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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing:
“The elections are a major event in Russia’s political calendar, the results of which represent will of the Russian people. China firmly supports their independent choice and stands ready to work with Russia to advance bilateral ties.”
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It’s frustrating how consistently China is backing Russia. But in the sense of geopolitical pragmatism, it does make a lot of sense with regards to the CCP stance on Taiwan.
The US considers China its enemy, and Europe considers the US its ally. The math is simple.
That’s right. Taiwan doesn’t come into the calculation at all. If the US had its way, China would not be a leader in any tachnology field and Chinese workers would still work for under $1/hr so US firms manufacturing in China can extract superprofits while deinstitutionalizing the US. If China is to prevent that, they gotta have defence, and economic independence that can’t be curbed by the US on a whim. So that includes unsanctionable fossil fuel supply. And that gives you the support for Russia.
At the same time I don’t think they’ve restricted exports of dual-use goods to Ukraine. They’ll make microcontrollers, motors and batteries for either.
China is backing Russia for basically the same reasons Europe is backing Ukraine*: It’s good value for weakening their enemies and getting their allies to owe them. If anything they could afford to do more; aside from sending good vibes their way their relationship with Russia is basically business as usual AFAIK, so they’re actually making money here. Not that I’m defending what they’re doing to be clear, but it makes so much sense geopolitically that it’s hard to imagine them behaving in any other way.
*Europeans might want to back Ukraine for human rights and stuff, but it’s fairly clear that their governments are doing so to keep Russia away.