In late April, Chinese President Xi Jinping had telephone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Following this, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced the establishment of a delegation to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, led by former Chinese ambassador to Russia, Li Hui. Russian media tells what this Chinese diplomat is known for and whether his experience will help resolve the conflict.
On April 26, the first talks between China and Ukraine since February 2022 took place. Although no specific agreement was reached as a result of the discussion, no one expected it – China adheres to a neutral position on Ukraine, and the “peace plan” it proposes aims rather to increase Beijing’s diplomatic prestige in the eyes of third states not involved in the conflict.
Moreover, the Ukrainian crisis has something in common with the Taiwanese file, which does not allow China to take any side. On the one hand, Western countries supply Ukraine with lethal weapons, which is akin to the military-technical support provided by Washington to Taipei, and this does not allow China to take a pro-Ukrainian position. On the other hand, China cannot fully recognize Crimea and the new territories as Russian, since Beijing strictly adheres to the principle of territorial integrity – its main argument in favor of Taiwan’s return. But China cannot oppose Russia either – otherwise it will lose its most important strategic partner, without good relations with which it may not be able to resist pressure from the United States, whose confrontation intensifies every year.
Li Hui, the PRC government’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, should try to reconcile the parties and at the same time not get lost in China’s diverse position on Ukraine. A delegation led by him will visit Ukraine, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry has not yet announced the exact date of the visit. In addition, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has authorized the possibility of travel to other countries, without specifying the specific states in question.
Who is Li Hui
Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS
Li Hui is a career diplomat and Russian specialist. He was born in the province of Heilongjiang, bordering Russia, in the northeast of China. He has been working in the system of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC since 1975, from 1981 to 1985 and from 1990 to 1992 he worked at the Chinese Embassy in the USSR, then in Russia. From 1997 to 1999 he was ambassador to Kazakhstan, and from 2003 to 2009 he worked as an assistant, then deputy foreign minister.
From August 2009 to August 2019, Li served as Chinese Ambassador to Russia. At the same time, a change of position from Deputy Minister to Ambassador is not a demotion. According to the tradition practiced in China, ambassadors to countries as large as Russia and the United States are usually sent by deputy ministers who have accumulated extensive experience working with these states. The same practice works in the Russian Foreign Ministry – for example, the current Russian Ambassador to China, Igor Morgulov, previously worked as Deputy Foreign Minister and oversaw Russian diplomacy in East Asia, South -East and South.
During Li Hui’s time working in Moscow, Russian-Chinese relations flourished. After Xi Jinping’s election as Chinese president in 2013, Russia became the first country the Chinese leader visited on a state visit. The events in Ukraine in 2014 and the annexation of Crimea to Russia accelerated the deepening of cooperation with the proclamation of a “pivot to the East” in Russian foreign policy.
In 2019, the parties issued a joint statement on the development of a comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, in which Russia and China noted the existence of a high degree of political trust between the leaders of the two country.
In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Li Hui with the Order of Friendship.
Li Hui is fluent in Russian and in one of the interviews he confessed that he admires “the profound experience of realism in Russian literature”. According to him, the novel “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy made a great impression on him. “I often read and re-read Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gorky and other famous writers and am inspired by their power and attractive thoughts. I love the expanse of forests, the expanse of fields, the depth of the Volga, the purity of Lake Baikal and the cold of the Arctic”, writing Li in his article for TASS published in July 2019 before his return to China.
After a long tenure as ambassador in Moscow, Li Hui was appointed special representative of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China for Eurasian Affairs. Chinese media do not specify exactly what tasks Li is responsible for, however, judging from the briefing notes of Central Asian news sources, one of the main tasks is to promote China’s cooperation with Central Asian countries. Thus, in December 2021, Li Hui held meeting with the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and encounter at a seminar with representatives of the public from Kazakhstan. Then Lee Meets with experts and journalists from Kyrgyzstan. In January 2022 Lee talked with public figures of Uzbekistan and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tajikistan .
Should we expect progress from the Chinese delegation
Artem Geodakyan/TASS
Despite his long experience of working with Russia, Li Hui cannot be caught in a position that would be more pro-Russian than pro-Chinese, said in an interview with SCMP, an expert from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Li Lifan. According to him, Li Hui’s position – which is considered higher than the post of ambassador – will give more weight to the messages of the Chinese leaders that Li Hui conveys. On the other hand, although some delegation may be created, it may simply not reach Moscow and Kiev due to the declarative nature of creating such a group.
The creation of a delegation to resolve the Ukrainian crisis and the appointment of Li Hui as its head can be seen as China’s desire to reassert itself as a world power that actively participates in the resolution of conflicts and problems. in the world, said the director of the Center for Global European and International Affairs in an interview with Russian media. HSE is looking for Vasily Kashin. At the same time, Beijing does not share high hopes for meaningful negotiations on Ukraine at this time, the expert believes. However, it is expected that a meaningful dialogue will be possible after the escalation of hostilities, which could follow in May or during the summer, Kashin said. “In part, the creation of a special delegation indicates that full-fledged negotiations await in China towards the end of 2023,” he told Russian media.
The Ukrainian problem is not new for China. In recent years, a new direction in area studies has arisen there – Ukrainian studies. “China has strong expertise in Russia and Ukraine, including well-established training of Ukrainian language specialists. Relevant issues are studied at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a number of universities and departmental universities and research centers,” Kashin said. A large number of personnel went through work in the CIS countries and in the post-Soviet space, which makes it possible to build a scientific direction for the study of Ukraine with Ukrainian scientists, noted the expert. Thus, unlike Russia, in 2011 China even created a peer-reviewed scientific journal “Ukrainian Research”, where scientific publications were sent by specialized specialists who spoke both Russian and Ukrainian, summarized the ‘expert.
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