A common view of Russia in China is that of the “Warrior Nation,” strewn in daily conversation and in hashtags on social media. This portrayal has only intensified with the Russo-Ukrainian war: when the warrior nation indeed waged war, new debates rose within China on how Beijing should respond and on whose side. Chinese authorities claim neutrality, abstaining from the U.N. General Assembly vote condemning Russia, while public sentiment – the social basis for government stance – is split between some pro-war views on social media and the surprise and outcry of many others.
Behind social media as the radar screen for an impression of public opinion lies the task of actually gauging public opinion – a particularly thorny one for China. The expulsion of foreign journalists and censorship means that (censored) social media has become the primary source for analyzing Chinese public opinion.
China and Russia have a long and complex history as hulking neighbours. During the “century of humiliation” (mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century), China viewed the Russian Empire as exploiting its weakness with unequal treaties, annexations and concessions. After the establishment of the Soviet Union (1922) in the 1920s and 1930s, relations remained fractious but the Soviets helped China through the upheaval of the Qing Dynasty, the war against Japan, and Moscow’s initial apathy turned to support for the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War, resulting in the Communists’ victory and establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The two Communist regimes made an alliance, but ideological tension emerged after Stalin’s death in 1953. Mao distrusted and accused the Soviet leadership of revisionism, replacing the alliance with reciprocal criticism and competition. This shift led to a freeze in relations to last three decades: Beijing’s anti-Soviet rhetoric intensified in the 1970s; China was opposed to the Russian stance in the Sino-Vietnam war (1979) and the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989). Leaders moved to reconcile and restore diplomatic relations in 1982, and rapprochement accelerated after the fall of the Soviet Union to become the Russian Federation in 1991. China and Russia have since maintained cordial, close relations with geopolitical and regional alliance and significant levels of trade.
On 4 February, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Xi Jinping and Putin declared a “friendship without limits.” However, since the onset of the Russian-Ukraine war, Beijing has very much played within limits to toe a careful line – abstaining from condemning Russia’s invasion, criticizing Western sanctions on Russia but not helping Russia to evade them either, and constantly offering reassurances that China is pro-peace – to render a symbolic, rather than practical or actionable relationship with Russia.
Practically then, Beijing appears to have little direct interest in the conflict aside from upholding its strategic alignment with Russia against the West. Beijing would view the war as a disturbance to global economic activity and China’s imports of grain and wheat, and China likely fears the repercussions that might result from engaging or associating with Russia.
China’s delicate position is reflected in state-run media and social media censorship, where modified content tends to show sympathy for the Russian position and blames the United States and the West for the conflict. Despite its tempting open-source convenience, social media under censorship becomes a warped lens into public opinion: patriotic voices run, often rampant, in the tightly controlled media space. On the Ukraine war, Chinese patriotism morphs into defence for Russia, contextualized and only in conjunction with a deeper, fundamental opposition toward the United States. Pro-Russia affinity on social media is often veiled as a larger critique of the West in a murky concoction, obscuring how much is pro-Russia or simply anti-US.
A more sophisticated attempt at gauging Chinese public opinion on the Ukraine war – paring back the censorship and clickbait, separating relativistic views on Russia and the West – was undertaken by the Carter Center’s China Focus initiative. Between March 28 and April 5, 2022, the Carter Center conducted a survey of Chinese public opinion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The survey occupied inactive web domains to randomly intercept Chinese internet users, asking respondents a) whether they feel that supporting Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is in China’s national interest, b) whether China should mediate the conflict, and c) whether they have seen the theory that Russia discovered American biolabs working on bioweapons in Ukraine and whether they believe it is true. Results demonstrate that 75% of respondents agree that supporting Russia in Ukraine is China’s national interest, and that roughly 60% of respondents support China mediating an end to the conflict. Among those who have encountered the theory, roughly 70% of respondents believe this theory is accurate.
The first two results combined spell reassurance that the public is clear-eyed that backing for Russia does not necessarily mean active or military engagement. However, a curious correlation between higher education and higher support for Russia and higher belief in conspiracy theories is concerning. China’s educated elites are conventionally considered western-leaning, however, these results show that Chinese urbanites increasingly view the US as determined to contain China, paralyze its economic growth, and thwart the country’s innovation and technology under the guise of ideology and human rights. This is reinforced from the personal dimension that there is no sentimental attachment between the Chinese and the Russians due to historical strife. It appears that the Chinese public does believe supporting Russia to be in the interest of China – not because they like the war, or that they like Russia as a country or as a people, but because of U.S. hostility and in turn, the very necessity of retaining Russia as a friend so not to end up fighting the U.S. alone. A popular tweet by Liu Xin, anchorwoman for China Global Television Network, summed up this view: “You want us to destroy our friend and then you turn around to destroy us.” In this second-person address and the conflict at large, the subject was never Russia or Ukraine for much of the Chinese public, but the U.S.