A live program and a good interviewer can become a deadly combo for the entire discursive strategy of a government… The same thing happened to Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, that in little more than 2 minutes the alleged Chinese peace plan was uploaded to Russia and Ukraineand laid bare Xi Jinping’s true position on Putin’s invasion.
The slip happened last night in the cycle of Darius Rochebin on the French television channel ICL. With a giant screen in the background showing Xi Jinping with Vladimir Putin walking together by kremlinthe journalist directly questioned the Chinese official.
“Please clarify your position because it seems to be buoying a bit… Is Crimea part of Ukraine in your eyes?”Rochebin asked, accompanying the weight of each word with a bang on the table, wanting to be as clear as possible.
What happened next was a moment of silencefollowed by a nervous laugh…
“Hmm, well, it depends on how this problem is perceived.”the Chinese official tried to escape from the crossroads.
But Rochebin did not give up the fight: “It doesn’t depend on anything, is it Ukraine or is it not Ukraine?”
As if annoyed in his own skin, Shaye sought to complicate the matter a little more with one last attempt at escape: “Yes it depends, because there is a story. Crimea was first of all, at first, from Russia, isn’t it? Khrushchev was the one who gave Crimea to Ukraine at the time of the Soviet Union…”
“Sorry, but according to international law, you know very well that you are from Ukraine. You can discuss it, dispute it, but it is Ukraine…”, the journalist stated.
And finally the brutal honesty, the one that China carefully omitted since February 24, 2022 when Putin launched his offensive on Ukraine: “According to international law, these ex-Soviet countries do not have the status… how to say… effective in international law, because there is no international agreement that specifies their status as sovereign countries.”
Horrified by the response, Rochebin cornered Shaye a little further: “It seems that he is saying that the border order as it was born after the fall of the Soviet Union, in his eyes, is not yet resolved.”
The Chinese official, already speechless, returned to the script from which he never wanted to leave and called for an end to the conflict, a ceasefire, etc., but by then it was too late. What was said, said he was.
When Putin launched his offensive against Ukraine, Xi Jinping did not condemn the invasion. While the entire world spoke out against Moscow, international companies left Russia and Europe, and the US applied financial sanctions and blacklisted Russian military and officials, Beijing continued in that comfortable neutrality.
After a year of undeniable horrors by Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, comfortable neutrality became uncomfortable. Beijing then built a way out of that position by selling itself as the “leader” of a possible resolution of the conflict. Thus, on March 21, Xi Jinping visited the Kremlin, sat down with Putin and stated that after an “exhaustive exchange of views” he had presented the Russian with a 12-point peace plan to end the war.
None of the points on that supposed roadmap came to light, and beyond empty promises, neither Putin nor Xi Jinping announced anything concrete. The only tangible thing was the numerous exchanges between envoys from Beijing to Moscow, who, far from negotiating peace, signed deals.
Last night, the sincerity of Xi Jinping’s ambassador to France buried China’s false neutrality in 2 minutes.
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