Strategic narratives of Russia’s war in Ukraine: perspectives from China

ABSTRACT

Strategic narratives have become an important tool with which states define their geopolitical reality and shape the types of foreign policy decisions that emerge. In order to build a more favourable international environment, China has deployed substantial resources to disseminate its strategic narratives and communicate its role, identity and vision and legitimise Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. Despite the obvious importance of narratives on conflict and global security, remarkably few studies have examined China’s strategic narratives on security-related issues. This article marks the first systematic effort to map out China’s strategic narratives in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Based on a corpus linguistics approach and qualitative content analysis, the findings reveal that China does not project itself as a neutral player and that its strategic narratives often echo Russia’s portrayal of the Ukrainian war. However, the analysis also highlights China’s efforts to maintain its distance from Russia while presenting itself against the backdrop of the US/West-Russian rivalry as an equidistant player belonging to the wider international community as well as the most suitable actor to manage a peaceful global order.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• strategic narrative
• security
• Russia
• Ukraine

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela Pennisi di Floristella

Angela Pennisi di Floristella is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Malta. She received a PhD in Global Politics and European Integration from the Scuola Superiore of the University of Catania. Before joining the Department of International Relations, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Research College The Transformative Power of Europe at the Freie Universität, Berlin and, a research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Studies at the University of Catania. She obtained her first degree in Political Science from the University of Florence and an M.A. in International Affairs, at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), in Milan. She has been a visiting scholar at the School of International Service (SIS) at the American University (Washington DC), at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore, at the Shandong University in Jinan (China) and, at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), in Beijing. Her research focuses on Asian Pacific security cooperation with a special focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), on ASEAN-EU interregional relations and on non-traditional security. She has authored the book The ASEAN Regional Security Partnership published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2015. Recently published articles include: A. Pennisi di Floristella (2020) Security cooperation in and with Asia: Towards a pragmatic turn in the EU’s security policy? European Security, 29 (2): 170–188. A. Pennisi di Floristella (2019) US and EU evolving approaches in Southeast Asia in the Trump era: Moving closer to convergence or divergence?, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 38 (2), 172–193.

Xuechen Chen

Xuechen Chen is an Assistant Professor in Politics & International Relations at Northeastern University London and a Visiting Research Fellow at the London Asia-Pacific Centre for Social Science, King’s College London. She received her PhD in European and International Studies at King’s College London and her MSc in European Studies at London School of Economics. Before joining Northeastern University London, she held teaching positions and visiting research fellowships at SOAS, University of London (2017–2019), the European Institute for Asian Studies (2017–2020) and the EU Centre in Singapore (2017). Her research lies at the intersection of International Relations and Area Studies. Her current research interests include EU external relations with the Asia-Pacific region, China’s foreign policy, regional integration in East Asia, and norm diffusion in international politics (with a particular focus on global cyberspace governance and non-traditional security issues). Xuechen recently became a member of NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks which is Northeastern University’s center for digital humanities and computational social science. Her publications appear on journals such as Journal of European Integration, European Security, The International Spectator, Defense Studies, Asia Europe Journal, Chinese Journal of Political Science, among others.