Relations between China and Russia have evolved dramatically since their first diplomatic contact, particularly during the twentieth century. During the past decade China and Russia have made efforts to strengthen bilateral ties and improve cooperation on a number of diplomatic fronts. The People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation maintain exceptionally close and friendly relations, strong geopolitical and regional cooperation, and significant levels of trade. In The Future of China-Russia Relations, scholars from around the world explore the current state of the relationship between the two powers and assess the prospects for future cooperation and possible tensions in the new century. The contributors examine Russian and Chinese perspectives on a wide range of issues, including security, political relationships, economic interactions, and defense ties. This collection explores the energy courtship between the two nations and analyzes their interests and policies regarding Central Asia, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan.
Fifteen years have passed since China and Russia formed a 'strategic cooperative partnership' in 1996, and 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of their 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation. Considering the significant changes that have taken place in China and Russia over this period, it is well worth assessing the meaning of the China-Russia 'strategic partnership' and their declared 'good-neighbourly' relations. The 'strategic partnership' falls short of the aspirational official rhetoric of both sides. There are three common threads in the views of Chinese policymakers and analysts regarding the China-Russia partnership: pragmatism, lack of political trust and the US factor. While some of the grander expectations of China-Russia relations are unlikely to develop, the two countries will nevertheless avoid antagonizing one another and will find common interests in a stable relationship. The relationship may encounter tension over specific issues, but it is relatively resistant to long-term damage because of the pragmatism of both parties and the willingness to discuss differences behind closed doors. China and Russia will continue to be pragmatic partners of convenience, but not partners based on deeper shared world views and strategic interests. In the coming years, while relations will remain close at the diplomatic level, the two cornerstones of the partnership over the past two decades -- military and energy cooperation -- will continue to crumble. As a result, Russia's significance to China will continue to diminish.
This report makes the point that in both Russia and China it is politics ââ¬" and not market or commercial considerations ââ¬" that largely drive energy relationships with each other and the outside world.à For both countries, energy and energy security is regarded as a strategic asset and/or objective that are at risk from outside forces.à The conditions that each state has attached to their energy policies ironically preclude the kind of easy cooperation seen in other strategic and political issues between Moscow and Beijing. In both Central and Northeast Asia, Russia has blocked Chinese efforts to realize its version of energy security, yet it has not been able to come up either with the resources or means for a coherent policy of supplying China with reliable quantities of energy that would lead China away from non-Russian producers.à The under-fulfilment of the potential for Russia to supply China will continue and continue as well to be a source of strain in their relationship.
This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia. Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China. China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.
With many predicting the end of US hegemony, Russia and China's growing cooperation in a number of key strategic areas looks set to have a major impact on global power dynamics. But what lies behind this Sino-Russian rapprochement? Is it simply the result of deteriorated Russo–US and Sino–US relations or does it date back to a more fundamental alignment of interests after the Cold War? In this book Alexander Lukin answers these questions, offering a deeply informed and nuanced assessment of Russia and China’s ever-closer ties. Tracing the evolution of this partnership from the 1990s to the present day, he shows how economic and geopolitical interests drove the two countries together in spite of political and cultural differences. Key areas of cooperation and possible conflict are explored, from bilateral trade and investment to immigration and security. Ultimately, Lukin argues that China and Russia’s strategic partnership is part of a growing system of cooperation in the non-Western world, which has also seen the emergence of a new political community: Greater Eurasia. His vision of the new China–Russia rapprochement will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding this evolving partnership and the way in which it is altering the contemporary geopolitical landscape.
Over the last two decades, relations between China and Russia have grown closer in ways that pose significant challenges for the United States and its allies and partners. Recently, as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have consolidated power, the two leaders have cultivated a strategic axis that, while not a formal alliance, aims to undermine the United States and other liberal nations while expanding Chinese and Russian influence abroad. In this volume, leading U.S. experts explore the contours of this emergent axis of authoritarians in multiple domains and consider policy options for the United States to strengthen its position and defend its interests.
Since the end of the Cold War, the improved political and economic relationship between Beijing and Moscow has affected a range of international security issues. China and Russia have expanded their bilateral economic and security cooperation. In addition, Beijing and Moscow have pursued distinct, yet parallel, policies regarding many global and regional issues. Yet, Chinese and Russian approaches to a range of significant subjects are still largely uncoordinated and at times conflict. Economic exchanges between China and Russia remain minimal compared to those found between most friendly countries, let alone allies. Although stronger Chinese-Russian ties could present greater challenges to other states (e.g., the establishment of a Beijing-Moscow condominium over Central Asia), several factors make it unlikely that the two countries will form such a bloc. Unlike during the Cold War, China and Russia no longer fear engaging in a shooting war. For example, the two countries have largely accepted their common border. Yet, tensions persist due to illegal Chinese immigration into Russia, as well the inability of Chinese authorities to halt the spillover of pollution from China into Russia. In particular, Russians worry about the long-term implications of China's exploding population for Russia's demographically and economically stagnant eastern regions, a situation some Russian leaders already consider to be a major security threat. In some respects, China and Russia should be natural energy partners. Chinese energy demand is soaring, and Russia's oil and gas deposits lie much closer to China than the more distant energy sources Africa and the Persian Gulf. Nonetheless, economic and political differences relating to their energy security have continually divided the two countries, reducing the prospects for creating an exclusive energy bloc in Eurasia. For over a decade, Russian military exports to China have constituted the most important dimension of the two countries' security relationship. Russian firms have derived substantial revenue from the sales, which also helped sustain Russia's military industrial complex during the lean years of the 1990s. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) was able to acquire advanced conventional weapons that Chinese firms could not yet manufacture. This situation is changing. The Chinese defense industry has become capable of producing much more sophisticated armaments. Moscow confronts the choice of either seeing its Chinese market decrease dramatically or agreeing to sell even more advanced weapons to Beijing with the risk of destabilizing military force balances in East Asia. In their public rhetoric, Chinese and Russian leaders appear the best of friends. They speak as if they share a comprehensive vision of the direction in which they want the world to evolve over the next few years. Their joint statements call for a multi-polar international system in which the United Nations and international law determine decisions regarding the possible use of force. Chinese and Russian government representatives also stress traditional interpretations of national sovereignty rather than the promotion of universal democratic values or other ideologies. Yet, Beijing and Moscow continue to differ on important global issues, including ballistic missile defense (BMD) and military operations in space.
This book depicts the sophisticated relationship between Russia and China as a pragmatic one, a political “marriage of convenience”. Yet at the same time the relationship is stable, and will remain so. After all, bilateral relations are usually based on pragmatic interests and the pursuit of these interests is the very essence of foreign policy. And, as often happens in life, the most long-lasting marriages are those based on convenience. The highly complex, complicated, ambiguous and yet, indeed, successful relationship between Russia and China throughout the past 25 years is difficult to grasp theoretically. Russian and Chinese elites are hard-core realists in their foreign policies, and the neorealist school in international relations seems to be the most adequate one to research Sino-Russian relations. Realistically, throughout this period China achieved a multidimensional advantage over Russia. Yet, simultaneously Russia-China relations do not follow the patterns of power politics. Beijing knows its limits and does not go into extremes. Rather, China successfully seeks to build a longterm, stable relationship based on Chinese terms, where both sides gain, albeit China gains a little more. Russia in this agenda does not necessary lose; just gains a little less out of this asymmetric deal. Thus, a new model of bilateral relations emerges, which may be called – by paraphrasing the slogan of Chinese diplomacy – as “asymmetric win-win” formula. This model is a kind of “back to the past“ – a contemporary equivalent of the first model of Russia-China relations: the modus vivendi from the 17th century, achieved after the Nerchinsk treaty.
