Cover Story

How we chose this week’s image

Our cover this week looks at how China sees the war in Ukraine. There is no doubt that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his neighbour has upended world affairs. The question is how. Some argue that China will build on a friendship with Russia that knows “no limits”, to create an axis of autocracy. Others counter that America can shame China into getting Russia to sue for peace.

In a televised address on Wednesday evening Mr Putin warned Russians about fifth columnists plotting the destruction of their country. Coiled tight with anger, he called them scum and traitors who are like insects that had got into Russian mouths and deserve to be spat out. It was dangerous language and this image illustrates both its inherent fascism and absurd machismo. The trouble is that, as our reporting this week shows, Mr Putin has lost control of the relationship with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. Russia is not holding the reins; China is.

This develops that thought. It’s pleasing to see the puffed-up Mr Putin being dandled on the knee of big brother Xi. It’s also misleading. You’d think that China is in cahoots with Russia over this war, whereas Mr Xi seems to have been taken by surprise by its scale and ferocity.

We thought about playing it straight. Here is a photograph of the meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Xi around the time of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, when the two issued a long statement setting out their shared vision of the world. It is a fascinating document that amounts to a repudiation of the liberal order promulgated after the second world war. We (mis)quote it in the bottom right-hand corner. Our excellent research department spotted that the Kremlin’s English-language version is in fact: “Friendship between the two states knows no limits.” Why is the language of 21st-century autocrats so stilted?

We also thought about focusing on how the new order sought by China and Russia would conflict with the Western vision for how the world should work. Both Mr Xi and Mr Putin want spheres of influence dominated by a few big countries. China would run East Asia, Russia would have a veto over European security and America would be forced back home. Their order would not feature universal values or human rights, which they see as a trick to justify Western subversion of their regimes. We illustrate this conflict by sandwiching a camouflaged container between the turret of a Russian tank and the tracks of an American one.

We thought that a tank cover lost sight of China and Russia. So here they are balancing a globe on their snouts. It looks as if it’s about to fall off. This is a pleasing image, but it is symmetrical. And that means we’re back to the observation that China and Russia are not equal partners. Our reporting suggests that neither all-in support for Russia, nor Chinese peacemaking is likely. Instead the deepening of ties with Russia will be guided by cautious self-interest, as China exploits the war in Ukraine to hasten what it sees as America’s inevitable decline.

It is a nuanced message and this is how we decided to represent it. Mr Putin and Mr Xi overlap, but they are different. Russia’s leader, in the foreground, is diminished. China’s leader looms massively behind him. It captures an alarming truth about the war. For Mr Xi, what happens in Ukraine’s shelled cities is a skirmish ahead of the great struggle to come. That struggle will be between China and America—and it is one he likes to suggest that China is destined to win.