In the month since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s foreign policy messages have been highly conflicted, as it attempts to maintain high-level support for Moscow while distancing China from the humanitarian costs and economic collateral damage of the conflict. Those mixed messages reflect not only the difficulty of reacting to Russian military setbacks on the ground, but a real split within China’s governing system: namely, between Political China and Technocratic China. Political China is primarily concerned with how China can use its relationship with Russia to advance its interests in a longer-term competition with the United States and U.S.-led alliances. Political China also emphasizes the importance of moving toward a multipolar world order and resists engagement with Western institutions. In this view, self-sufficiency is more important than economic and political engagement, while interdependence is defined as making the rest of the world more dependent upon Chi