Why Does China Have to Follow Rules That Europe Does Not Always Follow?

One of the recurring questions coming from Europe and North America is deceptively simple: why does China not do more to intervene in the Russia-Ukraine war?

The question sounds reasonable until it is placed inside the wider history of international relations. China has repeatedly said that it is not a party to the conflict, that it supports dialogue and negotiations, and that it does not believe unilateral sanctions without United Nations Security Council authorization should become a universal instrument of international relations. Beijing has also promoted the principle that countries should not impose their own security arrangements on others.

China's position is therefore not simply that it wants Russia to win. Beijing has consistently called for negotiations and a political settlement, while maintaining extensive economic relations with Russia. China says it has not provided lethal weapons to either side and has imposed controls on dual-use exports, although Western governments continue to accuse Chinese entities of supporting Russia's military-industrial capacity through trade in dual-use goods.

But there is another question that European governments should perhaps ask themselves before demanding that China adopt their foreign-policy choices: would they offer China the same latitude if the geopolitical circumstances were reversed?

Imagine, for example, a future conflict involving China in which Washington decided that military action was necessary. Would European governments refuse to participate unless Beijing had first agreed to the intervention? Would NATO members insist that every proposed American operation receive prior authorization from the UN Security Council? Or would governments first determine that China represented a strategic threat and then construct a legal and political justification for supporting Washington?

There is no way to know what individual governments would do in a hypothetical future conflict, but history explains why Beijing might be deeply sceptical of lectures about a rules-based international order. The problem is not that international rules are inherently meaningless. International law matters. Sovereignty matters. The prohibition on the use of force matters. The problem is the perception that these principles are sometimes applied selectively depending on who is acting and whose interests are involved. The same tension is visible in sanctions.

European governments have imposed extensive sanctions on Russia because of its war against Ukraine. The EU has adopted 21 packages of sanctions, targeting Russian energy, finance, technology, shipping and other sectors. At the same time, European countries have continued importing substantial quantities of Russian energy while the phase-out is being implemented. In the first half of 2026, EU countries imported almost 10 million tonnes of LNG from Russia's Yamal facility, with France, Belgium and Spain among the principal destinations.

The European Union is now legally moving toward ending Russian gas imports, with the phase-out scheduled to continue through 2027. But the fact that Russian energy continued flowing into Europe during the war demonstrates the difference between declaring that trade with an adversary is unacceptable and actually eliminating the economic relationship. China sees these contradictions.

It sees European countries telling Beijing that Chinese companies should not trade with Russia because Russia is sanctioned, while European businesses themselves continue to engage in transactions involving Russian energy during the transition period. It sees governments imposing sanctions that are not universally authorized by the Security Council and then asking China to treat those unilateral measures as if they were global law.

Beijing's official position is explicit on this point. China argues that unilateral sanctions without Security Council authorization should not be used as a substitute for international law and says states should retain the right to conduct normal economic and trade cooperation.

There is also an uncomfortable economic reality. Global trade does not divide neatly into good countries and bad countries. China sells products to Europe. Europe sells products to China. China buys energy from Russia. European countries have bought Russian energy. Western companies sell equipment and technology that ultimately contribute to the broader global economy in which China also participates.

The weapons question makes the contradiction even more complicated. European countries provide weapons and military assistance to Ukraine, while China maintains economic relations with Russia. Each side can point to the other's relationships as evidence of hypocrisy. China says Western countries are demanding that Beijing abandon normal trade while they themselves are actively participating in the conflict on one side. Western governments respond that China's economic relationship with Russia helps sustain Russia's war effort.

Both sides have a point that deserves examination. The larger issue is whether countries are genuinely prepared to accept a world in which other sovereign states make independent foreign-policy decisions.

If Europe believes sanctions are necessary, Europe has the right to impose them within its own legal framework. If China believes it should maintain trade with Russia, China will make its own calculation. If India wants Russian oil, India will make its own calculation. If Brazil wants to trade with Russia, Brazil will make its own calculation.

The alternative is a world in which one bloc's sanctions become everyone else's obligations simply because that bloc possesses greater financial, military, or diplomatic power. That is precisely why China's refusal to join Western sanctions should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that Beijing does not care about the war. China has repeatedly called for negotiations. It has also refused to adopt the Western position that economic isolation of Russia is the necessary path to peace.

There is another reason China may prefer this position: strategic autonomy. Beijing has watched the Ukraine war transform the relationship between Russia and the West, watched Europe dramatically increase defence spending, watched NATO become more strategically focused on Russia, and watched economic interdependence become a weapon of statecraft.

China would be foolish, from its own strategic perspective, to assume that the same economic and military instruments could never be directed against it. That does not mean China is secretly preparing for war with Europe or that European countries would automatically participate in a hypothetical conflict with China. Such claims would go beyond the evidence.

It does mean that Beijing has powerful reasons to resist establishing a precedent in which Washington and its allies decide what countries around the world are permitted to trade, whom they are permitted to cooperate with, and which sanctions they must enforce. The irony is that the Western world frequently describes this as a struggle over a "rules-based international order."

China's response is effectively to ask: whose rules, created by whom, applied to whom, and enforced against whom? That is the question the West should answer honestly. Because if international law is universal, it must be universal. If sovereignty matters, it must matter for powerful countries and weaker countries alike. If sanctions are legitimate, their legal basis should be clear. And if countries are expected to follow the rules, the rules cannot become whatever the most powerful states say they are on a particular day.

China's position may be controversial. Its relationship with Russia can legitimately be scrutinized. Its economic support for Russia can be debated. But demanding that China simply adopt Europe's foreign policy because Europe considers its own position morally or strategically correct is not a substitute for international law. A genuinely rules-based world would have to tolerate something that great powers often find uncomfortable: other countries are allowed to make their own decisions.