If I may, I think the sanctions, the speed with which those sanctions were imposed and the scale of them by North America and Europe in particular—and Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand—were a surprise. I think China will look at this, and it will make them think a bit.
We have to remember, those sanctions are not ones that Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and many other countries have joined. It has kind of made these geopolitical divisions between what I suppose we would call “the west and the rest” very evident.
I guess, also, that China will not welcome.... Of course, when Xi Jinping met Putin on February 4, they issued a joint communiqué. If you look at the language of that joint communiqué, it is very Chinese in terms of joint co-operation and it's very abstract. What Putin and Xi said to each other and how much Putin did say of what he was planning to Xi has been very controversial. It seems that the consensus is that he didn't really say much at all.
Although China has been neutral yet very friendly towards Russia, I don't think this situation in Ukraine is good for it. It doesn't want this kind of problem. It's destabilizing, and the way it's impacting on the global economy is unwelcome.
On the other hand, I'm sure it's not unhappy to see the west tripped up and distracted by this issue. That will probably be something that reinforces this narrative that China is on a winning streak, that the west is just busy fighting itself and that Europe is busy killing other Europeans. This is a narrative that's being reinforced by this.