As Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has churned on for more than a year, occasional glimmers of the hope of an end have emerged. One such glimmer has emerged in recent months — but it’s now an open question whether the Biden administration will support it.

That glimmer comes in the form of China’s intervention into the war, fresh off its successful mediation of rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Its peace plan for the conflict was greeted dismissively by NATO states when it was first rolled out in February — partly because critics viewed it as too thin to be a serious proposal, partly owing to the careful tightrope Beijing has walked in light of its closeness to Russia, refusing to supply weapons to the country but effectively helping prop up its war effort through massive purchases of discounted oil and gas. (Recently leaked intercepted Russian intelligence suggests that Beijing had approved “provision of lethal aid” to Russia, though US officials say they haven’t seen evidence of any weapon transfers so far).

But since then, several key players have shown interest in the Chinese proposal, suggesting it’s more than just the empty PR that some critics have charged. French president Emmanuel Macron at first responded that Beijing’s peace efforts were “a good thing” before traveling to China earlier this month and issuing a joint statement with Chinese president Xi Jinping that affirmed their shared support for restoring peace in Ukraine. A French diplomatic source told Reuters the two had “agreed to ‘work hard’ in order to accelerate the end of the war and to obtain that a negotiation opens in the full respect of international law.” Similarly interested is newly inaugurated leftist Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had publicly proposed forming a “peace club” of neutral countries to mediate an end to the war, and who is in China today to discuss the idea with the Chinese leader.