This week’s newsletter was written by Bloomberg Senior Editor Chris Anstey. Andrew Browne is on vacation.
The
great contest under way between the U.S. and China has many differences
from the Cold War of the last century. Close trade and supply-chain
linkages between the two are the most obvious. But this week showcased a
second major contrast—one that works to the great disadvantage of Washington.
President Xi Jinping, in a video call Wednesday with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, hailed Sino-Russian relations as even better than an alliance. It was their 37th meeting since 2013, according to Chinese state media’s count.
“The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era has become even closer, stronger and more mature,” Xinhua crooned.
And it’s not just rhetoric.
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- The five best books of 2021, according to Asia’s richest man.
This
past summer, some 10,000 Russian and Chinese troops held joint
exercises in Ningxia, in China’s northwest. For the first time, the two
armies used a NATO-like joint command and control system, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. In October, a flotilla of Chinese and Russian warships practically circled around Japan, America’s closest Asian ally.
This is a huge difference from the original Cold War. Even before the Sino-Soviet split, the giant neighbors had notable tensions over issues ranging from the withdrawal of Soviet troops who crossed into China during World War II to the quantity and quality of assistance extended by the USSR. With a centuries-long rivalry of influence and power across all of northeast Asia, the two are hardly natural bosom-buddies.
“If you look at geography, if you look at demographics, if you look at history, Russia should be scared to death of China.”
—Michael Green, a former senior White House National Security Council official who is now Asia studies director at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service
While getting closer to Russia does help isolate the U.S., Xi’s diplomacy has also hurt China’s global sway and interests.
By ditching Deng Xiaoping’s “hide your strength, bide your time” foreign policy in favor of an aggressive, national security-oriented approach, he has effectively tilted public opinion from Australia to Spain against China. Using trade to punish others when they do things Beijing dislikes, militarizing the South China Sea and crushing freedoms in Hong Kong haven’t gone down well, either.
But Xi’s handling of Russia is a force-multiplier, and it makes the challenge of autocracies to America and its allies all the greater.
For all the fraught history—including times when Joseph Stalin treated Chinese Communists with condescension—Moscow nowadays appears happy to serve as the junior partner to Beijing.
A test is looming, though. Just how comfortable will Putin and his adjutants be with China’s expanding military influence, a complement to its large-scale economic penetration of central Asia—a region once dominated by Russia?
Back in the days of the Soviet Union and through the 1990s, central Asian nations including Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan sent their gas north to consumers in Russia. But nowadays, China is the economic hegemon, with little obvious sign of concern from Moscow.
“China’s investments in energy, pipelines, power stations, roads and railways have realigned the region on an east-west axis, after many years of orienting northwards to Russia.”
—Tom Miller, senior Asia analyst at Gavekal Research
Trade patterns have now flipped to Russia’s giant neighbor to the east, as Gavekal analysis catalogues:
- China’s total trade with the five former Soviet central Asian economies exceeded $46 billion in 2019, against Russia’s $29 billion, and was climbing rapidly prior to the pandemic.
- Almost 500,000 containers crossed the central Asian steppes last year thanks to the China-Europe rail links that have connected 92 Chinese cities to 22 European countries.
- Turkmenistan in particular has become deeply reliant on China, sending some 85% of its gas exports to the country.
China’s attention to the region has up to now been economic, but that’s likely to evolve fairly quickly. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has suddenly made China’s western border less stable, arguing for greater attention to building a security apparatus in the area.
Moves are already under way. Tajikistan in October approved a plan by China to fund and build a counter-terrorism base for local police, Miller wrote. “The goal appears to be to build a buffer zone in Tajikistan without basing any Chinese soldiers on foreign territory,” he says.
Russia has retained its own security presence in central Asia, with thousands of troops in Tajikistan and its continuing use of the spaceport Baikonur in Kazakhstan. For the past couple of decades, this has led to a “division of labor” between Russia and China in the region known as “the wallet and the gun,” with the Russians providing the muscle.
That division “has kept geopolitical frictions in check, but the threat from Afghanistan means China has to increase its security presence. This could either exacerbate tensions and worsen regional instability, or it could pave the way for an informal partnership between Beijing and Moscow. The early signs are that a partnership, including military cooperation, is on the cards,” Miller says.
Perhaps nothing could better illustrate Xi’s success in coopting Russia as a junior partner. Moscow is joining a great alliance against the West that features Chinese sway over a region that Russia dominated for the better part of two centuries.