--- title: China’s Response to Russia Could Upend the World Order description: What China decides to do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could mark a turning point in both the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations. canonical: https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-03-16T22:42:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:33:53.997Z article:section: Politics og:title: How China’s Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order og:description: “This is really a crucial moment and potentially a turning point." og:url: https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1a2d74e9da1b62fc/698a300522fb8560a2e2d3f4/china-russia-ukraine-response-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: china-russia-ukraine-response-1 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How China’s Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order twitter:description: “This is really a crucial moment and potentially a turning point." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1a2d74e9da1b62fc/698a300522fb8560a2e2d3f4/china-russia-ukraine-response-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How China’s Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=d46a2cad-ed97-49ea-b1f3-1abc34fda68e&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Ukraine: A Glossary of Terms [Watch (HLS stream): Ukraine: A Glossary of Terms](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OM8MLV7Y.m3u8) (5:41)  _Published 2022-03-15. When it comes to learning about the conflict in Ukraine, there are a lot of terms that get thrown around. Here are a few you should know._  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Mar 16, 2022 10:42 PM UTC  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Mar 16, 2022 10:42 PM UTC Jake Sullivan looks flushed and his jaw is clenched. Across from President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser, over a row of ferns at a matching table draped in blue cloth, sits China’s senior foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi, his mouth frozen in a sanguine smile. The official photograph released by China’s state-run news agency of the two men sitting face to face on March 14 in Rome is a snapshot of how Beijing wants to be seen at this moment as China’s sometime ally Russia continues its deadly invasion of Ukraine: as a confident, emerging power facing a frustrated and worried United States. The reality is more complicated. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is hoping China’s leader Xi Jinping will see [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ](https://time.com/6150027/china-russia-ukraine-xi-jinping-putin/)as another step forward for the two countries’ broader effort to push back against the world’s democracies. Russia is courting China’s support of its assault on Ukraine and hopes China will prop up Moscow’s faltering economy battered by sanctions. But if China further backs Russia’s aggression with significant monetary help or—even more unsettling—weapons, the blowback from the U.S. and European countries could threaten China’s long-term effort to rise as the dominant global power. What [China decides to do](https://time.com/6157160/china-stop-russias-war-in-ukraine/) about Russia’s needs could mark a turning point in both the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations, and the outcome of China’s choice will define what a new global order looks like. Will China continue to try to reshape the current global economy in its image by participating in it? Or will China join Russia behind a new Iron Curtain of sanctions, cut off from the U.S. and Europe and left to navigate a new monetary system and trading framework?  Yang Jiechi, left, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, right in Rome on March 14 Jin Mamengni—Xinhua/Alamy “This is really a crucial moment and potentially a turning point,” says Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “They really are siding with the Russians. They are more closely aligned with the Russians than they’ve ever been.” China and Russia have occasionally had a strained relationship over the past several decades. Moscow and Beijing fought a border war in 1969 along the edge of China’s northeast territory, and the two countries have never developed strong person-to-person ties across their shared 2,500 miles of border. As China has risen in global influence, Russia’s leadership have resented the prospect of becoming a client state of Beijing. But China’s leaders are now leaning toward Moscow much more heavily than they did when trying to appear neutral following Putin’s seizure of Crimea in 2014\. When Xi and Putin met at the opening of the Beijing Olympics on Feb. 4, the two agreed their countries’ relationship would have “no limits” and “no wavering,” according to a Chinese government [description](http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2022/0204/c1024-32345448.html) of the meeting. That was two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. This has presented the Biden Administration with a delicate and growing challenge in how to talk to China about its assistance to Russia. The seven hours of talks between Sullivan and Yang inside the Rome Cavalieri hotel were “intense” and “reflecting the gravity of the moment,” a senior Administration official said, adding that the two officials had an “extensive conversation” about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Sullivan made it clear that the U.S. and European allies would consider cutting off Chinese financial institutions involved in backing Russia’s war financially, said a person familiar with the discussions. Broadly, Xi Jinping has calculated that the U.S. is in decline and Western democracies have failed, Glaser says, and that Russia is one ally that can work alongside China to create a different international system that’s more favorable. But with Russia’s violent effort to take Ukraine, that assessment comes with considerable risk for China. If Russia emerges weaker from its war in Ukraine, and China backed it, China could suffer major economic backlash. China relies heavily on its trading relationships with European countries and has worked hard to prevent Europe from restricting trade. “That would be huge, if China ends up with a vast amount of countries around the world that are aligned against it because it has sided with Russia,” Glaser says. Convincing European powers to punish China could be a tall order for President Biden, who’s had to work hard to convince Europe to limit its financial and energy ties to Russia. Biden is set to travel to Europe next week to meet with [NATO allies](https://time.com/6157257/nato-ukraine-military-aid/), and China’s degree of support for Russia will surely come up in those meetings. U.S. officials want to prepare allies for how to respond if China begins contributing more financially or militarily to Russia. Meanwhile, Xi showed the importance he puts on keeping lines of communication open with European powers when he joined a video call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 8 to talk about the war in Ukraine. This moment has put on a collision course two competing objectives of China’s foreign policy, says David Shullman, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst on East Asia. China wants Russia to be its partner in building a new global order, but it also wants to be viewed as a “responsible power” that can someday lead the current one, or at least be at the center of a new system of global governance and connectivity, Shullman says. If China provides Russia with drones, surface to air missiles, or other weapons, “It would very clearly demonstrate that we have a break in what we expected out of the world order,” Shullman says. “It would be clear that China had very firmly sided with Russia against the democratic world and against developed democracies.” ## Transcript President Zelensky once again calling on NATO for a no-fly zone... totality of our economic sanctions... that you hear about the humanitarian corridor... When it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, there are a lot of terms that are being thrown around. Here are a few that you should know. Oligarchs are Russian businessmen, who amass wealth very quickly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Most of them, through friendships and corruption, basically. They control different parts of the Russian infrastructure. So the Biden administration has developed a task force to go after property, such as yachts, and summer homes and things of this nature. And the hope is that this small group, relatively small group of men can apply some pressure to Vladimir Putin to make him stand down this war. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was started after World War Two. Its whole purpose was to stand against the Soviet Union. Nations like France, Britain, United States, they stood up this alliance, which it has a defining principle that, you know, attack against one is attack against all. One of the things that that Putin brings up when he has his list of complaints against the West, is the fact that, you know, Ukraine was being considered as becoming a member of the the NATO alliance. They're not, of course, and they haven't been brought in, but just the threat of that was enough for Putin to, you know, launch this assault into Ukraine. His big fear is that, you know, the alliance would pre-position military forces and capabilities along his border that would threaten the existence of Russia. Sanctions are measures like, hey, let's let's cut Russia off from the global banking system. That's one set of sanctions. Let's all agree not to buy Russian oil. It's a set of agreements between countries on one side of a conflict to kind of politically and economically ostracize a country that is a bad actor. Russia wants to decapitate the Government of Ukraine, they want to overthrow that government and install their own. And the way that they're applying that pressure is by going after major population centers. They've already launched over 600 missiles into major cities creating a humanitarian crisis. And seeing this, Ukraine has tried to cut a deal with Russia to be able to open up a number of corridors in which civilians are allowed to leave combat zones. Russia has already been seen to have violated this and to have targeted these areas. When we think of a nuclear weapon, we think of obliterating an entire city. Tactical nuclear weapons are designed to be more contained to a limited geography, to a smaller area of space. No army, no nation has ever used a tactical nuke in combat before. You know, the United States has said its nuclear umbrella extends to the NATO allies. Of course, Ukraine is not a NATO ally. But just a use of a nuclear weapon would demand that the United States would have to respond in some meaningful way. The United States has had air superiority over every war since World War Two. So the idea with a no-fly zone is that the United States does not allow another military to operate over a specific area. And if any aircraft breached that airspace, the United States or its allies would shoot down the enemy aircraft. This is off limits for the Biden administration because it puts American pilots in direct combat with Russian pilots, the risk of escalation and going into worldwide conflict grows exponentially greater. The United States has done no fly zones before, most recently in Libya, and also in Iraq. But the Air Force has they faced there were largely run down and much smaller numbers. So SWIFT is a messaging system that allows banks to communicate with each other about transactions that are being made. And by cutting Russia off from SWIFT, it means that people and organizations and banks inside Russia can no longer communicate with the outside banking world and complete transactions that are very important to to doing business in the country and doing business internationally. The Bayraktar drones are smaller drone systems that have their Turkish-made. And they've been used to devastating effect on Russian military. The Russian military has been stalled and they've encountered stiff resistance in almost every place that they've gone, you know, they're running out of fuel and food and the logistics problems that they've had, have basically made them sitting ducks they're stalled out. And these Turkish made drones have been, you know, perfect to hit those targets on the ground. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/"},"headline":"How China’s Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order","datePublished":"2022-03-16T22:42:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:33:53.997Z","description":"What China decides to do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could mark a turning point in both the war in Ukraine and U.S.-China relations.","url":"https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/","keywords":["Biden Administration","feature"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1a2d74e9da1b62fc/698a300522fb8560a2e2d3f4/china-russia-ukraine-response-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1a2d74e9da1b62fc/698a300522fb8560a2e2d3f4/china-russia-ukraine-response-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"china-russia-ukraine-response-1","caption":"President Xi Jinping of China appears on a screen during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Olympics on Feb. 4","creditText":"Gabriela Bhaskar—The New York Times/Redux","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/biden-administration/","name":"Biden Administration"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6158146/china-russia-ukraine-biden/","name":"How China’s Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Upend the World Order"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Ukraine: A Glossary of Terms","description":"When it comes to learning about the conflict in Ukraine, there are a lot of terms that get thrown around. 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