By Edward Wong | New York Times
President
Biden participated in a video summit with President Xi Jinping of China in
November.Credit…Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Americans presented Chinese officials with intelligence on Russia’s
troop buildup in hopes that President Xi Jinping would step in, but were
repeatedly rebuffed.
Over three months, senior Biden administration officials
held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the
Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell
Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.
Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign
minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans,
saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic
exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing
had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United
States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede
Russian plans and actions, the officials said.
The previously unreported talks between American and
Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence
findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary
to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi
Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of
Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.
This account is based on interviews with senior
administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The
Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.
China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and
the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic,
economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global
power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this
year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading
Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.
But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a
full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two
Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.
In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored
Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments,
according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media.
Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the
“legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial
integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to
negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.
Some American officials say the ties between
China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two
now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and
its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries
out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for
decades.
The growing alarm among American and European officials
at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the
Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M.
Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart
diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union.
For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China
grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed
due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical
ideas about power and governance. In the recent private talks on Ukraine,
American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was
consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which
showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the
American accounts.
On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern
Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the
United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”
“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending
weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the
possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame
while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of
behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”
She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO
expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced
offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever
think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has
refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign
journalists.
