The tumultuous history of the relationship between Russia and China enters a new stage this Friday (4), when President Vladimir Putin will meet with leader Xi Jinping for the first time since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, two years ago. years old.
Hyperbole is applicable. After years of cautious approximation, Moscow and Beijing are ready to show themselves to the world as an alternative pole to what they accuse of the artificial hegemony of the West, with the United States at the forefront.
The stage will be the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, otherwise boycotted by Western diplomacy, with the high tension surrounding Ukraine as a backdrop. Putin and Xi will exchange cuddles, after having defended in a virtual forum a union against the West.
It’s not something that came out of nowhere. Just read any speech by Putin from the Russian’s speech in Munich in 2007, which marked the end of attempts at accommodation with the West and NATO, his armed wing. Or the increasingly assertive interventions by Xi, in power since 2012, accusing Washington of breaking the post-war multilateral concert in favor of his agenda.
From the point of view of political rationality, both are right. The entire international agenda after the defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, in 1991, was based on the dynamics of American interests – by extension, not always harmonious, of its allies.
Washington has long underestimated two factors. Most importantly, the Chinese rise that ironically was born out of a joint Sino-American initiative against the Soviets.
Only the brutal acceleration of the Chinese weight in the world economy, in the 2000s, ignited the alerts. With the strength, intertwined as it is with Western trade chains, came the political-military pretension, embodied in Xi.
In 2017, Donald Trump vocalized the reaction to this and launched Cold War 2.0, seeking to give a confrontational north to his foreign policy and fixing chip factory fights to Chinese consulates, from Hong Kong to the South China Sea.
The second point underestimated by the US was the Russian resurgence. Of course, there is not even a shadow of the communist empire and its strength to challenge Americans by proxy in corners as diverse as Cuba, Vietnam or divided Germany.
But Americans saw in the moral and physical destruction of Russia in the 1990s an irreversible process, which was proved wrong since the rise of Putin. Initially interested in cooperation as an equal with the West, the Russian was ignored, and NATO snapped up several former Soviet satellites.
Mounted in a powerful oil and gas industry, Putin shaped the political framework and established himself as a tsar, flying over Russia’s internal disputes. He legitimized his power by rebuilding the country’s military power, which, in addition to having a nuclear arsenal comparable to that of the US, has a conventional machine that is well-oiled.
China and Russia are not natural allies, on the contrary. His country’s vast uninhabited borders in Asia have always been a concern for Putin. Their occupation efforts, however, brought fragile results, summarized on the empty Far East University campus in Vladivostok.
In fact, the two countries almost went to war in 1969. The constant clash with the West, denounced in Moscow and Beijing as imperialism and in Washington as a struggle against a communist dictatorship and a personalist autocracy, created the new alliance.
There is certainly irony in the fact that the great defenders of the multilateral system today are two countries quite distant from the concept of individual liberties and liberal democracy, with different histories of repression of human rights.
So far, there’s not exactly a big list of followers from Moscow and Beijing — in Xi’s case, there’s one of customers, which is different. In reality, this appears to be more of a secondary objective, the primary one being the end of presumed US hegemony.
The ballet between the two powers is not a classical union. The Russians have a historical horror of military agreements: the two they made in the 19th and 20th centuries made possible the French and Nazi invasions, respectively. Furthermore, as a Moscow diplomat with extensive experience in Beijing explains, there is a mutual cultural incomprehension.
On the other hand, the forge of Western pressure has served as a powerful incentive for rapprochement. It already has several warlike aspects: the Russians helped the Chinese to set up a warning system against nuclear attacks and are the primary suppliers of military material for the ally, in addition to promoting frequent joint maneuvers.
The center of it all, and also a limiting factor in the relationship, is the economy. The flow of trade between Moscow and Beijing grew by 167% from 2010 to 2021, reaching a record $147 billion last year. The growing business in the hydrocarbons area dictates this rhythm.
The main joint project is called Force of Siberia, a mega-gas pipeline that has 3,000 km on Russian soil and 5,000 km in Chinese. It has already started operations and, when it is finished in 2025, it will be able to supply the equivalent of 10% of China’s current natural gas consumption.
This Friday, the second branch of it should be announced, thus doubling the capacity. All of this serves as a kind of long-term insurance for Putin, who sees the US attacking his energy projects to supply Europe with gas and oil as part of the geopolitical dispute with Moscow.
Such a position guarantees Moscow a more generous view on the part of important European actors, such as Germany, the biggest customer for its gas — which supplies 40% of the continent’s needs. But a rupture around Ukraine could put that to a halt, and the eastern alternatives gain weight.
Russia also plans to take liquefied natural gas across the Arctic seas from the Yamal fields to Chinese ports, taking the strategic weight off the South China Sea routes: all gas arriving in the country by ship has to pass through the Malacca Strait, easily congested by enemies.
In 2021, China consumed 331 billion cubic meters of gas and is expected to double this by 2035, within its plan to fully decarbonize the economy by 2060. .
There are complications in the change of axis. There is fear in Moscow that the country will become a minority partner in the partnership with the Chinese. The economic and demographic weight is unparalleled, with a ten-to-one ratio in favor of the Chinese. If business with Beijing represents 18% of Russian transactions, the inverse only adds up to 2% of the Chinese portfolio.
In the political approach, Xi rolls out the red carpet for Putin. As their foreign minister, Wang Yi, told Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday, the two countries will coordinate all their positions — starting with Ukraine.
Xi praised Russian intervention in the January Kazakh crisis. In the Pacific seas, both countries already operate together. There, the US seeks to increase its pressure with alliances such as the Quad (with Japan, Australia and India) and Aukus (with Australia and the UK), reinforced by the disengagement from Afghanistan.
That this scenario could evolve into highly aggressive hypotheses, such as simultaneous conflicts in Ukraine and Taiwan, stretching American capabilities to the fullest, is only hypothetical today.
Source: Folha
