Authors: Sultana Yesmin and Noor Mohammad Sarker*
At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China on February 4, 2022. The first in person meeting between the two leaders in two years took place just ahead of the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Amid escalating tensions with the West over Ukraine and other issues, Putin hailed Russia’s “unprecedented” ties with China and confirmed its readiness to continue working on the China-proposed Global Development Initiative.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in response, stressed the further deepening of “back-to-back” strategic coordination between the two countries in the areas of sovereignty, security and development with particular emphasis on the protection of national interests from external interference and regional threats. Over Ukraine-Russia crisis, China warned the United States over Russia’s legitimate security concerns and supported Russia’s demands for security guarantees in Europe. Beijing opposed the further enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and urged the North Atlantic Alliance to discard the ideological approaches of the Cold War era.
Most importantly, Russia and China issued a joint statementthat paves a new type of international relations featuring genuine multipolarity, international law-based world order, self-determination and relationship between world powers based on mutually beneficial cooperation. The joint statement opposed the imposition of unilateral approaches in addressing international issues, interference in the internal affairs of other states, infringement of legitimate rights and interests of other states, zero-sum games, unilateral sanctions, hegemonic power politics, incitement of contradictions and confrontation between the major powers.
Having mentioned all these developments, it seems quite interesting to realize the fact that, China-Russia alignment in opposition to the US hegemony has led to the perception that the world order has entered a new era. However, to grasp a better understanding on this, we need to set some parameters first.
China and Russia – two great powers – have heightened multilateral cooperation in recent times in order to draw an end to the unipolar world order led by the US and, thereby, overthrow the current hegemon. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi clearly mentioned, “as long as China and Russia stand together shoulder to shoulder and deepen coordination hand in hand, hegemony will not win.” The US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2040 reports that, China and Russia are seeking to counterbalance Western influence, defend multilateralism and reshape the international order devoid of Western-origin norms.
China and Russia’s obstruction to Western-led initiatives may further decline Western leadership in the global, regional and sub-regional institutions. The development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) spearheaded by China have been described as the beginning of a new era in global finance. The new multilateral development banks are threatening the supremacy of the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and open up strategic rivalry with the Western-backed financial institutions.
Concurrently, Russia and China aim to strengthen the role of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to intensify their practical cooperation, promote interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions and enhance their role in reshaping the world order based on multilateralism. These two close allies have by far discarded the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy and proposed China-Russia supported equitable, open and inclusive security system in the wider Asia-Pacific Region. In addition, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade pact excluding the US, also offers China a fresh start to enhance its economic sphere of influence, notwithstanding of economic pressure from the former.
China-Russia military cooperation raises the prospect of new challenge to the US and its strategic allies in the Asia Pacific region. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed cooperation to rebuff Western intrusion into their countries’ internal affairs and defend their nations’ security interests. The two countries held a large-scale joint military exercise in August 2021 to strengthen military cooperation and unleash their combat capabilities. As per the common visions, both China and Russia strongly opposed the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and called on the international community to keep a clear understanding of the serious consequences of the US retreat from the nuclear deal. They have also condemned the US plans to deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, the US denunciation of a number of important international arms control agreements and the politicization of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, among other pressing issues.
Likewise, in the maritime domain, China and Russia have condemned Australia, the United Kingdom and the US (AUKUS) alliance for destabilizing the order of the sea in the Asia Pacific and heightened coordination to counterbalance the trilateral security partnership. As a part of this, Russia and China held joint naval drills for the first time in the Sea of Japan in October 2021. The joint drill attaches great importance to further deepen the defense ties between these two countries and safeguard their mutual interests in the international maritime domain. The joint naval exercise between China and Russia exhibits an instrumental resistance to the US influence over the global maritime sphere and raises new debate on the unilateral actions taken by the latter in international sea in recent history.
At a time of spiraling tensions in the Western block, the world has been witnessing rather a deepening of ties between the two Asian giants. The ever-growing mutual relationship between China and Russia has been upgraded into a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era. These two countries are likely to remain strongly aligned in coming years to pursue their common interests. The multidimensional cooperation between China and Russia has increased over the time, which is exclusively driven by the similarity of strategic interests, accommodative diplomatic approaches and consensuses on major global and regional issues among others. Most specifically, Russia–US rivalry amid the Ukraine Crisis and China–US strategic competition in the Asia-Pacific region have been serving as the key parameters of China-Russia strategic alignment. Unprecedented ties between China and Russia are perceived to unbolt a new era of international relations, where the US unipolarity is likely to remain a concise history.
*Noor Mohammad Sarker is a PhD from Shandong University and Research Fellow at Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA). Email: nmsrdu[at]gmail.com
