ukraine in stoking conflict. The Chinese also want to try to make gains in the Middle East. They want to appeal to the interests of other countries in the region and show a certain degree of solidarity with them. And that is reflected in the fact that the Chinese foreign minister hosted his counterparts from the region in Beijing.
But there's another dimension to it which rarely gets attention, at least in the Western media, which is that China does not want to further inflame domestic tensions inside China. China has a Muslim population, not just Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but also Hui and others, and they simply don't want to add stress to what is already a rather delicate situation at home.
And so I look at Chinese diplomats as Chinese strategic thinkers — they understand that they don't have a solution to this problem. They understand that siding with Palestine and opposing Israel's actions is not going to provide a roadmap to a solution, but they are going to try to position themselves to gain benefits in the region and to sharpen a contrast between their posture and the posture that they want the world to see from the United States. And so that's where I think China is right now.
China recognizes that they have introduced strain to their relationship with Israel. But I was in Beijing a few weeks ago. My sense is that the Chinese believe that Israel will come back to them not out of love or enmity, but just out of cold-hearted realization of their own interest, and that economic determinants will drive Israel to repair the relationship with China once the situation is calmed.
Mark Manger: So assuming for a moment that Israel ends its military action in Gaza with a defeat, whatever that is, of Hamas temporarily, locally, right? What are the options for guaranteeing stability there and for preventing a resurgence of Hamas or maybe worse in Gaza? A lot of this, of course, will involve regional and international diplomacy. Could you maybe lay out a few scenarios for us?
Suzanne Maloney: I think none of them are terribly optimistic. I think what many hope is that in the aftermath of the most active phase of this war, and there I would note that I think there won't be a day when the war ends, it will be a tapering off of hostilities and Israeli military activity in Gaza. The expectation would be that there will be someone who needs to come in and provide security, provide reconstruction and provide economic opportunity, as well as a political pathway for Palestinian politics.
We have heard the U.S. government has insisted that it should be the Palestinian Authority that comes in. There has been some pushback on that particular point from Prime Minister Netanyahu. I believe that it is still the expectation and understanding among all the parties. But when we think about the Palestinian Authority providing authority, meaningful governance and security in Gaza, it's hard to imagine that happening now with the current leadership of the P.A. being relatively inert and relatively unpopular even on the West Bank. And so I think there are a lot of discussions about what that might look like.
But I can tell you, I've heard nothing that I find terribly credible about what an immediate pathway is to re-impose the Palestinian Authority leadership at a time when you're trying to actually encourage some kind of a transition within that leadership itself. I think it's one of the fundamental dilemmas. The other dilemma, of course, is who provides security? The Palestinian Authority would not be in a position to do that effectively. And I can't imagine that the Israeli government would have confidence in their ability to do that successfully. There have been various propositions that suggest perhaps the parties to the Abraham Accords might be willing or capable. I think that also strains credulity. Will the United States take on some role? Not likely.
But again, that is another idea that has been proffered in Washington. So, you know, it is quite striking that while everybody understands that this is going to be a time limited operation, and we've heard senior Israeli officials say that themselves that they recognize — and they did, frankly, from day one — that the public opinion around the world would turn against them very quickly and that there would be a limited window of opportunity to actually achieve what they're trying to achieve, which is the elimination of Hamas' capability to undertake another attack of any kind on Israeli territory.
But much of this conversation around the idea of the day after, again, really from the opening moments of this conflict, I haven't heard and I don't have a pathway to provide to you that gives any of us confidence that we're going to be in a better position as the Israeli military operation winds down than we're in today. And that, frankly, is what worries me the most.
I'll just end with one final point, which is that a different war, one that isn't entirely analogous to this, but the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon. I was in the government at the time, and I think there was a lot of will and interest and determination to ensure that Hezbollah, which was not, of course, fully eliminated, but was in fact hit very hard in terms of its capabilities, there was a strong determination to ensure that the international community, led by the United States, would come in and rebuild southern Lebanon, would rebuild the Lebanese armed forces, the regular army, under the government's control in a way that wouldn't allow Hezbollah to dominate either politics or the security situation there. I think we all know how that story ended, and in many ways, the conditions were more fortuitous for success there than they are in Gaza.
Mark Manger: That's interesting. As you mentioned, the status of the P.A. at this point, I mean to the extent we can give credence to these surveys, but it seems that the Palestinian Authority is more popular in the West Bank than in Gaza itself and maybe vice versa [Hamas is more popular in the West Bank]. Now, this, of course is not, sadly, the only major conflict that is going on... let's turn to the other conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and doing diplomacy with another autocrat, Vladimir Putin.
Let me address this to Ryan. So Russia's President Putin has become somewhat of a burden for the Chinese leadership in the sense that he seems unpredictable and they have overextended themselves maybe in their support. But what is your sense of how the Chinese leadership and the Chinese public maybe perceive Russia's war in the Ukraine as this war drags on? How can they deal with this conundrum that they can hardly drop support for Putin on the one hand, but at the same time, they don't want to condone territorial conquest, which is one of the sort of guiding principles of Chinese diplomacy — and that they dash relations over decades?
Ryan Haas: I began paying attention to the China Russia relationship more closely around 2015. And at that time, I had an opportunity to sit next to Xi Jinping's right-hand man at a dinner. And we were talking about what is the difference between traveling to Moscow versus traveling to Washington. And he said, 'when you travel to Moscow, it's friendly, it's fun, it feels comfortable, and you feel like you're going to visit a family member. You can laugh, you can joke, you can sort of be yourself. When you come to Washington, it's like taking an examination. Everything has to be precise. You've got to get it exactly right. And there is no margin for error.' And I think that there's a certain truth in the way that the Chinese look at this relationship in the sense that they feel a certain camaraderie with Russia.
But most importantly, the first point I want to make is that this relationship is a relationship that's driven from the top. It's driven by the relationship between President Xi and President Putin. They are deeply invested, both of them, in this relationship. They've met over 40 times. They call each other on each other's birthdays. They remember their spouses birthdays or children's birthdays. There is a genuineness to the relationship that exists between these two leaders. The second point is that both benefit from the relationship or both believe that they do.
In the case of China, their big vulnerabilities are food, fuel, and arms. They are at risk. They have food insecurity, energy insecurity, and they don't have many countries in the world that are willing to sell them arms. Russia provides solutions to all three of those vulnerabilities. They can provide energy overland. They can provide food overland. And they are willing to sell more and more military capabilities to the Chinese. The other issue, though, is that at the same time as China derives benefit from the relationship with Russia, they also recognize that it creates a certain amount of vulnerability with the United States, but also vulnerability with Europe and other Western powers.
And so the Chinese are trying to walk a tightrope to a certain extent. They want to be strong and in solidarity with President Putin. I don't think that they feel too troubled by these pesky principles. I think that they're guided by interests and they're pretty clear eyed and unapologetic about those interests. But they don't want to burn down the bridge in their relationship with Europe in the process of showing support to Putin.
So what do they do? They talk about things that will be appealing. They talk about how China opposes the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in war. They talk about how the Black Sea should remain open for grain trans-shipment and food should not be used as a weapon of war. These are efforts that reflect Chinese interests, but also reflect a desire to maintain a certain degree of space, a certain openness to continuing to develop the relationship with Europe and with the United States.
They also have dialed back a bit. We don't hear them talking about the no limits partnership between China and Russia anymore. There certainly are limits. The limits are reflected in the fact that Russia now goes to Pyongyang to go shopping for ammunition and armaments, not to Beijing. So that reflects that limits do exist in this relationship still, and that China, for all of its talk of solidarity, still recognizes and respects certain boundaries around the degree to which they're able to demonstrate their support for their Russian friends.
Listen to the full conversation by downloading the CBC IDEAS podccast from your favourite app.
*Q&A edited for clarity and length. This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa.
