China is ramping up mediation efforts in the Middle East and on Ukraine, as it tries to capitalise on American missteps and cast itself as an alternative peace broker.
Last month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba visited China for the first time since the start of Russia’s invasion, while the leaders of 14 Palestinian factions – including rivals Hamas and Fatah – signed a unity declaration in Beijing.
State media hailed both events as efforts by Beijing to “address the deficit in global peace”. Observers say that while China wants to play a central role in conflict resolution it is clear-eyed about the limits of its influence.
Beijing is seeking to contrast its approach with Washington’s entanglement in regional conflicts and to present itself as a facilitator of peace – part of a soft power push to counter criticism from the West.
Zhiqun Zhu, an international relations professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said it was understandable that Beijing was pushing back.
“This new wave of active diplomacy is consistent with China’s attempt to project itself as a peacemaker in a turbulent world,” Zhu said. “Western governments and media have routinely portrayed China as an aggressive power, and China wants to demonstrate that it is a responsible and peaceful great power.”
He said China’s latest peacemaking efforts were a bid to counter what it sees as a hostile and unfair Western narrative.
“Whether one likes it or not, China is an important piece of the puzzle if we want to settle disputes in the Middle East, between Russia and Ukraine, and elsewhere,” he said.
The agreement reached by Palestinian factions on July 23 – dubbed the Beijing Declaration – was aimed at forming an “interim national unity government” once Israel’s war on Gaza ends.
The Chinese foreign ministry said it was the first time the 14 factions had gathered in Beijing for reconciliation talks, which demonstrated “China’s sincere efforts to support the rights of the Palestinian people, end the division and unify the Palestinian position”.
This is not a deal. It’s a declaration about a broad and repeated set of principles that, in reality, don’t mean anything yet
Israel and the US rejected the Beijing-brokered agreement, which called for the creation of a Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 Mideast war but gave few details on how or when the joint government would be formed.
“This is not a deal. It’s a declaration about a broad and repeated set of principles that, in reality, don’t mean anything yet. China was able to pull this off precisely because of the value-free nature of this declaration,” said Ahmed Aboudouh, associate fellow at Chatham House and head of the China Studies Unit at the Emirates Policy Centre, a think tank in Abu Dhabi.
Aboudouh said Beijing’s involvement in the pact was “strategic and long-term” – as it had been in the deal China brokered last year between rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.
He said the Palestinian factions also understood that Beijing wanted to build an image of being a responsible major power and they wanted to grant it a diplomatic win.
“But this is not all that China wants – in the long term, China wants to reserve a seat at the table of any peace negotiations,” he said. “Understanding its limited influence over Israel, it wants to come into the room as a virtual representative of Palestinian interests since it sees the US as the defender of Israeli interests.”
China, a staunch supporter of the Palestinians since the 1950s, has traditionally been cautious about getting drawn into the Middle East quagmire of conflict like the US.
Beijing has become increasingly pro-Palestinian since the Gaza war began in October, while Washington’s support for Israel has drawn criticism as the civilian death toll mounts.
Unlike Washington – which has no official ties with Tehran and designates Hamas as a terrorist group – Beijing maintains relatively balanced ties with regional stakeholders, including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since a brief war with Fatah in 2007.
But observers are sceptical about the Beijing pact – which both Hamas and Fatah said was just an initial step – citing previous failed attempts to end the enmity between rival factions, and Western opposition to any future role for Hamas.
“Ideally, China, the US and other powers should work together to help resolve all these major disputes. Unfortunately, due to growing US-China rivalry and distrust, great power cooperation is very rare nowadays,” Zhu said. “The Palestine agreement reached in Beijing may be hard to implement without cooperation from the US and its allies.”
03:05
World reacts to air strikes killing Hamas leader in Iran and Hezbollah commander in Beirut
World reacts to air strikes killing Hamas leader in Iran and Hezbollah commander in Beirut
Sourabh Gupta, a senior policy specialist with the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said Beijing’s recognition of Hamas’ role in the Palestinian cause was a message for the US and Israel.
“One key outcome of the Fatah-Hamas meeting has been to point out to Washington and Jerusalem implicitly that Hamas is here to stay as an actor in Palestine’s politics, and Western capitals don’t get to choose the constituents and complexion of the Palestinian liberation movement,” he said.
A day after he witnessed the Palestinian agreement being signed in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted his Ukrainian counterpart Kuleba in Guangzhou. Observers said Kuleba’s four-day trip came at a critical juncture for both China and Ukraine, after President Volodymyr Zelensky questioned Beijing’s self-proclaimed neutrality in the war.
Wang pledged to promote “healthy and stable development” of bilateral ties and to continue expanding grain imports from Kyiv.
He repeated China’s commitment to promoting a “political settlement” of the Ukraine crisis and claimed its joint peace proposal with Brazil – which would include Russia at the negotiating table – had “extensive support”.
Kuleba said he was convinced that “a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests, and China’s role as a global force for peace is important”, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry.
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Ukraine says it’s ready to resume ‘good faith’ negotiations with Russia
Ukraine says it’s ready to resume ‘good faith’ negotiations with Russia
Aboudouh of Chatham House said Kuleba’s visit to China was a risk-mitigating mission.
“Ukraine knows that China is the only non-Western power that can throw a spanner in the works of President Zelensky’s peace vision, and it wants to build a consensus with China over the main principles of the peace settlement,” he said.
Zhu from Bucknell University noted that Kuleba was in China as concerns are growing in Ukraine that Donald Trump could be re-elected in November.
“It’s very clear to Ukraine that if Trump returns as the US president, US support for Ukraine will significantly diminish,” he said. “It makes sense for Ukraine to reach out to China if Washington’s support is not guaranteed any more.”
Without a much higher willingness to take risks … Beijing is unlikely to be a peace broker in the same way the United States has been
Neil Thomas, a Chinese politics fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, also said Beijing was likely to wait until after the US presidential election before making any big moves on Russia-Ukraine peace talks.
“Beijing would score a diplomatic coup if it could broker an agreement between Kyiv and Moscow, but it would struggle to bring either Zelensky or [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin to come to the negotiating table unless they were already convinced there was no other option,” he said.
Thomas said China wanted to be seen as an international peacemaker but was cautious about risking its diplomatic capital to advance negotiations if they did not have a high likelihood of success.
“Without a much higher willingness to take risks in the name of peace, Beijing is unlikely to be a peace broker in the same way the United States has been in recent decades,” he said.
“China’s efforts to play a more prominent role in global governance would be greatly aided if the United States were to become more inward focused or even withdraw from some of these institutions. Beijing is eager to position itself as an alternative to Washington.”
Gupta said China was playing “a smart political game” on both Ukraine and Palestine.
“It is providing ‘global public goods’ in the international security arena, without overpromising outcomes that it is not in a position to deliver,” he said.
Gupta said Beijing was aware of the limits of its own principles-based approach, its “limited skin in the game”, as well as the limits in its agency to force outcomes.
With no realistic military path to liberating territories on the ground and with Trump’s possible return, Kyiv might want Beijing to use its influence to bring Moscow to the table, according to Gupta.
He said China’s aim was to present itself as the “purveyor of a different form of ‘major power’ diplomacy” – in contrast to the US.
“It desires to be part of the solution to global hotspot challenges; not be a disrupter that is part of the problem,” he said.
“The larger purpose of China’s ‘major power’ diplomacy is to grease its own rise without inviting countervailing geopolitical pushback, at a time when the incumbent powers have accused China of aiming to reshape the international order at the expense of others.”
He noted that Beijing had sent special envoy Li Hui to Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia to “build up conditions to resume peace talks” – countries that, like China, have not imposed US-led sanctions on Russia.
“The message of this new type of ‘major power’ diplomacy is directed primarily to the Global South, where it can expect a more sympathetic hearing,” Gupta said.
Aboudouh also said China had no choice but to deepen its relations with the Global South, as engagement with the West becomes more challenging.
“China will also have to deal with scepticism around its real intentions, including explaining its vision for the global order and reconciling its rhetoric around principles such as ‘non-interference’ with its actions,” he said. “Despite all these challenges, I see some success in China’s strategy to discredit the US-led Western world’s credibility since the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts.”
Suisheng Zhao, director of the Centre for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, saw both the Palestinian pact and Kubela’s China visit as symbolic rather than having concrete results.
He said Beijing’s pro-Palestinian approach and tacit support for Russia – which was more strategically important to China than Ukraine – would undermine its efforts to promote itself as a neutral peacemaker.
“While an alignment with Russia may empower China against the US, China is also concerned that it could get entrapped in Russia’s proxy war against the US-led West, threatening its strategic interests,” Zhao said. “However, China has yet to find a new balance when struggling between empowerment and entrapment over its handling of ties with Russia.”
