Russia and China Have Much in Common But There’s Much They Don’t
Look Beyond the Olympic Photo Ops
No image better captures the 21st Century’s own cold war than the heirs to the one-time Sino-Soviet alliance, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, together again in Beijing last month. After three dozen previous meetings, their ostentatious grip and grin at the Winter Olympics is nothing new. But the photo op also is far from evidence that the pair, much less Moscow and Beijing, are joined at the hip. Whatever their personal chemistry, it’s crucial not to overlook the substance that’s missing in the two authoritarians’ bromance. However fraternal they are in front of the cameras, their love match could easily go on the rocks.
The fact that China has moon-walked away from supporting Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine after the two big bosses’ last tête à tête reveals, as their Marxist mentors would put it, contradictions that shouldn’t be underplayed.
Their shared goals are clear enough. Ever since Mao Zedong took power in 1949, it’s been easy to point out similarities between two heavily armed autocracies: no respect for human rights, unrequited irredentist claims and a yearning to ditch the postwar, Western-authored international system for a more malleable alignment in which Moscow and Beijing make the rules.
However, the history that produced a post-Soviet and post-Maoist meeting of the minds between Putin and Xi on grand goals also holds a closet full of traumas that neither has forgotten.
Take several of the primal fears that, if a psychiatrist could put Xi and Putin on the couch, even a journeyman shrink could tease out. China’s president could talk about his father. He labored at Mao Zedong’s elbow, and may well have recounted Moscow’s near-fatal advice in the 1920s. Then, the Soviet party counseled Mao to cool his proselytizing among the peasants and join Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang to organize workers in the cities. Mao did, Chiang turned on him and China’s communists were nearly wiped out.
Or take the traumas of the Sino-Soviet alliance itself. As the rural, backward and struggling People’s Republic discovered during its decade or so under Moscow’s wing, taking advice from Stalin and his successors, including their ideological chapter and verse, didn’t set well. The Soviet directions to industrialize, toe Moscow’s party line around the world and buy their ideological scripture didn’t only fail to produce results. It also rankled Mao, who saw his own bust on the shelf next to Marx’s and Lenin’s as one of world revolution’s A-team. With Xi styling himself as the Great Helmsman’s 21st Century heir, it’s easy to imagine that he might have taken Mao’s pique as well as his ego to heart.
History matters no less to Putin, who recognizes how much the tables have turned. China’s growing global shadow puts Russia’s stature in their contemporary Eurasian condominium in deep shade. When comparing GDPs, of course, a bodega beside a big box store comes to mind. But Putin’s inferiority complex isn’t just about the fact that his national economy is smaller than Texas’s GDP, while Xi’s is the world’s second-largest. It’s about the strategic implications of their 2,600-mile border, Russia’s sparse population east of the Urals and its growing dependence on China. That Russian insecurity is historic, and for Putin, who sees his realm in imperial terms, his Ukraine disaster will only deepen the angst.
Put another way, Xi has a Belt and Road initiative to help gain influence around the world – including Ukraine – and Putin has a 40-mile military convoy on the road to Kyiv. As Russia escalates the violence in Ukraine, the bloody facts on the ground, as well as the accumulating evidence of incompetence, point toward Putin’s blitzkrieg threatening to become a sitzkrieg. The military reasons for the failure understandably are drawing attention, but its impact on the Putin-Xi relationship shouldn’t be ignored. Tony Saich, a Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School, put it this way on February 25: “The ongoing conflict in Ukraine will reveal whether there is a deeper bond or whether the relationship is essentially transactional.”
Saich isn’t the only one counseling a wait-and-see approach to assessing the next phase of the Putin-Xi tie. “China is balancing two conflicting policies: support for Ukraine’s sovereignty (as a function of China’s decades-old non-alignment and non-interference priorities, as well as large scale Chinese investments and trade with Ukraine, part of its Belt and Road Initiative) and recognition of Russia’s security concerns (translated as ‘we don’t want Western alliances ganging up on autocratic regimes),” wrote Kevin Nealer of The Scowcroft Group on February 28. “The problems occur where these two notions cannot be reconciled.”
Unlike Putin, Xi has a keen eye for the bottom line. China has a lot to lose in Ukraine. If Putin levels its cities, the Russian army’s default setting if the Chechen war is any guide, Chinese economic ties with Ukraine will be part of the rubble. Bilateral trade between the two countries in the first 11 months of last year was $17.36 billion, 37 percent more than the previous year. Foodstuffs such as feed corn figure prominently, as does long-term Chinese investment in Ukrainian agriculture to keep them flowing. There is—or was until the Russians were coming—direct freight service to China from Ukraine. China also has invested some $50 million to expand the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, now on the war’s southern front.
Don’t expect Xi to turn his back on Putin. After all, the two had such a good time together at the Winter Olympics. But don’t expect China to bail Russia out of the economic trouble it’s brought upon itself—for example, by providing relief for all the new sanctions and risking the same treatment for trading with Russia. Beijing will help with energy: At 1.6 million barrels a day, it already is the second-largest buyer of Russian crude oil. But even with a sanctions carve-out for energy, the Russians are facing a global market that’s refusing to buy their oil and gas because of the political risk. Russian traders already are discounting, and the Chinese will push them even harder for bargain prices, as they’ve done before.
As Harvard’s Saich put it: “China will pursue its national interest above all else and this may, or may not, coincide with Russia’s. . . . How Beijing responds will reveal just how transactional the revived relationship between China and Russia is, and whether China is willing to damage further its international reputation by throwing itself behind Russia in the face of Western hostility. It is trying to walk a difficult line.”
My extended Chinese Family has long held these very same views. Most excellent journalism.
Insightful. Especially your analysis on China's relationship with Russia.