China’s peace proposal for Ukraine has come to nothing—if, that is, peace in Ukraine were actually Beijing’s main motivation. The 12 points outlined in “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis” are clearly too abstract to be a road map to end the war. Instead, the proposal should be viewed as a piece in China’s intensified informational and diplomatic rivalry with the United States. After running its diplomatic activity at reduced speed for almost three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has recently launched a number of foreign-policy initiatives. The most prominent of these is its so-called peace proposal for Ukraine, with which China aims to strengthen its position visà-vis the United States among three specific audiences: the global south, Europe, and postwar Ukraine.
First, China aims to present itself to the global south as a future peace broker. The very same week in late February that Beijing presented its Ukraine proposal, it also issued a concept paper outlining the Global Security Initiative (GSI). This was no coincidence. First
