On April 21, Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye French television that the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), aka Soviet Union, had not been recognized as sovereign states:
That is false.
The international community, including the PRC, recognized the of the former republics of the Soviet Union, and those 15 countries are members of the United Nations. The Western democracies the Soviet Union’s annexation of the three Baltic states in the 1940s.
On December 8, 1991, the - Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - met in the village of Viskuly, Belarus, and signed the Belovezha Accords, which :
The People's Republic of China quickly the independence of all the former republics of the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations with them.
The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China :
While the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, were under Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1991, Western countries had them as de jure republics of the USSR.
The same position was by the themselves, the , the European Parliament, the of Human Rights and the .
Indeed, on January 13, 1983, the European Parliament stating that the Baltic states were not Soviet republics but independent states under occupation:
The European Parliament on May 24, 2007, that “the Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic States was never recognized as legal by the Western democracies.”
According to , lecturer in international relations at Britain’s Keele University, “a territory essentially becomes a sovereign state when its independence is recognized by the United Nations. As the largest and most inclusive multilateral organization, its sanctioning of sovereign statehood makes sense.”
Admission to the U.N. proves that a state has an internationally recognized independent status. According to , the adoption of a new country must be unanimously supported by the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members and two-thirds of the U.N. member nations:
Two Soviet republics, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine) and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Belarus), along with the USSR, were among the in June 1945.
The remaining 12 former Soviet republics to the U.N. from September 1991 to July 1992.
On April 24, 2023, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, “China respects the sovereign status of the former Soviet countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.”
The Chinese Embassy in France issued a statement Ambassador Lu Shaye's comments "were not a political declaration but an expression of his personal views".