Chinese President Xi Jinping’s top envoy traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, helping solidify the burgeoning alliance between Beijing and the Kremlin as China confronts the United States on the world stage.
Wang Yi, Beijing’s top diplomat and Xi’s top foreign policy adviser, was the first Chinese official in that role to visit Russia since the Kremlin’s full invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. As Xi’s right-hand man, Wang has helped strengthen China’s global clout and is partly responsible for the “wolf warrior” and increasingly confrontational mentality of China’s diplomats over the past few years.
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Wang, who served as China’s minister of foreign affairs since 2013, became the director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party at the start of 2023.
Wang met with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, declaring that “Chinese-Russian relations aren’t directed against any third countries and certainly can’t be subject to pressure from any third countries” as the Biden administration has warned Beijing against providing military support to the Russians in Ukraine.
“Russian-Chinese relations are developing as we planned in previous years,” Putin said as he sat next to Wang on Wednesday. “Cooperation in the international arena between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, as we have repeatedly said, is very important for stabilizing the international situation.”
Wang said that China and Russia “often face crisis and chaos, but there are always opportunities in a crisis” and that the two U.S. adversaries planned to “further strengthen our comprehensive strategic partnership.”
The Chinese official also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday, calling him an “old friend” and saying that “no matter how the international situation changes, China has been and remains willing to maintain the positive trend with Russia in building a new type of cooperative relationship between major powers.”
Wang also met with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on Tuesday. “Sino-Russian relations are mature and solid as a rock and will withstand the test of the changing international situation," he said.
Wang was born in 1953 in Beijing but spent 1969 to 1977 as a “sent-down youth” in Inner Mongolia during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. He went to Beijing International Studies University, a training ground for China’s foreign ministry, after returning to Beijing in 1982, and he also studied as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in 1997. He soon rapidly moved up through China’s government.
He became minister of foreign affairs in March 2013 and was appointed state councilor in March 2018. At the end of 2022, China announced that Qin Gang, then China’s ambassador to the U.S. under Wang, would take over leadership of the foreign ministry, with Wang getting promoted even higher. Qin said, “Don’t be naive,” when asked in May 2022 why China wasn’t condemning the Russian invasion.
Wang has long been key in helping Xi implement Beijing’s global initiatives. Xi announced the “One Belt, One Road” initiative in 2013, which would soon be rebranded as the “Belt and Road Initiative.” Its implementation would be overseen in large part by Wang.
The Congressional Research Service said last year that many experts assess these Chinese projects “advance China’s geopolitical and economic goals while undercutting U.S. influence and challenging U.S. interests.” Wang has repeatedly defended the Chinese initiative, including arguing in 2021, “The BRI has never been a geopolitical strategy, but a road of development."
Wang has also long defended China’s repression efforts against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang in western China. He said in November 2018 that “affairs related to Xinjiang are China's internal affairs” and that the world should listen to “authoritative information” issued by the Chinese government in Xinjiang “rather than believing in the gossip.” He has also played a key role in the Chinese government’s clampdown on political, economic, and religious freedoms in Hong Kong in recent years.
“The move to improve Hong Kong's electoral system and ensure ‘patriots administering Hong Kong’ is necessitated by the need to advance the One Country, Two Systems cause and maintain long-term stability in Hong Kong,” Wang declared in March 2021.
The Trump administration sanctioned a host of Chinese leaders in Hong Kong in 2020 over their implementation of the so-called “national security law” in Hong Kong, with the State Department declaring that "this law, purportedly enacted to 'safeguard' the security of Hong Kong, is in fact a tool of CCP repression.”
The Biden State Department said last year that “China continued to dismantle Hong Kong’s political freedoms and autonomy” and has “eroded civil liberties and democratic institutions” there.
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Wang has also been somewhat successful in peeling Taiwan’s allies away during his tenure. Panama broke its ties with Taiwan and formalized its recognition of China instead in June 2017, with Wang marking the event with a celebration with his Panamanian counterpart in Beijing. The Dominican Republic formalized its ties to China rather than Taiwan in May 2018, and El Salvador did the same in August 2018, with Wang hosting his counterparts in Beijing for both signing ceremonies.
Wang declared in February that Taiwan “has never been a state, nor will it ever be.”