How far is China willing to go to help Russia?

The joint statement did not mention Ukraine by name. But with Russian troops poised on that nation’s border, and the United States warning of an attack at any moment, the timing of the lovefest this month wasn’t lost. It came as the West is threatening crippling sanctions on Moscow should its forces act. Putin, as the New York Times pointed out, has been stockpiling currency reserves, slashing its budget and reorienting away from U.S. and European imports to prepare for Western punishment. But even Russia needs friends.

China is Putin’s best bet. In the shadow of the escalating Ukraine crisis, the two nations have appeared to forge tighter bonds built on shared strategic interests — and enemies. The joint statement this month suggested a road map for an authoritarian axis that serves as a stronger counterweight to the democratic West, even as they sought to twist the definition of democracy itself.

“The Beijing manifesto,” as The Post’s David Ignatius dubs it, sought to present a new vision of a multipolar world bent on the “redistribution of power.”

“The two leaders even tried to appropriate the United States’ signature theme of democracy, arguing that it was ‘a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States.’ Meaning: Democracy is anything we say it is,” Ignatius writes.

U.S. officials have long fretted over the prospect of a strong Sino-Russian partnership, with Henry Kissinger’s historic trip to China in 1971 laying the groundwork for an opening with Beijing and driving a wedge between it and Moscow. Thus, a Xi-Putin bromance is the stuff of U.S. nightmares.

But how much of the repackaged partnership is just talk, and how far is China truly willing to go to help Russia?

At an Atlantic Council forum last week, former U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley argued that China — which recognizes the Ukrainian government and has developed trade ties with it — “will not formally endorse” an invasion, but would nevertheless “blame the United States and blame the West for provoking it and for failing to take into account Russia’s legitimate security interests.”

Beijing has denied reports suggesting Xi may have asked Putin not to invade Ukraine during the Olympics so as not to steal Chinese thunder. “The Chinese side advocates resolving differences by means of dialogue and consultations,” the Chinese diplomatic mission in Moscow said in denying the reports, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

There’s some reason to believe in limits to the Chinese-Russian partnership, especially in the event of serious Western sanctions with knock-on effects for any Chinese companies that violate them. The Chinese show little distaste for authoritarian behavior — doing easy business with nasty regimes. But in general, China dislikes foreign invention, prioritizes economic interests and tends to hedge its bets.

Heavily censored Chinese media as well as government statements have “tended to accept Russia’s framing” of the Ukraine issue, write defense analyst Daniel Shats and security author Peter W. Singer in Defense One. The People’s Liberation Army Daily, among other state media, has run articles that present the United States and NATO as “provocateurs” in a “hybrid war” against Russia, painting Ukraine as their pawn.

“But so far, this rhetoric has not translated into substantive support for Russia’s actions,” they write. “Official statements from the Chinese government have repeatedly emphasized neutrality and a posture of non-intervention, the same stance it took in the 2014 Crimea crisis.”

That stance in 2014 prioritized Chinese access to Western markets.

“China criticized American and European sanctions imposed on Russian officials, banks and companies after 2014,” the Economist noted last month. “But by and large Chinese banks and companies did not try to bust them, putting access to Western markets and financial systems first.”

Still, the current standoff between Russia and the West — as suggested by that opus of a joint statement — may be fundamentally different. Warming Sino-Russian ties have allowed Moscow to redeploy troops from the Chinese border closer to Ukraine in Belarus, according to Bonnie Glaser, the German Marshall Fund’s Asia program director. She suggests in Foreign Policy that this time, Beijing — locked in its own strategic stare down with Washington over a host of issues including the fate of Taiwan — may be willing to incur costs to break any attempt by the West to isolate Russia, including financially.

“In a wider strategic context where Beijing sees itself in an intensifying rivalry with the United States, consolidating a partnership with Russia is now worth the price of some unhappy European leaders and modest potential economic costs in Ukraine,” Glaser wrote.

Bloomberg News, citing three senior officials, reported last week that the Biden administration increasingly believes China is viewing the U.S. response to Ukraine as a test case for how it might react to Chinese aggression in Taiwan. China’s belligerence there is indeed growing. Last month, Taiwan — which China views as its own territory — scrambled fighters to warn away 39 incursions by the Chinese air force within one day, the largest number since October.

“It will help Xi decide whether and how he should go about military and forceful reunification with Taiwan,” writes Gunjan Singh, a professor at India’s O.P. Jindal Global University.

Chinese academics dispute that characterization — in part because it’s not unusual for them to “grumble when foreigners doubt that China is anything but a peace-loving giant,” the Economist notes. It would surely watch the West’s reaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine closely. But Chinese experts say Beijing understands that a showdown over Taiwan would be far graver.

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