Your quote by the Chinese spokesman Wang is ironic and typical of the doublethink that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke about under the Soviets: Wang believes that relationships between countries should be worked out peacefully, but cannot envision working things out peacefully with China's citizens. For them, it's either comply or go to prison.
What the official representative said must be considered in the context of course.
I found it interesting what Alexander Gabuev said in the interview. You will not see information about China unless you specifically look for it. That is why I pay attention to such publications. I also understand that even if you know Chinese and live in China, much will still remain unknown to you. Nevertheless, I paid attention to the following statements about China:
The Chinese do not believe that they know everything better than anyone else, and that everyone around them should live like them. But China, in their view, is, of course, the strongest power on Earth. Or in other words: America dominates the Western Hemisphere, and China dominates the Eastern Hemisphere. In Asia, China is an absolute hegemon, there are no wars here, because everyone de facto recognizes China's suzerainty and respects Chinese interests.
And here we need to make a very important remark about how our cultures differ in their understanding of what a mutually beneficial agreement is. In the Western sense, "win-win" is when the proportion of this "win" between the parties to the agreement fluctuates somewhere around 50 to 50 or, let's say, 40 to 60. And in the Chinese view, "win-win" is any agreement in which each party fixes any gain.
That is, conventionally speaking, if we started a joint business, earned a dollar together, but you received one cent from the profit, and I received 99, then in the Chinese sense it is still a "win-win", because at least you earned something. And if there were no business, you would not earn anything.
The narrative of state television can be described as "Not everything is so clear-cut." That is, yes, there is a war, war is generally bad. Territorial integrity is violated - it is also not good. But, on the other hand, all this is, of course, a consequence of NATO expansion, American machinations, so russia can be understood. This is if we simplify it completely.
China supports russia economically and technologically, but says it does not do what the West does. After all, the West directly supplies Ukraine with weapons, shares intelligence with it, trains Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters, etc. China manipulates this, but the conflict in Ukraine for them is a proxy war between superpowers. So if in this situation russia is ready to provide oil, fertilizers, grain – its own and stolen Ukrainian – at a discount, then why not take advantage of this if we need it? Many countries in the world do this, and they do not condemn China for it. Even India, the largest democracy in the world, does less than China, but it is quite enough to keep russia afloat, at least in terms of supporting its exports.
China was absolutely convinced that there would be no war. Their main argument was that it was not in russia’s interest. After all, even if we imagine that russia would quickly seize Ukraine, it would result in some losses, the introduction of large-scale sanctions. This would mean a guerrilla war at least on part of the territory of Ukraine. This would lead to an increase in the US military presence in Europe, a possible expansion of NATO, and an increase in russia’s dependence on China. What is the point of this, even if russia succeeds?
It seemed to them that if they see this in China, then of course putin is not an idiot, and he sees it in the Kremlin too. But they were wrong. putin is obsessed with Ukraine and this makes him a bad partner, but stopping the war or, even more so, russia’s military defeat will lead to a change of power to someone pro-Western – this is a nightmare for China. That’s it, russia falls into the Western sphere of influence, China finds itself surrounded.
Therefore, they don’t care how the war ends, it is important for them that putin or someone like putin is in the Kremlin. Accordingly, they are ready to play on the verge of violating sanctions so that russia remains sufficiently combat-ready, so that it at least doesn’t lose, because this does not correspond to their interests. Although they believe that putin is an obsessed fanatic.
And the Chinese had a feeling - and quite rightly so - that America would deal with russia now, and then come after them with redoubled force. And why help them in this case? That's why the Chinese are behaving cynically, but as rationally as possible.
