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When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed China over the weekend to drop its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, he was opposing a red line now firmly entrenched in Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down on his country’s stance, retorting that Beijing was neutral and lashing out at the United States for “China phobia” and policies offering “a dead end” with no way out.

The stalemate after the G20 meeting in Bali showed just how tied Chinese leader Xi Jinping is to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s battlefield fortunes, and how unlikely it is. helps the United States end the Ukrainian conflict. It also underscored the deep chasms in a worsening relationship as the Biden administration tries to come up with a coherent China policy.

“For Chinese strategists, if the war ends in a severe defeat of Russia, China would face a much worse geostrategic environment than today,” said Zhao Tong, a research fellow with the Global Science and Security Program at the University. Princeton University.

Despite being rich and powerful, China fears being isolated without a viable Russia on its side, left to fend for itself against what Beijing sees as “the West’s strategic aggression led by the United States.” “, did he declare.

The worst outcome for Beijing, he added, is a defeated Russia and a pro-Western government in Moscow.

From the start of the war, Washington was able, under the threat of heavy sanctions, to dissuade China from supplying arms and economic aid to Russia. China asserts that it is neutral since it has refrained from such explicit support.

Last week, Chinese authorities deleted White House and State Department posts on Chinese social media platforms that outlined Washington’s policies on NATO and Hong Kong. “The PRC should allow the Chinese people to see what American leaders say, just as the American people hear what Chinese leaders say,” said US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. on Twitter after censorship, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

China’s harsh language after the Bali meeting was calculated to show that Mr. Wang had stood up to a relentless United States, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

The statement implied that “the United States must bow its head and bow”, an image that fits Beijing’s conclusion that Mr Biden was “weak” and that the Democrats were on the verge of losing the election of midterm, she said.

“Beijing doesn’t think Biden will change the direction of Chinese policy,” Ms Sun said. “So what’s left to do is to speak loudly, defend their position and press Washington as hard as possible.”

A Chinese expert on US-China relations, Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, which advises the Chinese government, said the atmosphere at the Bali meeting was better than at recent meetings between US officials. and Chinese.

But from the United States, he said, “the bottom line is to stop treating China as the greatest imaginary enemy, so that we can better mobilize the international community and provide a more positive response” to the Russia.

A possible meeting later in the year between President Biden and Mr. Xi was also on the line in Bali. The two sides were weighing whether it was worth the two men, who have not met in person since Mr Biden won the election, trying to defuse the worst of the tensions.

Senior US and Chinese officials have had about half a dozen meetings, Ms. Sun said. And both sides, she said, sense a crisis is looming, believing it would take the two top leaders to establish at least some ground rules.

If the talks between Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden turn sour, it could indicate whether the world will return to a Cold War-like division into two well-armed blocs: one led by the United States and its Democratic partners , the other anchored by China, Russia and other like-minded autocracies.

At a NATO summit in early July, the United States and its Western allies officially declared China a systemic “challenge”, an action that drew strong denunciation from Beijing.

Washington has devised a series of plans to counter China, but few have won firm support in the region.

A US-Japan-Australia-India coalition known as the Quad is meant to show solidarity in the Asia-Pacific region, but India is buying huge amounts of oil to Russia; a new economic group of 14 countries led by the United States, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, has received a mixed reception from its members since it does not offer tariff reductions for goods entering the United States ; and an agreement allowing the United States and Britain to share technology to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines remains vague.

This week, Richard Marles, Australia’s defense minister for less than two months, said in a speech in Washington that a “catastrophic failure of deterrence” was within reach if the United States did not increase cooperation. military with his country. has increased its presence in the South Pacific, concluding a security pact with the Solomon Islands this year. In response, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday the opening of two new embassies in the region. One is planned in Kiribati, another in Tonga, she said, addressing regional leaders virtually.

When the United States opened its relations with China 50 years ago, it was relatively easy for Washington to alienate China from the Soviet Union.

Poor and isolated, China needed friends, and President Richard M. Nixon persuaded the leader, Mao Zedong, to join the United States during the Cold War. In 1972, when Mr. Nixon visited China, the two great communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, had also fallen out over differences in ideology and other issues.

The relationship between Washington and Beijing has grown so close that for a time they even shared joint intelligence facilities, located in the western province of Xinjiang, aimed at the Soviet Union.

“The table is turned,” Mr Zhao said of the current relationship. “Beijing is in intense ideological competition with Washington and genuinely shares Moscow’s outlook on many domestic and international issues.”

It was “unrealistic,” Mr. Zhao said, “to expect China to take a value-neutral approach to managing the U.S.-China-Russia trilateral relationship and only switch sides on the basis of calculations of the balance of powers and material interests”.

Mr. Xi often refers in his speeches to big changes in the world that have never been seen before, a nod to China’s growing ideological divide with the United States and its allies.

In an address last month to a group of emerging economies, known as the BRICS, Xi criticized Washington and its allies for “expanding military alliances and seeking their own security at the expense of the security of others. country”.

The administration’s efforts to get more cooperation from China on Ukraine have been complicated by the lack of economic incentive.

China is facing a slowdown, in part because of its insistence on eliminating virtually all Covid infections through strict lockdowns and extensive restrictions. The government is unlikely to achieve its 5.5% growth target for 2022.

With soaring energy prices, Russian oil offers some relief. China is able to buy large quantities at a price below the current market price.

“China is definitely supporting Russia with these purchases, and it’s a puzzle why they haven’t pushed for a bigger discount,” said Simon Johnson, a professor of global economics at the Sloan School of Management in Washington. MIT.

Efforts by the administration to find common ground on some issues, such as climate change and trade, have been dismissed by Beijing, sometimes derisively.

“The United States wants cooperation on climate change to be an ‘oasis’ of U.S.-China relations,” Wang said last year after speaking with U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. . “However, if the oasis is surrounded by deserts, sooner or later the ‘oasis’ will be desertified.”

The testy exchange between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Wang was just the latest string of violent confrontations, said Charles A. Kupchan, professor of international relations at Georgetown University. But it’s still possible, he said, that the administration is driving a wedge between China and Russia.

“Washington should explore whether a reset with China and a strategy that involves a better mix of containment and engagement,” he added, “can help tame the rivalry with Beijing, and ultimately encircle Moscow.”

You Li contributed to the research and Yan Zhuang contributed report.