By backing Russia during its war on Ukraine, China may risk involvement in ecocide
Hong Kong Free Press
The Ukraine war is inching closer to Hong Kong. On Mayday, while many people here were enjoying a well-deserved day off work, officials at the US Treasury Department were busy: they announced a package of sanctions on several Hong Kong companies accused of supplying electronic equipment for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Officials in Hong Kong will be angered by this development, but they can’t say they weren’t warned.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Beijing recently to remind China’s leaders that the world is watching their country’s growing role in the Ukraine war. Blinken exhorted them to end their support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal and brutal military campaign.
Blinken’s visit came on the heels of earlier warnings from President Joe Biden – which he conveyed by phone directly to President Xi Jinping – and other American officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They telegraphed that the United States would hold Beijing responsible if Russia makes substantial gains on the battlefield.
Similar concerns have been expressed by leading Western officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
In the run-up to his Beijing visit, Blinken said that, “When it comes to Russia’s defense industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment is China.” He did not say that China is already supplying fully assembled weapons, but he previously suggested it was planning to do so.
Beijing claims to be neutral in the Ukraine war. Nevertheless, its support for Russia has become much more extensive and sophisticated since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. China is helping Putin keep Russians quiescent by supplying consumer goods that were embargoed by the West, and it is bankrolling Russia’s expanding military-industrial complex by purchasing great quantities of the country’s otherwise embargoed oil exports.
China is sending Russia every imaginable kind of material and technological support, including dual-use equipment that can be utilised for both civilian and military purposes. According to US officials, it is “providing all of the inputs for weapons” and “helping Russia undertake its biggest military expansion since Soviet times.” China is reported to be supplying 90 percent of Russia’s microelectronics – some of it apparently funneled through Hong Kong – 70 percent of its imported machine tools, chemicals to make explosives, assistance with space-based military capabilities, and just about everything else Russia needs to wage war indefinitely.
China’s leaders seem to be oblivious to Putin’s indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Ukraine. What’s more, Beijing is cosy with Putin’s two favourite dictatorships – Iran and North Korea – which are supplying him with missiles, drones and other weapons used to kill Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike.
China’s leadership obviously believes that supporting Russia will further Chinese national interests. After more than two years of bloody conflict, Beijing has yet to condemn the invasion. That’s despite it being a blatant violation of fundamental international norms, not least sovereignty and non-interference, that Beijing has claimed for decades to value above all else.
Alongside Putin, officials in Beijing may have concluded that the war is an opportunity to weaken the United States and its allies. Time will tell whether this will prove to be true. The recent expansion of NATO and growing Euro-Atlantic solidarity in opposing Putin suggest that it may not be. What is beyond doubt is that China’s support for Russia will exacerbate human suffering and material destruction across Ukraine.
That destruction goes far beyond the human realm. Putin’s war on Ukraine is also a war on nature. According to Olena Maslyukivska, a Ukrainian environmental economist, “Nature is suffering. The environment is the silent victim of the war.”
The war’s environmental impacts include destruction of vast habitats, ranging from woodlands to wetlands and marine ecosystems; widespread killing of wildlife and destruction of breeding and feeding grounds; release of massive quantities of poisonous emissions from exploding munitions; and pollution of rivers, lakes and the Black Sea, among many other devastating effects. All of this comes on top of increased carbon emissions arising from the burning of fossil fuels to power Russia’s war machine.
While Russia has been damaging nature in Ukraine for the last decade, the magnitude of that damage since its full-scale invasion have brought its actions to wider attention. The war has had such harmful ecological impacts that international legal experts have accused Moscow of committing the nascent crime of “ecocide.” This was the accusation levelled by personalities as diverse as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and environmental activist Greta Thunberg following the destruction in June 2023 of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, which unleashed a massive flood of toxic sediment and obliterated freshwater ecosystems.
Merging the concept of ecology with the existing crime of genocide, ecocide has been defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” It is, in the words of historian David Zierler, “the wilful destruction of ecology – of the environment – as a weapon of war.”
Campaigners and international lawyers hope that ecocide will join not just genocide but crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression – all of which experts say Russia is actively perpetrating in Ukraine – as an offence that can be tried before the ICC. The court already has the authority to prosecute the crime of “Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause … long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” Calls for Russia to be held accountable for such behaviour will only increase.
In a strange irony, Russia and Ukraine are among the few countries whose legal systems already recognize the crime of ecocide. Kiev is opening a “new environmental-legal front” in its campaign for both national and ecological survival. It has set up a hotline for citizens to report instances of Russian ecocide. Those reports number in the thousands and will contribute to ongoing investigations by Ukrainian experts and conservationists.
Weirdly, as part of its propaganda war, Russia has accused Ukraine of committing ecocide – not in Russia, but in Crimea, a part of Ukraine illegally annexed by Moscow.
The chief architect of environmental devastation in Ukraine – Putin – is officially President Xi Jinping’s “best friend.” Beijing’s indifference should come as no surprise. China is, after all, no stranger to ecological destruction. Even before its underpinning of Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s environment, China rose to become the world’s greatest polluter. It is a key driver of ecosystem destruction, and far and away the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution driving the climate crisis. Much of that pollution is the result of burning Russian oil and natural gas.
Russia is not the only country accused of ecocidal aggression. For example, the United States faced justifiable accusations for its use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. In its ongoing war in Gaza, Israel has been accused of wanton environmental destruction. The United States supplies money and materiel to Israel. If media reports are correct that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be indicted by the ICC, Washington may be, like Beijing, cooperating with a war criminal.
To be sure, Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists and is, according to international law, entitled to defend itself. That entitlement does not extend to committing war crimes.
This introduces the prospect that the United States could be accused of complicity in ecocide by Israel. Perhaps officials in Beijing and Hong Kong would be sympathetic to such accusations. Here in Hong Kong, for example, complicity in illegal acts can be a very serious offence. Surely those same officials should see that any actors, including in Hong Kong and elsewhere in China, which provide material support to Russia during its illegal war in Ukraine could, like the United States, be similarly complicit in ecocide.
Many Americans question their government’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Even President Biden has belatedly criticised Netanyahu and his military’s excesses. In contrast, China is doubling down on its support for Russia and reaffirming its praise for Putin. Given that Russia attacked Ukraine and that Israel was the recipient of an attack from Gaza, history may judge China’s support for Russia more harshly than it does the US’s support for Israel.
Even if one is not bothered by Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine, its war there has potentially major implications for Hong Kong and the region. Officials in Taipei have warned that unless the West helps Ukraine survive the Russian onslaught, Beijing could be emboldened to use military force against Taiwan. Not only would that cause yet more environmental devastation, it could threaten lives and livelihoods in Hong Kong and throughout East Asia.
If Russia (or Putin) were to be indicted by the ICC for committing ecocide in Ukraine, and even if China were to be judged to be complicit in that crime, there’s little reason to expect Beijing would pay much attention. It has a record of disregarding international law. For example, it refuses to comply with the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that its sweeping claims to the South China Sea are invalid.
A time may come when such non-observance of international law will diminish China’s influence enough for party-state leaders to pay attention. In the meantime, if Beijing were to heed Antony Blinken and others critical of its support for Russia, its reputation would be enhanced and its influence increased.
This is not merely an issue for some Hong Kong companies that could lose trade due to US sanctions. The best way for China to be prosperous and secure is to be a good global citizen. By allying with Russia’s brutal and ecocidal war it is making the world less safe and less habitable, including for China. Just because Russia seems hellbent on self-inflicted harm – and taking Ukraine, the world, and nature along for the ride – doesn’t mean China has to join it.
Being friends with dictators and indicted war criminals not only puts China on the wrong side of nature; it also places China on the wrong side of history. China’s possible complicity in Putin’s war crimes is bad enough. History may record its complicity in Putin’s ecocide, too.
Nature cannot defend itself against warmongers like Putin. China is unlikely to come to its defence. But is it too much to ask China – and some Hong Kong businesses, if US accusations are true – to discontinue what could be complicity in Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine? Doing so would be good for nature and good for everyone in China, including Hong Kong.
Support HKFP | Policies & Ethics | Error/typo? | Contact Us | Newsletter | Transparency & Annual Report | Apps
| HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities. |
Help safeguard press freedom & keep HKFP free for all readers by supporting our team
HKFP has an impartial stance, transparent funding, and balanced coverage guided by an Ethics Code and Corrections Policy.
Support press freedom & help us surpass 1,000 monthly Patrons: 100% independent, governed by an ethics code & not-for-profit.