China’s President Xi wants the Ukraine war to drag on for years, writes DR JADE MCGLYNN

When a noticeably swollen face Vladimir Putin welcomed his “best friend” Xi Jinping to the Kremlin yesterday, the Russian despot pretended to receive his equal.

After all, he no doubt reasoned, China needs Russian oil and gas for its energy-guzzling economy. The Kremlin is also a handy ally for Beijing to oppose what the two dictators see as America’s domination of global affairs. When the two met in China last year, they issued a statement declaring that the “friendship” between their regimes “knows no bounds.”

Xi seemed happy to play along with this fiction yesterday. He knows that the presence of a bona fide world leader traveling to Moscow is of great domestic propaganda value to Putin, allowing him to show his subjects that his horrific war has not left him completely isolated on the international stage.

While paying tribute to Putin’s “strong leadership” and insisting that he was “convinced” that the mass murderer had the support of the Russian people, Xi even said they were “partners in comprehensive strategic cooperation.” I studied Russian culture and politics for 15 years. Let me tell you: Putin would have happily gobbled all this up.

But if the Russian dictator really believes Xi is his equal, he is delusional. Because Beijing’s approach to world politics is much smarter than Moscow’s.

The Chinese president and the Russian president walk after their talks at the Kremlin

While Putin lashes out, miscalculates and sees the world in crude terms of status, Xi is infinitely more cunning. And despite everything, he presented himself as a man of peace yesterday, even claiming to have a 12-point “peace plan” to end the war in Ukraine, Xi wants the war to continue.

The Americans have suggested that he intends to provide arms to Putin. If so, you can be sure that he will give the Russians just enough weapons to prolong this terrible conflict for months or years, but not to end it.

Why? Because every day as the war continues, Xi and his proxies in the Chinese Communist Party are gaining new and valuable insights into how the West might respond if he continues to do what really matters to him.

Such is his plan to invade and take over Taiwan, the island democracy of 23 million people that has been governed independently since 1949 but which China believes belongs in its empire.

Just last month, the CIA revealed that Xi had ordered his massive People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi, a dictator for life, knows that as long as the war in Ukraine dominates the international agenda, Western attention will be diverted.

Meanwhile, he calculates, several long and punishing years of a bloody and costly proxy war in Ukraine will weaken America’s resolve to fight elsewhere or defend its allies. NATO’s taxpayers, he suspects, will hate paying for conflicts in distant lands.

Which brings me to another reason Xi wants the war to continue. Accepting Chinese arms and support means Russia is getting closer to Beijing. Remember: China’s infamous “Belt and Road” infrastructure project has led it to loan billions to African countries in a decades-long effort to bring the continent under its rule.

Putin can look closer to home to learn the same lesson. Chinese logging companies have taken advantage of Russia’s isolation and desperation to export to clear parts of Siberia’s forests at low prices.

“Xi will have unscrupulously supported a man who shot at maternity wards and playgrounds in Ukraine, massacred tens of thousands of civilians and kidnapped thousands of children.”

In 2020, China imported nearly 6.5 million cubic meters of logs from Russia, leaving expanses of scarred earth littered with dying stumps.

So Putin can rest assured that Xi’s generosity can only pay a high price. Yes, the two men have similar worldviews, scorn freedom and democracy, and desire a new world order that is no longer controlled by the West.

Xi will have unscrupulously supported a man who has shelled maternity wards and playgrounds in Ukraine, massacred tens of thousands of civilians and kidnapped thousands of children. And he will have regarded the arrest warrant recently issued to Putin by the International Criminal Court as little more than a diplomatic trifle.

Nevertheless, Xi expects repayment for his generosity – with interest.

Last night, the two despots would feast on a banquet that included quail, venison, and wines from some of Russia’s finest vineyards. How long this sordid friendship will last remains to be seen. But unfortunately for the world, its continued existence means that whatever the Chinese president’s weasel words may be, peace will remain a distant dream.

Dr. Jade McGlynn is a Research Fellow at Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and author of Russia’s War, published this week