China and Belarus pledge deeper ties

Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in Beijing today. They inked a series of agreements to strengthen their “all-weather” strategic partnership, and also urged for a ceasefire and for peace talks in the Ukraine war. Xi  proposed that the two countries “continuously enhance political mutual trust, build unbreakable strategic support for each other and always support each other to independently choose…paths for development.”

The Belarusians may want more. China has for many years promoted the economic benefits of its ties to Belarus, but the promised investments and growth opportunities have not materialized. As far back as 2020, Warsaw-based scholar Andrei Yeliseyeu observed that “Belarus’s ambitious plans to benefit from Chinese investment and participation in the China-led BRI continue to be confronted with harsh realities.” The money has not been flowing as Minsk had hoped it would. Just over two weeks ago, Yeliseyeu and Olga Aleszko-Lessels noted that despite continued “sunny rhetoric,” China is actually restricting investment in Belarus, where growth is slowing, partly as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“There has been a lot of hype about trade between China and Belarus. That has largely disappointed Belarus, since the Chinese economic footprint in Belarus has not really matched what people hoped that it would achieve,” Joe Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the editor of the China-Russia Report, told The China Project today. “But there’s potential for greater signs of Belarusian trade this year. And I think that that would be politically motivated, not economically motivated.”

The meeting between Xi and Lukashenko also marks stronger ties between the two nations that an isolated and sanctioned Russia most heavily relies on to wage its war on Ukraine.

Belarus is one of Russia’s staunchest allies in the Ukraine war

China’s meeting with Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies, comes after Beijing announced a 12-point peace proposal to resolve the Ukraine conflict on February 24, the one-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion. The proposal did not specify that Russia should withdraw its invading forces.

Although Belarus has not formally been involved in the war in Ukraine, it has loaned a substantial amount of support to Russia. Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine from Belarus more than a year ago, which resulted in Western sanctions against Minsk. Lukashenko also signed a series of agreements that left him heavily dependent on Russian President Vladimir Putin, ever since the Kremlin helped him crack down on the 2020 anti-government protests in Belarus.

Just over a week ago on February 20, Lukashenko announced that Belarus, a country of about 9.3 million people, would form a 100,000 to 150,000-strong volunteer military defense force. Every citizen “should be able to at least handle weapons,” Lukashenko said during the announcement.

The looming threat of annexation and a template for Taiwan?

Yahoo News reported on February 20 that it had obtained a leaked internal strategy document from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s executive office detailing “a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means” for Russia to take full control of Belarus in the next decade.

“There’s always been the implicit threat of annexation by Russia,” Webster told The China Project. “Frankly, if the war in Ukraine had gone much better [for Putin], Belarus could be part of Russian territory right now. I think that’s part of the reason why Lukashenko has been very reluctant to commit military forces to Ukraine…There’s the non-trivial chance that he might need those forces in the event of an incident involving Russia.”

Russia has threatened to absorb Belarus since 1996, when the supranational Union State of Russia and Belarus was formed with the stated aim of deepening economic and defense ties. Russia has always been the dominant player.

In January 2022, “the Chinese Embassy in Russia began including some Belarus-related updates into its Russia related news section,” Webster said. “I think from Beijing’s perspective, they were open to [Russian] annexation for a couple of reasons. First, I think the cost of that would have been much smaller than actually invading Ukraine. And the second one is that there could have been some implications, if Russia was able to politically annex Belarus, that could have potentially provided a template for the PRC vis-à-vis Taiwan.”

Will Beijing use Belarus as a “cutout” to support Russia?

The meeting between Xi and Lukashenko comes amid Western fears that China is considering lethal support to Russia, accusations that Beijing has vehemently denied.

But if Beijing were to provide additional economic or other assistance to Belarus, it could have military implications, as it could provide a plausible deniability about direct involvement with Russia, while allowing  Chinese money or even military equipment to end up in Russia’s hands.

The United States has raised concern over Lukashenko’s visit, after Wáng Yì 王毅 signaled China would continue to deepen ties with Russia during his visit to Moscow earlier this month.

“The fact that the PRC is now engaging with Lukashenko, who has, in effect, ceded his own sovereignty to Russia, is just another element of the PRC’s deepening engagement with Russia, with all of those who are engaged with and supporting Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said at a press briefing on February 27.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also warned that any lethal aid that China would provide to Russia would “come at real cost.”

Note: This article was edited after publication for clarity, to correct the attribution of  the final quote from Jake Sullivan, and to add additional research.