On April 26, during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would send a special representative to visit Ukraine and other countries to conduct in-depth communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.

One month later, on May 26, the Chinese special envoy, Li Hui, was in Moscow, the last stop of a nearly two-week trip that had also taken him to Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany and Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union in Belgium.

During the six-leg tour, Li met with President Zelenskyy, and held talks with senior officials in the European capitals, including with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, expounding China's position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis and meanwhile promoting relations between China and the European countries.

Observers and officials highlight the trip's significance in seeking common ground on the Ukraine crisis and also acknowledge the difficulties in securing peace.

A consensus-seeking trip

The Chinese special envoy set off the much-anticipated trip on May 15 and visited Ukraine in the following two days. That shows Beijing and Kyiv have secured a "reliable and fast" channel of communication, Piotr Gadzinowski, former editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper Trybuna, told CGTN.

The envoy also created one of the most effective channels of communication between the two sides of the conflict and their allies, Gadzinowski said.

During talks with European officials over the Ukraine crisis, Li reiterated the Chinese president's proposals of "four points" about what must be done, "four things" the international community must do together and "three observations," all of which speak to Beijing's core stance – to facilitate talks for peace.

In a 12-point paper stating its position released in February, China has also stressed the importance of respecting the sovereignty of all countries, resolving the humanitarian crisis, and keeping nuclear power plants safe, among others.

In order to "put an immediate stop to the fighting and to start peaceful negotiation," China has been "very active" in trying to talk to Russia and Ukraine over the past year, Fu Cong, head of the Chinese mission to the EU, told media.

In an interview with British magazine The New Statesman published on Sunday, Fu said the Chinese special envoy was in Europe to solicit the views of the European capitals to try to find peace over the conflict.

Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for EU Studies at Renmin University of China, said Li's major mission on the shuttle-diplomacy trip was to find consensus from different or even confrontational stances over the conflict.

Also a senior fellow of the Center for China and Globalization, Wang, who was part of a delegation of the non-governmental think tank's trip to Europe from May 12 to 24, noted that he felt personally the divisions of views within the EU, with stronger voice for an early ceasefire.

"If the special envoy's trip could be summed up by one phrase, it would be 'seeking common ground while preserving differences," Wang told CGTN, quoting a conventional Chinese wisdom and philosophy.

It is the first time in history that China both plays and is expected to play such an important role in the security and peace of Europe, said Wang. "This is of historical significance."

The view was shared by Elias Jabbour, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro of Brazil, who interpreted the Chinese envoy's trip as "the most important diplomatic tour made" since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022.

"Only China, today, is a country capable of sitting at the negotiating table with countries with such different views on the war," Jabbour told CGTN.

'No panacea'

Though voices for peace and rationality are building in Europe and the world at large, the scale of difficulty in persuading Russia and Ukraine to resume peace talks should not be underestimated, according to the analysts.

Since the crisis has been going on for over a year, with more conflicts building up, there is "no panacea" for a way out, said Wang, the international relations expert at Renmin University.

Quoting a Polish saying, Gadzinowski said "if you want peace, please start communication." Peace talks demand patience, time and hard efforts, he underscored.

Jabbour accused the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of prolonging the conflict. "The biggest obstacle to ending the war is the continued supply of weapons to Ukraine by the United States and its NATO colonies," he told CGTN.

As early as March 2022, Zelenskyy had noted the "varied interests" of different parties over the Ukraine conflict.

"There are those in the West who don't mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives," he said in an interview with The Economist. "This is definitely in the interests of some countries."

Ambassador Fu stressed China's consistent support for a resolution through negotiations, naysaying continued fighting and "senseless killing."

That is the theme that the Chinese special envoy has been advocating earnestly to the European capitals, Fu said. 

"I hope he can have a good hearing."

(Cover: Li Hui, special representative of the Chinese government on Eurasian Affairs, during talks in Moscow, Russia, May 26, 2023. /CFP)

Bu Weijun, Lin Weida, Shi Liang and Li Yan, all with the Program Center of European and Latin American Languages of China Media Group, contributed to the story.