Ukraine has officially registered approximately 300 citizens currently located in China. This figure comes from data disclosed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to LIGA.net. For comparison: the Ukrainian diaspora in the USA numbers over 150,000 people — a difference of nearly 500 times.
According to Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga, the figure reflects the actual state of bilateral relations: China has never been a destination for mass Ukrainian migration, and even less so after 2022.
But the number of registered citizens alone is merely the tip of the iceberg. Consular registration in Ukraine is voluntary, so the actual number of Ukrainians in the PRC could be higher. Exactly how many — the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not clarify, simply because it does not know.
This creates a practical problem: in the event of an emergency — evacuation, mass detention, legal crisis — the state does not have a complete list of its citizens on the ground. This is exactly what happened at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when Ukrainians in various countries essentially self-organized without waiting for embassies.
China meanwhile remains a geopolitically sensitive point. Beijing has not officially condemned Russian aggression, maintains trade with Moscow, and at the same time declares "neutrality." For Ukrainian citizens there, this means being in a country that publicly does not recognize the occupation of Ukrainian territories as illegal.
300 registered citizens — this is neither a catastrophe nor a sensation. It is an indicator: how deeply are the two societies connected to each other beyond official rhetoric about "strategic partnership."
If Kyiv and Beijing truly expect rapprochement after the war — is this possible without basic infrastructure of trust between people, which essentially does not exist now?
