In yet another sign of rapprochement with Russia against the West, China expressed support for Vladimir Putin’s action to help control the crisis in Kazakhstan and suggested that both powers should work together against “color revolutions and the three evils”.
The expression was used by Chancellor Wang Yi in a phone call to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and unites the two geopolitical terrors of Moscow and Beijing in a single sentence.
“Color revolution” is the term for revolts in countries of the former Soviet Union against Kremlin-allied governments, having taken place in places such as Ukraine and Georgia, with initial successes turned into failures even by the Russian reaction, which treats them as Western-backed coups. .
The “three evils” are the Chinese definition of the trio of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism. As of 2017, the term came to occupy official Chinese news to refer to the turmoil in the Muslim region of Xinjiang.
Wang praised the “positive role of the CSO (Collective Security Treaty Organization, Russian-led military alliance) in restoring stability in Kazakhstan”. The day before, Putin had told his club colleagues that a new pattern of intervention was in place.
It is worth remembering that China has strong economic ties with the Kazakhs, and that their internal balance is of interest to Beijing not least because the country borders Xinjiang.
Last week, protests against rising fuel prices evolved within days into an uprising in several cities, which shook what was one of the islands of stability in post-Soviet Central Asia.
The country’s ruling autocrat, Kasim-Jomart Tokayev, after initial hesitation, lowered a harsh crackdown that left 164 dead and 8,000 imprisoned. There were burning of public buildings, taking over the airport, shootings, with a classic coup — which he said there was, with foreign support.
Next, he asked Putin for the troops of the CTO, a zombie entity formed in the rubble of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had never operated in practice. In two days, the Kremlin landed perhaps 3,000 Russian, Armenian, Belarusian and other soldiers in Kazakhstan.
They were posted to secure the country’s assets such as oil fields and uranium mines. Over the weekend, the US protested, questioning why the troops were there.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded. He said the Americans are not happy about the perceived success of the Russian-led mission.
What she didn’t say was that this was just as Putin was embroiled in tense negotiations with the West over the status of Ukraine’s breakaway areas. The Russian came to them in a stronger strategic position, now backed by China, which had already supported him in the Ukrainian dispute.
CTO troops are expected to start leaving Kazakhstan in two days, Tokayev said on Tuesday. The withdrawal process should last ten days, and by September the president promises to present a package of political and economic reforms, the manual response to assuage the genuine dissatisfactions at the origin of the crisis.
Since becoming Washington’s target in Cold War 2.0 in 2017, China has grown closer to Russia. The pandemic has further accelerated the process, with both countries playing the role of defenders of multilateralism in the face of Western actions and Beijing openly speaking in joint defense against rivals.
It is self-defense against sanctions like the ones Russia suffers for having annexed Crimea in 2014, and military expansions like the one operated by the US in the Indo-Pacific, in turn a reaction to the regime’s growing assertiveness under Xi Jinping.
That such a role falls to a dictatorship (China) and an increasingly autocratic state (Russia) is one of 21st century ironies. Finding a common denominator, the hostile West, one wonders how much closer the countries will become.
Wang, for example, argued that the parameters against foreign interference should be expanded within the scope of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an eight-member club that already includes China and Russia.
It is not just military, like the CTO or NATO (Western alliance), having more of an economic character — not least because it includes countries like India, today an opponent of the Chinese more aligned with the US, despite having strong defense ties with Moscow. .
In another signal, leader Xi called on Monday (10) to dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko, Putin’s protege in Belarus. He said he supported the increase in relations with the country, which serves as a strategic buffer for Russia against Europe, a role that Putin wants to see consolidated in Ukraine.
Xi specifically spoke of avoiding foreign interference in Belarus, music to Lukachenko’s ears, embroiled in a crisis in which European Union countries have accused him of using illegal migrants to push borders in Poland and Lithuania.
There are perceived limits, however, to this joint game of Beijing and Moscow. Historically, the countries are geopolitical adversaries in the Russian Far East, an uninhabited area that Putin has always wanted to defend against Chinese influence.
Furthermore, in Russian diplomacy there is a perception that the long-term interests of both are different, given the economic size of China in relation to the rickety Russian economy. In the military area, however, the integration between the two has made considerable progress in the last two years, raising fears in the West about the degree of support that both can garner in the event of a global crisis.
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