While in Europe, the war in Ukraine drags on, relations between Russia and its Chinese neighbor are tightening. Beyond their common hostility towards the domination of Westerners, Moscow and Beijing present themselves as a tandem of uninhibited power. Pierre Andrieu, SEnior Fellow of the Center for China Analysis at Asia Society, former ambassador to Tajikistan and Moldova and co -president of the OSCE Minsk group, Returns on this particular relationship established between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the chief of Kremlin, Vladimir Putin.
The Tangwall Campagin. How would you qualify relations between China and Russia since the Russian invasion in Ukraine?
Pierre Andrieu. Sino-Russian relations have significantly approached since the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in 2000 and Xi Jinping twelve years later in Beijing. The two heads of state have very close personal relationships and have been running their country for many years. They are, like the other, assured of going to posterity. Some observers even speak of political “bromance” between the two men. Beyond that, China as Russia share the same ideological base: namely, common hostility towards Western domination and a fortiori American. This connivance therefore created a political and strategic proximity and participated in the alignment of their foreign policy on major international files.
A rapprochement which was strengthened in 2014, when the Crimea was annexed by Moscow and which intensified in 2022, after the Russian invasion in Ukraine…
Yes, this observation has been further strengthened since 2014 and even more since 2022, Moscow having seen its relations with Europe and the ostensibly degraded West – not to say completely broken. To compensate for the impasse of Russian-European and Russian-Western relations, and in order to counterbalance the weight of Western sanctions and bypass the risk of isolation on the international scene, Russia has been turning from China to China. However, a strategic rebalancing which takes place at the cost of an economic and political vassalization of Moscow.
“Moscow’s strategic rebalancing to China takes place at the cost of an economic and political vassalization of Russia”
If China and Russia have sealed the February 4, 2022, at the dawn of the Russian invasion, a “Boundary friendship”, They are united by a “Alliance without treated”. However, there is very strong distrust between the two countries. The latter is mainly due to the structural imbalances which oppose them on the economic and technological levels as well as to past historical and territorial disputes. In China, party leaders do not forget that the Tsarist Empire annexed nearly two million square kilometers of territories in the Siberian Far East during the “humiliation century”, land that China considered its own. Admittedly, the two countries, needing each other, have put this litigation under the bushel for pragmatic reasons, but Beijing does not hesitate from time to time to do “recall bites”.
For several years, all the more since 2014 (annexation of Crimea by Russia), Moscow as Beijing has continued to strengthen their strategic partnership. Cooperation, multisectoral, are also very close in the military field. How do you see this growing militarization of the two nations?
China takes advantage of the Russian military industry and buy armaments in large quantities in Moscow. Beyond armament deliveries and transfer of military technologies to which Moscow agrees less and less, Beijing is inspired by the Russian experience in combat. The People’s Army of Liberation (APL) has not fought since 1979, during the Sino-Vietnamese war. China therefore looks with great interest what is happening in Ukraine and benefits from the feedback from the Ukrainian Front. Regarding the purely operational aspect, there is cooperation Very close sectoral, reinforced by joint military exercises (land, navals and air). But the Russian army and the APL do not have common staff as within NATO for example.
China as Russia dispute the international order established since 1945, an order politically, economically and financially dominated by the West. Do you think Beijing and Moscow will one day succeed in overthrowing the table?
China and Russia evolve in an international context where the American influence, always dominant, gradually stretches. The precipitous military disengagement of the United States in Afghanistan from 2021 and the switch from the world economy to Asia-Pacific changes power relations. China is taking advantage of Washington’s loss of influence in the Middle East (Iran and Gulf Monarchies), and everywhere else (Europe, Africa, South America) to court the countries of the regions crossed by new silk roads. It weaves formidable economic ties. But it is above all a commercial relationship. On the ideological level, Beijing aims to export its governance model, an alternative “Chinese model” to that of Westerners.
“” As part of the new silk roads, Beijing weaves formidable economic ties »»
Beyond this properly Chinese approach, China and Russia are busy together within various multilateral organizations which, all, dispute American-central Western hegemony. This is the case of the BRICS (bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa; joined this year by Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia), a coalition built against Western economic and political domination and which promotes a vision of the multipolar world. The China-Russia tandem has taken up the ascendancy on the platform, as well as in the Shanghai cooperation organization (OCS), which seeks to unite the powers of Eurasia in order to counter American influence. But it is especially China that holds the strings. And Beijing managed to bring together countries with heterogeneous and often divergent interests. Let us quote the case of the Sino-Indian rivalry. And, important, two alternative banks to Western banks have emerged and federate these emerging powers: the new BRICS development bank, which is intended to be an alternative to the World Bank in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Shanghai Cooperation Development Bank (OCS) bringing together China, Russia, India, Pakistan and several countries in Central Asia.
China also tries to internationalize its currency, via its many trade with Russia, Iran, and the Gulf monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia. The latter now accept the yuan as a currency of exchange to high percentages of their exports. This is a significant advance in the dedollarization strategy led by Beijing, even if for the time being the dollar retains its status of hegemonic currency.
As for NATO? Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Russia has seen the alliance extend to eastern Europe? As for China, it is surrounded by FIVES EYESthe quad and the American military bases? Is a military conflict between NATO forces and Moscow and Beijing possible where is it a hypothesis to be dismissed?
The invasion in Ukraine has indeed ended the “Brain death” NATO noted by Emmanuel Macron in 2019. This is the diplomatic “exploit” of Vladimir Putin: to have successively rallied Finland (April 2023) and Sweden (March 2024), two traditionally neutral countries, in the fold of the American alliance. At the same time, the uncertain strategic posture of Washington nourishes concerns about the viability of NATO and questions the solidity of the Euro-Atlantic alliance. A situation that offers Russians the opportunity to multiply incursions, in order to test the reliability and effectiveness of the security guarantees of the Alliance.
If China decides to launch an amphibious invasion against Taiwan, because it is one of the possible geostrategic scenarios with regard to the official declarations of the CCP which advocates “the unification of China” before 2049, NATO should logically not intervene, Asia-Pacific not falling under its theater of operations. Unlike its partners (Japan, Australia, Republic of Korea, New Zealand)who, on the other hand, should react alongside the Americans, Even if the reliability of the new administration is not fully ensured. It would nevertheless be difficult for him to remain motionless, if only to guarantee the credibility of the United States vis-à-vis Beijing and their own allies (Quad, Five Eyes, etc.). Moscow, for his part, will bring his diplomatic support to Beijing without blinking. It would be to return the same to China, which since the start of the war in Ukraine has adopted a position of “prorussian neutrality” with regard to Moscow, which is none other than an implicit support. China, everything By never condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has never recognized the annexation of the five Ukrainian oblasts.
“Moscow takes advantage of the uncertain strategic posture of Washington and multiplies the incursions in order to test the reliability of the alliance”
As for whether Moscow will engage militarily alongside China, it could only do so to a limited measure at sea. China has been preparing for many years, it continues to consolidate its army and multiply the demonstrations of forces in the Strait in order to increase pressure on the rebel island.
Beyond Ukraine, is the Sino-Russian relationship led, in your opinion, to intensify in the years to come? Or is it just a simple “marriage of reason”, as many affirm, faced with a common enemy (American hegemony)?
Although marked by reciprocal distrust and historical and territorial disputes, Sino-Russian relations are led to intensify as long as this “new Cold War” lasts between China and Washington. The frank hostility shown by the Trump administration towards China continues to strengthen Sino-Russian strategic alignment. And this is worth on all levels: political, economic and ideological. China as Russia have built a dynamic and pragmatic strategic partnership, based on an ideological and political convergence as well as on two complementary economies: Russia being a provider of natural and energy resources for Beijing, and China, an industrial and technological power with which Moscow Commerce. It is therefore very likely that the Prorussian policy led by Beijing and the Prochinese policy led by Moscow to be consolidated in the future, the two acting in concert and in a coordinated manner to weigh more on the international scene against the West.
* Former ambassador to Tadjikistan and Moldova and former co-president of the Minsk group in charge of the Haut-Karabakh regulation, Pierre Andrieu teaches geopolitics in several French establishments, including Sciences Po Paris, L’Inalco and ESCP, and foreigners. He is also a superior aggregate of research on Sino-Russian relations at the Chinese Center for the ASIA Society Policy Institute as well as the author of the book “Geopolitics of Russian-Chinese relations” published by PUF editions in 2023.
