Transcript: China’s International Relations and the Ukraine Crisis

Opener (00:00:02)

 This is the Nordic Asia Podcast.

 Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:00:09)

Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Ari-Joonas Pitkänen. I am a doctoral candidate at the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku in Finland.

In this episode we will be talking about China's foreign relations and China's strategic thought especially in light of the current situation in Ukraine. I'm joined by Matti Puranen who is a senior researcher at the Department of Warfare of the Finnish National Defense University.

Matti conducts research on strategy and international relations with a focus on China and Chinese strategic thought. He holds a PhD on social sciences from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. So welcome to the podcast Matti.

Matti Puranen (00:00:49)

Thanks a lot! Great to be here.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:00:51)

Great to have you with us. So the thing that's in everybody's mind right now is the situation in Ukraine, so I thought we could start with that. We know that Russia and China have gotten closer to each other in recent years and there's been a lot of analysis recently on whether China knew about Russia's plans in Ukraine in advance, whether it was caught by surprise and wasn't happy about what's been taking place, and just where China stands generally regarding this issue. As an expert on Chinese strategic thought, what's your take on this situation, China's position regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Matti Puranen (00:01:27)

That's a very good and important question, and probably most of us studying China right now are trying to make up our minds on it. Initially when the war started, and of course it surprised everybody, almost everywhere, well almost almost everybody everywhere, me and myself included, I was thinking that China, Chinese leadership, probably did not know about the invasion in advance and it was a huge surprise for Xi Jinping and others, but then as the conflict has been evolving, I have kind of started to change my mind on this, and there has also been coming information on this. That perhaps there was some kind of discussions between at least the top level leaders of both countries, that perhaps it happened when Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, visited China during the Olympics, even before, who knows? But there has been some argument thrown around that Putin warned the Chinese president that something like this is coming and there has also been speculation that Xi Jinping, then as a response said that, yeah okay, a war is coming okay that's great, but please don't invade Ukraine during the Olympics, because it would make a huge face loss for us, but of course all this is speculation, but there are some interesting signs coming up on this for example I don't know if you noticed this small detail but right after the invasion began in 24th of February the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine informed the Chinese citizens living in Ukraine that you should attach a small Chinese flag in your vehicles when you're driving around the city, because when the Russian army will march into Kyiv within the next few days, as they probably speculated, they will not shoot you because you are wearing Chinese flags. This is an interesting detail because it seems to at least hint that there was some knowledge that perhaps an invasion is coming and if it does it's going to be a really quick march through Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and Ukraine will, you know, surrender within 48 hours or something like that and the Chinese population in Ukraine will be safe.

This is not how it ended up as we know right now, and the Chinese government was really slow to initiate evacuation protocols in Kyiv which is an interesting detail. I don't know what to make of this interesting detail at least at this point, but at least it is an interesting detail, that something might have been in the back of minds in China and the Chinese diplomatic corps before the invasion happened.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:03:55)

Okay, yeah. It seems that it's a very vague situation and probably it might take some time or maybe we'll never know what was the exact knowledge in China regarding this, but how do you see China's and Russia's current relationship in general? Last year you published an article with Juha Kukkola in the National Interest where you argued that the Sino-Russian relations already bear some signs of a military alliance, even though there's no formal alliance between China and Russia so, how do you see this general Sino-Russian relations now in light of the situation in Ukraine and perhaps going forward?

Matti Puranen (00:04:28)

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. The title of the article you just mentioned, it’s kind of exaggerating maybe, I mean, and it was not actually written by us. But the point that we tried to make in this article was that even though that the Chinese and Russian leaders, they don't have any formal alliance signed between the heads of the state, and that even though they don't use the words alliance in the discussions and so on and so on, their security cooperation is becoming or has become so deep during the last few decades, that even though they don't have an actual military alliance in place, there would be certain effects that would be similar to an actual alliance being in place. That would mean that they could be able to cooperate with their own security issues because they both are facing the same military and security challenge. They are both faced by the US and its alliance system around them and they are both trying to establish a sphere of influence around their peripheries, and they have these unsolved security issues. Russia has Ukraine, China has Taiwan. And so because of this pattern we argued with Juho in this piece that even though a formal alliance is not in place, China and Russia could support each other in various different ways. That would mean that they don't need a formal alliance to have certain alliance like effects or functions.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:05:56)

Okay sounds like more this kind of pragmatic cooperation based on a mutual enemy, in this case perhaps the United States. But you mentioned there also Taiwan, and China's relationship with Taiwan, which is obviously one of the big flash points in global politics. Do you think China could take advantage of how the West is preoccupied with the Ukraine crisis and start making some moves either in Taiwan or perhaps the South China Sea which is also place where China has these tense disputes with others? There's been some speculation, once again in the media, that China and Russia might somehow coordinate their campaigns with Ukraine and Taiwan, and China could somehow harness this situation when all eyes are on Ukraine and perhaps launch some sort of activity in the Taiwan Strait. Do you think there's any truth to this kind of idea and would this be possible in reality?

Matti Puranen (00:06:51)

Yeah this is actually exactly something that we try to bring up with Juha in that piece that you just mentioned, that even though there's not an alliance in place, if a conflict were to erupt at the other end of the Eurasian continent, so within Ukraine or Taiwan, the other country involved, I mean for example Russia, if there would be an escalation in Taiwan, Russia could then, for example escalate around the border of Ukraine, to bring in the US attention in there, and so do to kind of split the attention of the U.S. because U.S. probably cannot be at the both extremes of the Eurasian continent at the same time, or at least it's going to be pretty hard, so this is what we speculated, that these kinds of collaborations could be possible, but right now it would seem that Ukraine has, with its strenuous capability to defend its own country, it has kind of made a point to the Chinese leadership that attacking a modern country with modernized weaponry is not an easy task at all, because probably as we discussed earlier, the Chinese leadership probably supposed that Russia would be able to march into Kyiv within a few days or so and if that would have been the case, then perhaps their calculus would be different, but now that the Ukrainian Army has been able to defend its own country for two weeks already, and because of massive awakening of the Western countries with their sanctions against Russia, I would be tending to think that China is currently putting the invasion plans to the background, because the risks involved militarily,  politically and economically are made pretty obvious with what's going on in Ukraine, so I think they're not going to use this window of opportunity for invading Taiwan.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:08:36)

Okay. Well, what do you think about the longer-term development? If China is not currently planning anything with Taiwan, how do you see this Taiwan situation perhaps some years from now in the future? Could there be possibly something coming from China's side later in the future?

Matti Puranen (00:08:54)

Well it's hard to tell at this point, but I think that the kind of basic line is going to be continuing. That they're not going to escalate with Taiwan over the threshold of actual warfare, but they're going to increase their so-called hybrid or gray-zone activities against the island to the foreseeable future, so I don't think there's nothing dramatic going to be happening around the Taiwan strait within the next few years. Unless Taiwan decided that this is the exact moment for us to declare independence.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:09:25)

Okay yeah, that would take the situation to a whole new level for sure. Well, let's talk a bit about China's overall military capabilities. What is the status of China's military development currently? I mean we know that China is rising power and it's been increasingly painted as a true challenger to the United States and already in the economic sphere for example, overtaking the United States in some fashion. So do we also see China catching up to the United States, like really catching up in terms of its military capabilities?

Matti Puranen (00:09:57)

Yeah that's a good question, and it kind of depends on which geographical region we are talking about. If you look at the East Asian region and China's military build-up in that region with last, let's say thirty years or forty years or so, then for sure China is really catching up U.S. capabilities in that region. It has been building anti-ship missiles and nuclear submarines and such capabilities that are probably able to deter U.S. from operating within the region if a full conflict would escalate. But if we look at the more global arena and the balances of forces, then there's no question that the U.S. is still the number one in all possible measurements. I mean if you compare the amount of military bases, you compare the amount of aircraft carriers and your capability to project power around the globe, then China is nowhere near the U.S. in that regard.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:10:49)

Okay, so probably then in that general regard it would take a long time still for China to sort of catch up with the U.S.

Matti Puranen (00:10:58)

It will and there's an interesting sideline to this competition within the military technological sphere to some extent, because as we know, Chinese economy is slowing down as we speak, but at the same time they would need huge investments into their military R&D to be able to compete against the U.S. or against the West at large in military technology, as your economy keeps shrinking and as your military R&D levels are still not matching those of the West. I mean China has been able to rapidly develop its military technological base during the last thirty or forty years because it has been mostly based on espionage, reverse engineering and buying of foreign technology. But if you're going to be transforming yourself into a truly important military innovating power, then that's a different thing. That needs a lot of investments to be able to continue in similar fashion. In this sense we are in a turning point to some degree, and this is why China is trying to develop this military-civil fusion project, in which the civilian sector of the economy and civilian sector of the R&D, so civilian universities, civilian research facilities, collaborations between these civilian sectors and the military companies, military research facilities. This is a huge priority for the Chinese leadership, that this fusion of these two different worlds will happen in the future, because that is possibly something that is able to maintain the technological development or maintain China's ability to remain in this competition, technological competition in the future.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:12:38)

Right, okay. So definitely they have the ambition, but perhaps still a long way from actually getting there and there might be some hype and hubris in the way that these things are discussed to in the media.

I want to move now to China's relationship with Finland. You've also published several articles on this and studied China's relations with Finland. Looking at your articles, one can see a certain change over the course of years in this relationship. In 2020 you published an article in the Diplomat where you talked about Finland being sort of China's quote-unquote "model relationship" in Europe, whereas China's relations with other Western countries were already starting to worsen. But now just last month you published an article called "Finland's China Shift" where you argue that this model relationship is now changing, and Finland is sort of perhaps pivoting more towards the other Western countries, falling in line with the overall sort of perhaps weakening of the relations between China and the West. So how would you describe this China shift in Finland and what do you think is behind this development?

Matti Puranen (00:13:42)

Yeah another excellent question. Finland and China have had a very functioning relationship for a long time. You could say since the establishment of the diplomatic relations between PRC and Finland, which was in the 1950. There has been no important diplomatic clashes during the 70 years, and economic relations have developed really smoothly throughout the decades, and to some extent in 2017, when Xi Jinping came to Finland and the pandas were offered to the Finnish zoo of Ähtäri, this was seen as kind of a peak moment in this relationship, at least in my point of view. But after 2017 or 2018, something like that, around that time something happened, and after this so called peak in 2017 the relations have been deteriorating slowly but steadily, and if you read for example all the official publications in which the Finnish government defines its relations with China, they have been becoming gloomier and gloomier every time ever since this. And there are probably many reasons for this, but one of them has to be that in 2017 Xi Jinping launched his so-called New Era policies, the Xinshidai policies, after which China has taking a way more assertive and aggressive foreign policy line overall, everywhere. Not particularly in Finland, the official policy towards Finland has remained pretty calm even after the Xinshidai was announced.

But everywhere else around the globe we have seen increasing influence activities, we have seen the United Front type of influence activities around the planet, also in Finland. We have seen the so-called Wolf warrior diplomats raging around the world on different topics, and of course in 2020 when the pandemic hit the Earth, there was another kind of turn in most countries’ relations, or at least in their opinions and images of what China was and what it represents. So Finland has been going along this larger trend and if you read the official publications you can notice that Finland is carefully distancing itself from China, and at the same time placing itself more and more within the larger Western or European collectives, for example the more newer Finnish official policy documents tend to emphasize that Finland and Finnish China policy happens within the context of the European Union and the European Union's China policy and so on.

So we are definitely seeing a shift in this and it is too early to say anything about the effects of Russia's invasion to Ukraine but it would be difficult to see that it would not impact Finnish relations also with China, because China has been so vague in how it describes the situation. It doesn't use the word invasion for example and it clearly supports the Russian invasion at some level. And if a country supports Russia's invasion, this is typically, in Finland, not a good thing in any way, so I would tend to see that after the dust settles, this is not forgotten in Finland nor in other Western countries.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:16:45)

Yeah that's very interesting, and you mentioned the Ukraine situation, and now there's obviously in Finland been a lot of talk about Finland's possible NATO membership, which has been a sort of very hot topic in Finland for a long time, and Finland has had a sort of very cautious attitude towards NATO due to its long border and long history with Russia. But now clearly, first of all there's suddenly a new type of unity in Europe and the West in general and NATO membership is being seriously discussed in Finland, whereas China, when it talks about this Ukraine situation, it seems that China sees specifically NATO enlargement, NATO expansion and obviously NATO as a sort of extension of United States' influence in the world, China seems to see these things as a major or perhaps the major reason and culprit behind this crisis in Ukraine, so if Finland were to get closer to NATO and even join NATO at some point, what do you think China would make of this?

Matti Puranen (00:17:42)

Well, I don't think that's an important piece in the larger puzzle from the point of view of China. But I think what worries them most at this moment, not whether Finland joins or not, but the sudden unity of the Western community. I mean let's say during the last five or ten years or so, as the relations between U.S. and China have been deteriorating, I think it has been a kind of a top priority for Chinese diplomacy to keep U.S. and the European Union in a distance with each other, because this transatlantic kind of community, if it would get stronger, it would be a very hard nut for China to crack, but now we are seeing exactly that happening. We are seeing the European Union get together against Russia and we are seeing the transatlantic communities strengthening every day and we are seeing NATO strengthening every day. This is something that probably worries China a lot because if this newly found unity within the transatlantic community is then turned against China at some point, it is going to be problematic from their point of view. So I don't think Finland is important, but the more larger development that is going on, and this is why I think China is really in a hard spot on how it is handling the situation in Ukraine, how it is kind of balancing between supporting Russia and then not supporting Russia, and trying not making the Western community angry at the same time. But it's going to be hard to try to square that circle.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:19:14)

Right, yeah. You mentioned this sort of larger trend in global politics and the newfound unity in the West. You know, looking at the larger picture, you actually wrote your doctoral dissertation on China's so called tianxia theory, which is sort of an attempt to develop a Chinese theory of international politics and a sort of alternative vision of the international order which is quite interesting if you look at the way that the world is developing right now. Could you just first of all briefly explain what is the tianxia theory? What's behind this thinking in China?

Matti Puranen (00:19:46)

Yeah so the tianxia theory is based on this age-old ancient Chinese concept of tianxia, which basically means "the world" but it's more than that. The Chinese word for "world", tianxia, means "all under Heaven", and the basic idea in this all under Heaven is that all under heaven are one unified political space, which is centered around this "Son of Heaven", the Chinese Emperor, and the Son of Heaven then again is kind of the balancer of different political forces and cosmological forces coming from the supernatural world and so on, and he's taking care of the world, the all under heaven, and all other political units, other kingdoms, states, even though they might be autonomous or sovereign even to some degree, they are not at the same level in the political hierarchy with the Son of Heaven, the Emperor of China because the Emperor of China is kind of the center of the world. Well this is the ancient tianxia model in a really really simplified form.

But the modern version of tianxia then, as a part of this larger interest in China into kind of developing these Chinese theories of international relations, there have been some scholars, they have found this ancient tianxia concept and they have been trying to kind of modernize it and develop a modernized version of the tianxia, which would then replace the political or the international system that we have right now, because right now we have these independent sovereign nation states, which just keep fighting against each other and it's chaos, it's a Warring States kind of a situation, and these tianxia theorists, the modern tianxia theorists, they’re trying to develop a modern tianxia, which would have a strong central institution, like the Son of Heaven in the past, which would then pacify all this fighting sovereign states and allocate resources with different regions of the world and so on and so on. So basically the modern tianxia theory is variant of these different kind of world government theories that we have had for a long time within our Western tradition of international politics or political science. It's just a Chinese version based on this ancient tianxia concept.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:21:55)

Okay. That's a very interesting concept and certainly very different from the system that we have currently. Now, in recent years there has been a lot of talk about the so-called decline of democracy and you know rise authoritarian governments which now of course is put into new light with this Ukraine crisis when we seem to see a newfound unity in the West. So perhaps to kind of wrap up what we've been talking about here, do you see that there is any possibility that this sort of Chinese version of an international order could be a viable alternative to the liberal institutional order that we have now or is the democratic international order still sort of the thing that probably will be the basis of our international politics for the foreseeable future?

Matti Puranen (00:22:42)

Woah, that's a huge question. Well I don't think, at least in its current form, if you go and read the tianxia theorists you don't really find anything substantial in there. You don't find any concrete models on how the tianxia could be set in place. Or at least you don't find anything that has not been written in those various different world government models here the West for centuries, so I don't think there's anything substantial in there and I think it's merely a rhetorical device with which the Chinese government, because the Chinese government is also using some ideas from this tianxia theory I think, I see it merely as a rhetorical device with which the Chinese government and the Chinese kind of scholarly community are able to argue that we have this ancient Chinese wisdom of tianxia and these ancient Chinese values which are better than the Western chaotic warlike values, so I merely see it as a kind of a vehicle or device for macroscale identity politics, but nothing beyond that. If they developed the concept further, if they really propose and point out the model on how the tianxia can be established, sounds great because I mean the basic idea in tianxia is of course beautiful. It's a world without borders and peaceful and harmonious, equal, all this stuff. If they keep developing the concept and are able to somehow provide something substantial, than yeah, that sounds awesome. But at this point at least, I don't think they're offering any viable options for what we currently have.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:24:12)

Yeah, so it sounds like it's more like this sort of visionary utopian conceptual idea, not really a practical suggestion at least in its current form, so probably we will continue for the foreseeable future with how the world is currently, and perhaps China will pick some ideas from there when it tries to sort of assert itself in the global stage, but I guess from what you say it seems like China will be working within the existing system, perhaps trying to gain more influence in the existing system and sort of develop the existing system to more match China's own national and international interests. 

That's basically it for our current episode, so thank you very much for joining us Matti. It's been a very interesting discussion and I'm sure we'll be following China's role in the world arena with great interest, so yeah thank you very much for joining us.

Matti Puranen (00:25:04)

Thanks a lot for the invitation. It was my pleasure.

Ari-Joonas Pitkänen (00:25:06)

And obviously we hope for peace in Ukraine as soon as possible. And to our listeners, thank you for joining the Nordic Asia Podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.

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