Explained: The China-Russia relationship

Despite being together in rejecting US unipolarity, the relationship between Russia and China is complex and layered. Each has its distinct worldview and specific interests in its geographical region, and its own battles to fight.

Mistrust to cooperation

Relations between China and the former Soviet Union were frosty, marked by mistrust and doctrinal differences for most of the Cold War decades. The change came in 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to land in Beijing since Nikita Khrushchev in 1958. The visit took place in the midst of the Tiananmen Square student protests, but Gorbachev held off from saying anything that would anger his hosts. Gorbachev and paramount leader Deng Xiaoping declared “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence” as the basis of their bilateral relations.

A decade after the Soviet Union broke up, disappointed and humiliated by the way the West had downgraded it, and deep in economic crisis, Russia under Putin’s first presidency turned to China under President Jiang Zemin. In 2001, the two countries signed the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation, paving the way for expanding economic and trade ties, including sales of defence equipment and energy by Russia to China, and Russia’s backing for China’s position on Taiwan.

The George W Bush Administration was not perturbed — and said this was not an alliance against the US. Last June, the two countries extended the treaty at a virtual meeting between Putin and Xi. Putin told Xi that the “Russian-Chinese coordination plays a stabilizing role in world affairs”, and China’s President said their countries had “set an example for the formation of a new type of international relations”.

Together against US

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea in Ukraine led to a sharp downturn in Moscow’s ties with the US, NATO, and Europe. This was also the turning point in Russia’s ties with China, which revealed the possibilities, potential, and the limits of the relationship.

When the US, EU, and Australia imposed sanctions on Russia, Putin turned reflexively to Beijing. Over the next year, Russia opened its doors wide for Chinese investments, and struck a $400 billion deal for Gazprom, the Russian state monopoly gas exporter, to supply 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) annually to China for 30 years from 2025.

The Power of Siberia pipeline began operations in 2019, and sent 16.5 bcm of gas to China last year. During Putin’s visit to Beijing last week, the two countries signed a deal for another pipeline, Power of Siberia 2, which will add 10 bcm of gas to the annual supply for 30 years.

Since 2016, trade between the two countries has gone from $ 50 bn to over $147 bn. China is now Russia’s largest trading partner. Towards a modus vivendi in Central Asia, the two countries agreed to work towards speeding up the linking of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

With their ties closer than ever before, the crisis in Ukraine has been an opportunity for each country to express solidarity with the other’s grievance against the US. Should the West impose financial and banking sanctions on Russia, Beijing is expected to assist Moscow, perhaps with alternative payment methods.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a photo prior to their talks in Beijing, China, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

China said during Putin’s visit that Russia’s “reasonable security concerns should be recognised and resolved”, an apparent reference to Ukraine’s interest in joining NATO, and the joint statement backed the Russian opposition to any expansion of the Western military alliance in Europe.

Russia reaffirmed support for the One-China principle, and opposed any form of independence for Taiwan. The statement also hit out “against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region” and “the negative impact” of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Different interests

And yet, as several observers have pointed out, the China-Russia compact is not yet a formal security alliance against the West, nor is it an ideological partnership.

The joint statement referred to NATO’s expansion, but did not mention Ukraine. Back in March 2014, in the vote on UN Security Council resolutions on the referendum in Crimea that was used by Putin as an excuse to annex the Black Sea peninsula, China had abstained — and despite the recent bonhomie, has not recognised Crimea’s accession to Russia.

China’s main security interests lie in Asia; Russia’s are in Europe. From Putin’s demands in ongoing negotiations with the West, it is clear that he is seeking the restructuring of European security — and if the US wants to link the crisis in eastern Europe with China, it was their problem, not his. Russia, which wants to be recognised as a great power once again, has positions independent of Beijing on many issues — including on the relationship with India.

As the smaller economy — its GDP is a tenth of China’s — but with a strong memory of its lost superpower status, Russia is loath to become China’s junior partner. Its experience with China in 2014 had brought home the reality that friend or not, Beijing drives a hard bargain. The negotiations on the pipeline and gas prices were fraught, and Russia is acutely conscious that its gas exports to Germany and the rest of Europe gets much more revenue — and that China anyway has other pipelines to tap. Also, despite talk of Russia-China co-operation in Central Asia, Moscow still sees the region as part of its sphere of influence.

For Beijing, war in Ukraine is the least suitable of options. It would take US military energies away from the South China Sea, but might also stall talks to resolve trade issues. China and the EU are each other’s biggest trading partners — China’s trade with Russia is small by comparison. Beijing will not fight the war if it breaks out, but it will nonetheless find it messy and complicated to negotiate.

As for Ukraine, it is a crucial link in Xi’s BRI project. China is also Ukraine’s biggest trading partner — and its agricultural exports, particularly corn, have sustained China during its trade war with the US.

View from New Delhi

In this crisis with many moving parts, it is easy to both overstate and under-read the the Russia-China relationship. All actors are hedging their bets in ways that are altering the geopolitics of Europe and Asia in real time.

New Delhi’s best bet would be to treat its relations with both countries and the US separately — or it runs the risk of shrinking its own space. India’s relationship with Russia is not what it used to be, but there is much that both sides continue to see as mutually beneficial. The Russia-China statement did not mention China’s border dispute with India; it only made a reference to developing cooperation among the three countries.

After the Russian-linked Redfish media teased a documentary that drew parallels between Kashmir and Palestine, the Russian embassy clarified that Redfish was not official media, and reiterated that Kashmir was an issue for India and Pakistan to resolve bilaterally. This came a day after Pakistan and China issued a statement expressing concern at India’s “unilateral actions” in J&K.

As one former Indian diplomat put it, India would restrict its foreign policy choices and undermine its own status as a rising power of global standing by taking sides in a conflict that has nothing to do with it. What else was French President Emmanuel Macron’s five-hour meeting with Putin over dinner if not a display of the grand complexity of global politics, the fluidity of the present, and the opportunities in it?

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