GEOPOLITICS

Intro: Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. But while the crisis in Ukraine has drawn Russia closer to China, the relationship is far from equal

The commemorations in Moscow to celebrate the capitulation of Nazi Germany 70 years ago speak volumes about today’s geopolitics. On May 9th, Western leaders stayed away in protest against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, an important proclamation as this was the first annexation of sovereign territory in Europe since the second world war. China’s president, Xi Jinping, was the guest of honour of his friend, Vladimir Putin. Western sanctions over Ukraine, and what looks set to be a long-term chilling of relations with America and Europe, has given Russia no other option than to embrace China as tightly as it can.

In the coming days, in a further symbol of the growing strategic partnership between the two countries, up to four Chinese and six Russian naval vessels will rendezvous to conduct live-firing drills in the eastern Mediterranean. The exercise, which follows several similar ones in 2013, is aimed at sending a clear message to America and its allies. For Russia the manoeuvres send a strong signal that it has a powerful friend and a bonding military relationship with a country that has growing geographic reach and influence. For China, such an exercise of this kind speaks of increasing global ambition that is line with Mr Xi’s slogan about a ‘Chinese dream’, one which he says includes a ‘dream of a strong armed-forces’. In taking part, China is sending its ships from anti-piracy duty in the Gulf of Aden.

But this also provides an opportunity for China to display its Type 054A guided-missile frigate, which it would like to sell to the Russians. It also brings with it operational experience in an unstable region in which it has an expanding economic presence. In 2011, China organised the evacuation of more than 38,000 Chinese from Libya during that country’s upheaval. And just last month its navy disembarked several hundred of its citizens out of Yemen, which is being torn apart by civil war. There are believed to be at least 40,000 Chinese working in Algeria and more than 1m across Africa.

Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. For different reasons both countries resent America’s ‘hegemony’ and share a desire for a more multipolar world order. Russia, for all its bravado, is a declining great power, and is looking for ways to recover at least some of its lost status; whereas China, a rising power on the world stage, bridles at what it perceives as American attempts to constrain it. As fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council, both with autocratic governments, Russia and China find common cause in expressing grievance at Western liberal interventionism. The two countries settled all of their long-standing border disputes in 2008, just prior to the Russian-choreographed war in Georgia. This provided the onset for Russia in concentrating more of its military forces in the west as a deterrent against the further expansion of NATO.

Despite the strengthening partnership there have been the occasional tensions. For example, Russia played a key role during the 1990s in helping China to reform and modernise its military forces. Russia was able to preserve a defence-industrial base that would otherwise have withered from lack of domestic orders. But since the middle of the last decade, irked by China’s pilferage of its military technology and its consequent emergence as a rival in the arms market, Russia’s weapons sales to its neighbour have slowed.

Moscow’s wariness of becoming little more than a supplier of natural resources to China’s industrial machine speaks volumes of Russia’s humiliating position that until recently saw China as backward. As long as Russia could sell to Europe all the gas required to keep the Russian economy growing, it could arbitrarily put deals with China on hold. These included plans for two gas pipelines from Siberia into China that were announced in 2006 and then quietly dropped as the two sides argued and bickered over prices.

All that has changed. The continuing crisis in Ukraine has forced Russia to ‘pivot’ its economy towards Asia in an effort to lessen the impact of Western sanctions by finding alternative markets and new sources of capital. For China it is a golden opportunity to gain greater access to Russia’s natural resources, at favourable prices, as well as being in a better position to secure access to big infrastructure contracts that might have gone to Western competitors and to provide financing for projects that will directly benefit Chinese firms.

Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and its seizure of Crimea violated two of China’s most consistently held foreign-policy tenets: non-interference in other states and separatism of any kind. Yet, while China abstained from voting on the UN Security Council resolutions condemning Russia (with the Chinese media giving Russia strong support) it has quietly welcomed a new cold war in Europe that might distract America from its declared ‘rebalancing’ towards Asia.

Additional and striking new evidence of the new closeness between China and Russia was a $400 billion gas deal signed in May last year under which Russia will supply China with 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually from 2018 for 30 years. China has insisted that the gas comes from new fields in eastern Siberia by passing through as yet an unbuilt pipeline, a plan that will ensure supplies are not diverted elsewhere. Other deals have followed too. The biggest was a preliminary agreement signed in November for Russia to sell an additional 30 bcm a year through a proposed pipeline from Western Siberia. In every such new instance it is probable that China was able to drive a hard bargain on price.

Other clear signs of Russia’s weakness have also become clear. Its recent decision to resume high-tech arms exports to China most noticeable. In April it agreed to sell China an air-defence system, the S-400, for around $3 billion. This will help give China air dominance over Taiwan and the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), who dispute Japan’s claim to them. In November, too, Russia said it was prepared to sell China its latest Sukhoi-35S combat aircraft. Initially it had refused to sell any fewer than 48, in order to make up for losses it suffered as a result of China’s purloining of the designs. Now it has agreed to sell only 24.

Looking ahead problems seem discernibly clear. One is that both countries are competing for influence in Central Asia, once Russia’s backyard. Mr Putin wants to establish his Eurasian Economic Union partly to counter growing economic power in Central Asia, through which China wants to develop what it calls a Silk Road Economic Belt. China is using the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), of which Russia and Central Asian nations are also members, to boost its security ties in the region as well. Another difficulty is Russia’s military and energy links with countries such as India and Vietnam, both of which are rivals of China. But the biggest problem of all seems likely to be Russia’s irritation with being forced into an increasingly subservient role in its relations with China.