SPEAKING FREELY Debating the dragon-bear duet
By Anna Konopatskaya
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Over the past decade, China and Russia have adopted official hyperbole about
mutually collaborative bilateral relations. Some top experts and analysts,
however, have been questioning whether this reflects the beginning of a new and
multipolar world order, or if instead Moscow is being pulled into a new form of
resource patron-clientism through a host of arrangements in which China holds
the upper hand.
Making sense of both sides of the argument will require not just a close
examination of recent political developments but also a watchful eye on how
Sino-Russian relations continue to develop.
Advances and agendas
The July 16, 2001, signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness
and Friendly Cooperation Between the People's Republic of China and the Russian
Federation (FCT, commonly known as the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship)
framed a new chapter - one premised on a strategy for peaceful relations,
economic cooperation, environmental security and diplomatic and geopolitical
interreliance.
Since the signing, a number of other significant and positive developments have
followed, including several high-level exchanges between senior officials, such
as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's September 2004 visit to Moscow and Russia's
then-president Vladimir Putin's October 2004 exchange visit.
As a result, the two countries have several significant political
accomplishments - including putting aside enduring disputes like the
Sino-Russian border conflict - and have prioritized strategic areas of joint
cooperation such as combating international terrorism, preventing proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, and furthering the issue of denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula and the continuation of six-party talks.
For some experts, such as, Bobo Lo, author of Axis of Convenience: Moscow,
Beijing and the New Geopolitics, the improvement of Sino-Russian relations "is,
for all its faults, one of the more convincing examples of positive-sum
international relations today".
Others disagree. Stephen Kotkin, professor of History and International Affairs
at Princeton University, for instance, suggests that an improved relationship
between Moscow and Beijing may allow the Chinese to extract strategically
important natural resources from Russia and extend their regional influence,
but it affords little more than the pretense of a multi-polar world in which
Moscow enjoys a central role.
For both Lo and Kotkin, the crux of Sino-Russian cooperation is a legacy of
"pervasive mistrust" rooted in historical grievances, geopolitical competition,
and structural factors. Clearly, a realistic forecast of Sino-Russian bilateral
cooperation in the 21st century must take into account both economic and
geopolitical realities - and there are more than a few ways to interpret the
significance of Sino-Russian relations in each and every one of their
manifestations.
In terms of geopolitics, China extracts considerable practical benefits in
energy and weapons from Russia. Russia, in turn, achieves very real and
measurable economic advantages from this relationship. How are these issues
being interpreted?
Analysts generally begin from similar clusters of facts before rendering their
interpretations. In terms of energy, the situation can be loosely defined as
follows:
Much of the new Russian-Chinese trade and economic cooperation is predicated on
ambitious agreements in the energy sector. Russia's current policy is to orient
the gas industry in eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East to export gas
supplies to China, with a goal of 68 billion cubic meters by 2020.
Recently, plans were finalized for a branch oil pipeline to transport 15
million tons of crude oil annually from the Skovorodinoin Siberia to the
Chinese border city of Daqing. The proposed pipeline would increase Russia's
share of China's oil imports to roughly 8% (up from around 4% now). The Chinese
side has already funded an estimated $32 million to design this branch
pipeline, and Transneft and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are in
the final stages of negotiations on transit rates and service prices.
Operations are set to start by the end of 2010.
Additionally, in February, China and Russia signed seven energy cooperation
agreements to establish joint ventures for exploration and exploitation of oil
and gas fields in Russia with refining and marketing based in China.
In terms of weapons technologies, according to US estimates Russia supplies
China with 95% of its military hardware, including air defense systems, older
combat aircraft and many classes of warships, including Kilo-class diesel
submarines. China also remains an eager customer for Russia's military hardware
blueprints.
In Kotkin's reading, this cooperation has severe practical limitations.
Cooperation in the energy sector appears to be disadvantageous to Moscow in the
long run. Factoring in the interest payments Russian companies will owe on
their loans to the China Development Bank, the recent oil deals are estimated
to result in prices of under $20 a barrel for China - less than half the global
price at the time of the deal and less than one-third the market price for
future deliveries in 2017.
Considering the plausibility of more advantageous energy deals that have been
on the table with the US and European multinationals, Kotkin writes in the
September/October issue of Foreign Affairs that Rosneft and Transeft's deal
with China "looks like a giveaway".
Russia's weapons exports, for their part, also appear to scholars of Kotkin's
pursuasion to be largely an historic artifact resulting from the arms embargo
imposed on China by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States after the
Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, coupled with Russia's desire to keep its
defense industry alive.
Russian arms sales to China have declined in recent years, and that decline is
seen as continuing - perhaps even as much as 75% in the immediate future, as
Andrei Belyaninov, the CEO of Rosoboronexport, Russia's main official arms
exporting corporation, warned in February. Both Putin and President Dmitry
Medvedev have refused to sell China any items on the long shopping list of
advanced, expensive ground warfare and close air support weapons that China
still cannot produce but desperately needs to become a truly formidable
military power.
The times, are they a-changing?
It is widely recognized that, until recently, political calculations prevailed
over economic concerns in the development of Sino-Russian relations. And it is
clear that political calculations remain important even for economic matters.
For instance, Moscow's seeming economic capitulation to Beijing on the issue of
energy exports may be a consequence of the obsession many Russian officials
still harbor for denying the United States a strategic foothold in Russia’s
energy sector.
However, in sharp divergence from the pessimistic view of scholars like Kotkin
and Lo, there is also evidence that the political calculations of both China
and Russia are truly converging around the establishment of a multi-polar world
order. The two countries have agreed, for instance, that in addition to needing
specific guidelines to expand trade and increase Chinese investment in the
Russian economy between 2010 and 2020, both sides also must also strengthen
their strategic and economic partnerships - including within the United
Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other international
organizations.
For example, in the July 2005 "Joint Statement of the People's Republic of
China and the Russian Federation Regarding the International Order of the 21st
Century", the two countries codified strategic interactions not only in terms
of a deepening of trust between Russia and China, but also via a framework for
permanent consultations on global and regional security issues.
The paper outlines mutual commitments towards maintaining sovereignty and
territorial integrity as well as to the formation of a new just and rational
world order based on the primacy of international law, multilateralism,
equality and mutual respect.
Under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russian-Chinese regional
cooperation has improved. In this framework, both Russia and China continue to
emphasize that they do not intend to make a multilateral, sub-regional
association in alliance against any other country or group of countries.
Strategic partnerships are also being developed around security issues under
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. One of the key
advances that could result from this interaction is the improvement of the
inter-regional anti-terrorism legal framework and anti-crime cooperation
between Russia, China and Southeast Asia.
Russia has strongly advocated the establishment of linkages between the
regional counter-terrorism center in Southeast Asia and the structure of the
SCO Regional Anti-Terrorism, which will allow the two states to better
coordinate efforts to crush terrorist movements that threaten the political
stability and territorial integrity of these countries.
The road ahead
Is Russia truly entering into a veiled client-patron relationship with Beijing
under the pretense of a multi-polar world? Or is the intended mutual economic
advancement of both countries a more likely outcome?
By some measures, the contradictions that arise between Russia and China derive
from their commitment to non-interference in each other's internal affairs and
the political disagreements of their regional counterparts. The troubled
politics of the SCO described by Kotkin and others may indeed be reflective of
a profound asymmetry in Chinese-Russian relations.
But it is also important to keep in mind that a new political discourse has
emerged in recent years - one that centers on mutual respect and trust that
takes into account the long-term perspective and commitment to joint
development.
While there is certainly evidence of a Chinese-Russian "axis of convenience",
as Bobo Lo puts it, it is not entirely clear that such amounts merely to
China's ascendency at the expense of Russia. The economic turnabout Russia has
witnessed by catering to China's commodities demands has been impressive.
Through the development of strategic bilateral relations with France, Germany,
and Italy, Russia has also managed to blunt the collective power of the EU.
Both countries clearly have something to gain.
Also important to bear in mind is that China has itself accepted a subsidiary
role relative to the United States - with impressive economic gains as a
result. By taking advantage of its strategic partnership with the United States
while sometimes biting the bullet in the face of American dominance, Beijing
finds ample room to pursue its national interests without paying the enormous
costs of oppositional politics.
How does political discourse on Sino-Russian bilateral relations continue to
change in frame and tenor? How are forums for regional cooperation developing
(or stagnating)? How are each of the two countries aligning themselves
vis-a-vis other issues of global significance? As one ponders such questions,
it is important to keep an open mind and a watchful eye.
Anna Konopatskaya is a graduate from St Petersburg State Polytechnic
University with a specialist degree in International Relations.
(Copyright 2009, Anna Konopatskaya)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in contributing.
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