At a summit last week in Moscow, Russia’s overbearing ruler Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping joined forces to counter American power.
But analysts say that while the two countries showed solidarity against the backdrop of the Kremlin’s majesty, the summit revealed an uneven power dynamic in the relationship and a weakening of Russia’s global position.
Jonathan Ward, founder of the Atlas Organization, a US-China global competition consultancy, said the imbalance could eventually split the union.
World leaders regard Putin’s army as a pariah for his gratuitous and brutal takeover of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the wealthy democracies of Western Europe have cut ties with the Russian economy.
Since the invasion, China has decided to deepen its economic ties with Russia, which are critical to keeping the Russian economy afloat and provide the Kremlin with diplomatic and propaganda support.
At last week’s summit, Xi proposed a peace plan for Ukraine that critics say largely reflects Russia’s demands.
At the summit, China was given full access to the Russian economy in exchange for a lifeline that Xi offered Putin, but little tangible additional Russian support in return.
“Sino-Russian relations are heavily skewed in favor of Beijing,” Ward said. He is also the author of The Decisive Decade and A Vision for China’s Victory.
“In the long term, the imbalance of power in relations is the main reason for their failure, and China also has historical claims to its northern “strategic partner”.
During the summit, Xi asserted his dominance by convening a meeting of former Soviet republics in Central Asia, which the Kremlin has long considered part of its sphere of influence, AFP reported.
Putin’s response likely angered Beijing, which announced plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus over the weekend, in direct contradiction to a joint statement with China released a few days earlier. Former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul called the move a “humiliation” for Xi.
Ali Winn, an analyst at Eurasia Group, said Russia’s repeated nuclear threats against Ukraine and its allies are one source of tension between Russia and China. He said they put Mr. Xi in an “uncomfortable position” as he tried to act as an intermediary. in conflict.
But despite these tensions, the Russia-China alliance is likely to persist as Putin and Xi are deeply unhappy with America’s status as the world’s top superpower.
“It seems likely that general dissatisfaction with US influence, which has been the backbone of their post-Cold War partnership, will grow rapidly,” Wynn told Insider.
“As angry as Russia is at the growing asymmetry with China, it knows that it currently has no real path to détente with the US, it needs to keep Beijing on its side so as not to be worse off. The world’s two most important forces have been mobilized against its further aggression,” he said.
The situation is similar to the early decades of the Cold War, when the communist regimes in Russia and China sought to balance the power of the democratic United States and its allies.
“As long as these two neo-totalitarian states are focused on rewriting the map of Europe and Asia, they will stick together,” Ward said.
But the key difference now is that the power dynamic has shifted, and unlike in the 1960s when the Russian economy was stronger, China is now about 10 times the size of the Russian economy and has jumped to the top in areas like technology.
In the long term, if Russia’s imperial ambitions are thwarted and China’s plans to become a world power are held back by the United States and its allies, disagreements between the two countries could tear them apart, Ward said.
“None of this bode well in the long run unless China solidifies its grip on the country,” Ward said.
Post time: Jul-12-2023