The latest state visit to China by Russian President Putin who led a massive, high-level delegation has caused various comments around the world. Some of the opinions are insightful while others are truly utopian or even naive. Recently, Geoff Raby who was former Australian ambassador to China (2007-11) aruged that Putin’s visit to China revealed that Russia’s weakness has enabled China to resume its dominance in Eurasia but the two largest Eurasian powers actually “have one bed but different dreams”.
Since Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine started tree years ago, the U.S.-led global allies and partners have not only launched a hybrid war against Russia but also accused its allies and partners like China. No doubt, quite a few EU states act in line with the U.N. Charter that literally endorses the tenets of sovereignty of each state but they equally lack the knowledge of “security indivisibility” in foreigh affairs where states react to each other in an anarchic world. Obviously, the key states of NATO are motivated by the geopolitical elements to end Russia as a great power and then contain China’s rise to a great power of the world. This is what the U.S. has driven the NATO to assure Russia to suffer a “strategic failure” while decouping China from all the accesses to high-tech and global markets. Nevertheless, the war has not developed yet into a direct overall conflicts only due to the reality that Russia and China have strong and reliable nuclear capabilities.
Over the past years, China has appealed to “indivisible security” as a principle applied to the international community. The rationales behind is that since sovereign states act in terms of realpolitik more than law and norms, it is imperative to rebuild a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture for the purpose of butressing the legitimate and reasonable security concerns of all countries in the world. Conceptually, the idea of indivisible security can be traced to modern European state system. As Vattel argued in 1758 that a system of independent states could maintain the liberty of each without undermining the ideal of an international society due to the key tenets of the balance of power and collective security that endorsed common interests of states via diplomacy. Yet, since the U.S. is obsessed with unilateral world order based on its primacy, it has played down the tenet of indivisible security in international relations.
In 1975, the Helsinki Accord—known as Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Final Act—was signed by 33 states of Europe including the U.S. and Canada “to recognize the indivisibility of security in Europe.” Given the Cold War scenario of the day, the Helsinki Accord was hailed as the vehicle for East-West dialogue since the 1990s witnessed three more substantial treaties—the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990), the Founding Act between NATO and Russia (1997) and The Charter for European Security (1999)—were concluded between the expanding European Union and shrinking Russia in the post-Soviet era. All the documents defined the term of indivisible security in line with the Helsinki Accord that “Security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the other in Europe.”
From the start of the Ukraine conflict, China has asserted the geosecurity logic that China and Russia together will never fail to defend the multilateral world order while sealing the increasingly formidable strategic bond bwteen them. As Ray McGovern put it that since the Russia-China entente amounts to a tectonic shift in the world balance of power, it also sounds the death knell for attempts by U.S. foreign policy neophytes to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow. Given this, the triangular interaction among the U.S., China and Russia has turned out two-against-one, with serious implications to the world and particularly for the war in Ukraine. If U.S. political elites remain in denial, escalation is almost certain.
So thus, Russia has appreciated China for its continued support to each other in terms of diplomacy and economics. And China has reiterated the root course of the crisis in Ukraine coming from the restless expansion of the NATO in the wake of the end of the former Soviet Union. As President Putin said that he and Xi are “in constant contact to keep personal control over all pressing issues on the Russian-Chinese and international agenda.” On May 16, the two sidess signed a strong joint statement, and in tone and principle, it was similar to the extraordinary one issued in early 2022 in Beijing as it described their strategic synergy as “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.”
Under such circumstances in the world and Ukraine, the joint statement of 2024 didn’t use the words like “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation …”. Yet, Beijing and Moscow confirmed “the need for every country to defend its core interests” and to judge each situation “on its own merits.” As Andrey Kortunov observed, given the U.S.-led efforts to complicate the Russia-China economic interaction to the extent possible, the two Eurasian powers have to make sure that the U.S.-led bloc will not succeed in its efforts to jeopardize the bilateral trade between China and Russia which by the end of 2024 has targeted $280–290 billion as planned and also once again confirmed by the Xi-Putin summit.
In effect, the United States and its allies are aware of the combined power of China and Russia which have struggled for the multialteral world order rather than accepting the U.S. primacy. However, the Western media and policy-elites have tried to convince the world in general and Russia in particular that since it gets a multi-thousand-mile border with China, it is uncertain for Moscow how to deal with Beijing that has aimed to be the most powerful economy in the world and the most advanced military on the Earth. Thus, Russia is supposed in an extremely difficult spot sooner or later since it is being squeezed by the rise of China. But the Chinese are keen of the reality that they are the next in line for the ministrations of NATO/East because the U.S. has seen China as the rival one. In 2023, U.S. National Defense Strategy defined that “defense priorities are first, defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.”
Although fears in the West of a rising Chussia – a united China and Russia “axis of autocracies” – is evident, the U.S. also opines that it is a long way for the Eurasian powers to forge a mutual defence pact as neither wants such interoperability. Yet, the real story is that the two powers are committed to mutual support for each other’s core interests. For example, the two sides have vowed, in accordance with the consensus of the two heads of state, to promote cooperation in traditional areas such as economy and trade, energy and agriculture, and further explore new growth points for cooperation in artificial intelligence, high-tech and basic research. In addition, China and Russia are committed to carrying forward the torch of mutual friendship through a series of cultural activities to encourage closer interactions between various sectors and at subnational levels.
As the world has seen the vicissitudes in the past years, China and Russia have acted back-to-back to support each other. One of the cases is that with Russia presiding BRICS and China taking over the chairmanship of the SCO during the same year, they will aim to advance a high-quality partnership while making all efforts to enhance unity and strength of the Global South. It is true that advancing multi-polarity and economic globalization not only serves the fundamental interests of China and Russia but is also conducive to peace, stability and prosperity of the world at large.