As Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week, he claimed to be working towards a “true multilateralism” in which nations treat each other as equals and avoid “hegemonism and power politics” – a vocabulary the Chinese president returns to with regularity.

China is officially neutral in Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Xi has presented himself as a mediator, inviting Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and United States President Donald Trump to Beijing in December for talks.

But China is not equidistant from the neighbours at war.

Xi’s “no limits” alliance with Putin, pronounced just before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, puts him in the camp of an aggressor bent on “hegemonism”, experts tell Al Jazeera.

Three decades ago, however, China was Ukraine’s ally, not Russia’s.

When Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees from Russia in 1994, China lauded the move and, in December of that year, offered Kyiv nuclear security guarantees should it ever be attacked by a nuclear power.

In 2013, Ukraine and China signed a Treaty of Friendship undertaking that “none of the sides shall take any action that harms the sovereignty, security, or territorial integrity of the other side”.

Vita Golod, an expert on Chinese-Ukrainian relations at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said Beijing has betrayed both undertakings.

“These commitments have so far remained largely rhetorical and have not translated into concrete security guarantees for Ukraine,” she told Al Jazeera. “In 2024, Ukraine attempted to remind China of these assurances during its appeal at the United Nations, calling for special security guarantees from nuclear states.”

Instead, China helped Russia scupper condemnations of its invasion of Ukraine in the UN Security Council.

A 12-point position paper China published in February 2023 refused to condemn Russia’s war and echoed the Kremlin’s talking points, such as initiating peace talks without the precondition of a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

“Beijing lacks the credibility to act as an honest broker between Ukraine and Russia,” said Plamen Tonchev, a China expert at the Institute of International Economic Relations (IIER), an Athens-based think tank. “I don’t think that it acted as a guarantor. On the contrary, it ditched Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s ‘strategic scepticism’ on China

In June 2024, Ukraine attempted to bring countries to a peace conference hosted by Switzerland. China did not attend, and Ukraine accused it of pressing other Asian nations to abstain.

At a speech in Singapore, Zelenskyy lashed out at Russia for “using Chinese influence in the region, using Chinese diplomats also”, and doing “everything to disrupt the peace summit”.

Xi has met Putin, whom European leaders openly refer to as a war criminal, five times since the full-scale invasion began.

“Ukraine has moved from caution to open strategic scepticism,” said Velina Tchakarova, founder of Vienna-based forecaster For a Conscious Experience (FACE). “China is no longer seen as a potential mediator but as a strategic adversary masked in neutral rhetoric.

“Ukraine is therefore deepening its integration with NATO, aligning with the G7 reconstruction framework, and engaging in tech and defence cooperation with Indo-Pacific democracies as part of a broader anti-revisionist coalition.”

Material interests

China moved quickly from diplomatic support and political rehabilitation to material assistance.

As early as February 2023, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “information that they’re considering providing lethal support”, in a reference to China.

“The US is in no position to tell China what to do,” responded Wang Wenbin, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman.

Last April, Ukraine accused China of sending artillery shells and gunpowder to Russia and sanctioned three Chinese companies – an aeronautics firm and two industrial components companies.

The European Union followed. In May, it included Chinese firms in a 17th package of sanctions for supplying dual-use goods to Russia’s war machine.

China denied supplying deadly arms and said it strictly controlled the export of dual-use goods.

But a July investigative report by the Reuters news agency said Chinese firms were single-handedly sustaining Russian drone production by shipping engines mislabelled as “industrial refrigeration units” to Russia’s drone assembly plants.

Last month alone, Ukraine said it downed 6,173 drones launched by Russia.

China has also helped Russia financially by refusing to join the EU and the US in banning imports of Russian energy.

On the contrary, Putin and Xi signed an agreement last week to construct a new gas pipeline supplying China with as much as 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year, in addition to the 38bcm China receives from an existing pipeline. On August 29, China received its first shipment of liquefied natural gas from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project, a sanctioned liquefaction plant.

“Russia is cementing its political and economic dependence on China,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation. “China is … dictating cheap prices, terms, and deadlines, forcing Moscow to sign agreements that turn it into an appendage.”

That dependence may go beyond energy revenues and industrial production. Ukraine suspects China is spying on Russia’s behalf. Last September, Zelenskyy said Chinese satellites were photographing Ukrainian nuclear power plants, possibly in preparation for a Russian strike.

In July, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) arrested Chinese citizens after it allegedly found classified documents on their mobile phones with the specifications of Ukraine’s Neptune missile system. Ukraine used the Neptune to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, in 2022.

China’s debt to Ukraine

In addition to “Beijing’s pro-Russia neutrality”, as IIER’s Tonchev put it, China has overlooked a historic debt to Ukraine, said analysts.

“China owes Ukraine a lot. It would not now be a peer competitor to the US without significant transfers of technology from Ukraine,” said a European China expert on condition of anonymity.

In 1998, a Chinese national bought the hull of an unfinished Soviet aircraft carrier, the Varyag, from Ukraine and towed it to China, allegedly to convert it into a casino.

“The vessel was later refurbished, militarised, and launched as the Liaoning, laying the foundation for China’s modern aircraft carrier programme and broader naval modernisation,” said North Carolina University’s Golod.

“This early episode exemplified China’s exploitation of post-Soviet weakness to build its own military capabilities using Ukrainian technology,” said Tchakarova of FACE.

“It was the starting point in China’s strategy to build carrier battle groups and enhance the interoperability of its navy and air forces,” said Tonchev.

But another military technology target was of far greater interest.

In 2016, Beijing Skyrizon Aviation sought to acquire a controlling stake in Ukraine’s Motor Sich, one of the world’s top makers of engines for cargo aircraft and helicopters. Rich with Soviet aeronautics technology, the company was impoverished by the loss of its main client, Russia, which had waged war in Ukraine’s Donbas region. China saw Motor Sich as key to its rearmament.

But 2016 was a wake-up call for Europe, as Chinese appliance maker Midea acquired Kuka, Germany’s leading robotics company, and the China Ocean Shipping Company, a state-owned enterprise, bought the Piraeus Port Authority in Greece to facilitate Chinese exports to Europe.

China’s State Grid, another state behemoth, was found to have bought up a string of European electricity networks as the EU thought it was privatising them.

The capital spending had political implications. Eastern European countries like Hungary and Greece were breaking ranks with Europe on policy positions towards China.

“If we do not succeed … in developing a single strategy towards China, then China will succeed in dividing Europe,” German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in September.

France, Germany and Italy requested a Europe-wide screening mechanism for foreign mergers and acquisitions, and the EU declared China a non-market economy.

In this political climate, and under US pressure, Ukraine stopped the sale of Motor Sich and nationalised the company. Beijing Skyrizon Aviation sued Ukraine for $4.5bn.

“Today … there is no active military or sensitive technological cooperation between Ukraine and China. The relationship has cooled significantly,” said Golod.

There were other interests.

“By 2021, China was the largest importer of Ukrainian barley and corn, accounting for over 30 percent of its corn imports. Ukrainian sunflower oil, iron ore, and titanium were crucial to China’s food security and industrial base,” said Tchakarova. All those goods now come from Russia.

China’s imports from Ukraine now amount to $4bn – a fraction of the $130bn it spends on Russian imports, according to the UN’s Comtrade database.

What, then, is China’s game in Ukraine? It appears to hold a balanced position. China helped discourage Putin from any use of nuclear weapons. It has not recognised the annexation of the four provinces Russia claims – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. It is interested in reconstruction. It is willing to host talks and possibly contribute troops to a peacekeeping force.

But, Tonchev said, self-interest drives some of these positions. China’s support of “territorial integrity” and the renunciation of separatism “suited both sides, with a view to Taiwan”, he said. And in discussions he has had with Chinese analysts, “China is unlikely to act as a donor … In fact, when I raise this question, there’s deafening silence.”

Ultimately, believed Tchakarova, China is strategically supporting Russia to drain Western power.

In Beijing, Putin and Xi openly supported a new world order. That, said Tchakarova, meant “replacing the Western-led, rules-based order with a multipolar system that tolerates spheres of influence and territorial revisionism”.

In claiming Ukrainian lands, Russia is clearly in favour of such revisionism in Europe.