China-Russia Strategic Partnership: The Strategic Fulcrum of China's Rise?

Abstract

During the post-Cold War era, China has committed to creating a strategic partnership with Russia. Doing so is a key part of China's foreign strategy of restoring its past glory as a great power, with this partnership as the strategic fulcrum for its “peaceful” rise at the systemic or global level. It also reflects China's desire to intensify cooperation with its largest neighbour to sustain economic growth. By formulating a strategic partnership, China wishes to re-shape the current global order and counterattack its perceived containment of its rise by the US. By intensifying cooperation, particularly around the economy and resource development, China hopes to sustain the growth that its political leaders have long considered as underlying China's “hard” power and rejuvenation. By expanding their military collaboration, China aspires to accelerate the PLA's modernization and work with Russia to contain US military unilateralism and hegemony.

Introduction

After the Soviet demise in 1991, China shaped a strategic partnership with Russia by persistently upgrading their relationship. International analysts have noted that the China-Russia relationship “evolve[d] quickly” following the Soviet collapse and the onset of the US unipolarity, to what Boris Yeltsin, Russian president (1991–1999) and Chinese president Jiang Zemin (1993–2003) declared in 1996 to be “an equal and trustworthy strategic partnership.” ¹ In 2011, Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao (Chinese president, 2003–2013) elevated the relationship by designating it a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” ² and this was followed by Xi Jinping and Putin's call for “a new stage in the comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2014. ³ In 2019, Xi and Putin announced their intention to further upgrade relations to reflect a “comprehensive strategic partnership for a new era,” ⁴ and in early 2023, the two elevated their relations to “an intensified comprehensive strategic partnership for a new era” to deal with the challenges of US unilateralism and hegemonism and maintain global peace and strategic stability. ⁵

The China-Russia strategic partnership is seen by both states as an instrument to contain what their foreign policy makers perceive as the US's hegemonism, unilateralism, and interventionism, and to usher into the world a new order deemed by both as “more reasonable” and “fairer.” ⁶ Moreover, Chinese foreign policy elites view the partnership as a significant booster to China's rise at the global systemic level by overcoming their perceived US containment. The presumed magnitude of the strategic partnership provides insights into the motivations of successive Chinese presidents in the post-Cold War era to prioritize the partnership in their country's international relations.

The argument of this article is that China's quest for a strategic partnership with Russia reveals the country's desire to create a geopolitical environment assumed by Chinese foreign policymakers to favour their country's re-emergence as a global great power. The partnership is expected to help China counterbalance the perceived containment imposed on it by the US, the sole remaining superpower, and to reshape the US-dominated world order in its favour. By intensifying their economic and energy cooperation and trade within the framework of the partnership, China attempts to gain entry to Russia's markets and, particularly, its energy resources to sustain the economic growth that is viewed by Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese political leaders as the basis for China's “hard” power, including its military capabilities. ⁷ By intensifying military collaboration between the two countries, China seeks to gain access to Russia's weaponry and military technology to modernize the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and to work with Russia to contain what both perceive as the US's unilateralism, hegemonism, and interventionism. The Chinese foreign policy elites increasingly view the US's unilateralism and hegemonism as detrimental to China's “core interests” (e.g., its territorial integrity and national rejuvenation) and peace and stability, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. ⁸ This perspective sheds light on why Chinese foreign policy elites conceive the partnership with Russia as “vital” for China's peaceful development (commonly known as its “peaceful rise” overseas) and as the “ballast stone for global peace and strategic stability.” ⁹

Since his presidency began in 2013, Xi has attached much more importance to the China-Russia partnership than his predecessors did, as revealed by his frequent meetings with Putin and efforts to intensify China-Russia collaboration across economic, political, and military realms. Xi and Putin have met over forty times since early 2013, holding five meetings annually, an unusually high frequency in international relations. ¹⁰ Their topics extend well beyond bilateral relations and include advancing a new world order, reforming the global system of governance, and containing US unilateralism, hegemonism, and interventionism. ¹¹

Chinese foreign policy makers, ¹² PLA generals, ¹³ and IR scholars ¹⁴ all agree on the magnitude of the China-Russia partnership. Contrary to the Chinese consensus, a number of international IR scholars underrate the significance of the partnership and suspect its resilience and sustainability. They posit the partnership as being anchored merely in a shared grievance and hostility to the US and have dubbed it a short-lived “marriage of convenience.” ¹⁵ This argument sounds plausible if one takes into consideration the competition between China and Russia for geopolitical influence, especially in Eastern Siberia and Central Asia. Nevertheless, this analysis fails to demonstrate a deep understanding of Chinese political culture and the dream long cherished by Chinese political elites and the public.

The Chinese people have long embraced the dream of their country's re-emergence as a great power at the global level, since China plunged into the so-called “century of humiliation” (1839–1949), in which it suffered foreign bullying and invasions. ¹⁶ This history is why the Chinese view their country's global re-emergence as its first priority and democracy second. ¹⁷ In this context, China's cooperation with the US in the post-Cold War era is primarily due to economic motivations (defined in the IR textbooks as “low politics”), whereas its relationship with Russia is aimed to facilitate China's re-emergence at the global level, which is defined as “high politics” in IR. ¹⁸ This explains why Fu Ying, former Chinese vice foreign minister, dismisses the assumption made by some analysts that “the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine would create tensions or even a schism between China and Russia.” ¹⁹ The above argument, nevertheless, by no means underrates the importance of the relationship between China and the US, as their economic cooperation and trade are highly influential to China's economic growth that Deng identified as underpinning China's “hard” power and its consequent rise. ²⁰

In October 2019, Putin announced his intention to help China with “a missile attack warning system” that “will fundamentally enhance China's defence capabilities.” ²¹ Obviously, this system is primarily meant to defend against missiles deployed by the US from its military bases in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of Asia bordering China. Some international observers and analysts therefore assume that Putin's announcement signals a de facto Russia-China military alliance. ²² However, the mainstream viewpoints of Chinese foreign policy makers and IR scholars insist that China-Russia ties are by no means an “alliance,” even though the two states declared a “no-limit” partnership in early 2022. ²³ Some argue that it is too early for China to announce an alliance with Russia, and that China needs to wait and see what may happen with China-US relations. Others add that an alliance with Russia is most likely to antagonize the US, heightening tensions and limiting China's space for strategic flexibility. ²⁴

The intensified China-Russia partnership comes against the background of China's delicate shift from emerging to established superpower, or in the Chinese IR discourse, “a juncture of China's rejuvenation in the profound changes in global situation unseen in a century.” ²⁵ In this context, Chinese academics including Xuetong Yan and Lei Yu have expressed their concerns with US containment. ²⁶ Additionally, IR scholars inside and outside China believe that the US will prevent any powerful state from ascending to a level from which it may challenge US hegemony, particularly in the Pacific. ²⁷ Chinese foreign policy elites view the US strategies of a “pivot to Asia,” “free navigation operations” in the South China Sea, and the ongoing trade war as containment of this kind, despite Washington's denials. ²⁸

It is not hard to discern the motivations behind China's pursuit of partnership with Russia amidst worsened China-US relations. China's efforts have been increasingly reciprocated by Russia. ²⁹ Some IR scholars conceive of NATO's expansion and its Partnership for Peace (PFP) in Central Asia as a boost to the strategic partnership, as both China and Russia view the “US threat” as more menacing than their geopolitical competition in Central Asia. ³⁰ This explains why some academics in China and Russia contend that some Western scholars exaggerate Sino-Russian geopolitical competition. ³¹ Artyom Lukin at the Far Eastern Federal University claims that Moscow identifies NATO as its preeminent security challenge and that the West is keen to “play China and Russia against each other.” ³²

The argument and analysis of this article proceed as follows. The paper starts with a contextualization of Chinese foreign strategies in the post-Cold War era and how they have created and intensified the strategic partnership with Russia. It is followed by an examination and analysis of the motivations and strategies that underlie China's foreign policy towards Russia and their strategic partnership. From a Chinese perspective, the paper makes a critical appraisal of China's economic and geopolitical interests arising from its intensified partnership with Russia.

China's strategy

Deng was committed to China's rejuvenation and re-emergence at the global systemic level since his return to top Chinese leadership in the late 1970s. ³³ To this end, Deng abandoned Mao Zedong's “proletarian revolution” ³⁴ and prioritized economic growth that he deemed as underlying China's power and, particularly, its military capabilities. ³⁵ Internationally, Deng continued Mao's strategy of “aligning with the United States” to contain the Soviet expansion that he perceived as “an imminent and dangerous threat” to China's security and regional peace. ³⁶ Equally importantly, the alignment with the US-led West contributed to China's economic growth and modernization, which depended on Western capital, markets, and technology. ³⁷ This could be extrapolated from Deng's comments concerning international development: ³⁸ the countries that remained aligned with the US (e.g., Japan, South Korea, and Singapore) have become economically prosperous, whereas those that have been in military confrontation with the US (e.g., China and Vietnam) are poor.

The disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the Cold War and the end of China-US alignment formulated in defiance of Soviet expansion. In its place, the US language of “peaceful (colour) evolution” has pervaded the Chinese political discussion since the fall of the Soviet blocs, underlying their fear that China might be the next target of “evolution.” ³⁹ Deng described the US's “peaceful evolution” as a “Third World War” launched by the US to topple the communist rule, ⁴⁰ and consequently prioritized the economic growth to improve the livelihood of the Chinese people and to win their hearts and minds in support of the legitimacy of the communist rule of China. Deng disagreed with prevalent US perceptions that the Soviet demise marked the triumph of America-style democracy over Soviet authoritarian communism and that the universalization of liberal democracy was the final form of human government. ⁴¹ He theorized the Soviet fall as a consequence of Soviet economic limitations buttressing its “imperial over-expansion” and long-term rivalry with the US. ⁴² This provides insights into Deng's doctrine that China should prioritize economic growth and the improvement of the Chinese people's livelihoods, rather than the pursuit of military hegemony. ⁴³

In response to the shifting environment of the post-Cold War era, Deng proposed, among others, two strategies to buy the time that China needs to advance its modernization and global rise. One is the strategy of “taoguang yanghui” (meaning to hide China's capabilities and bide its time), ⁴⁴ which suggests that China should keep a low profile in international affairs and avoid any confrontation with the US, the one remaining superpower, unless its core interests (e.g., in Taiwan and the South China Sea) are threatened. Deng designed this strategy to advance China's economic growth by keeping access to the US markets, capital, and technology, and by avoiding an early US containment of China. The other strategy is to “open up a new future” for the China-Russia relationship by ending their historical and territorial disputes, which paved the way for the creation of China-Russia strategic partnership in the late 1990s. ⁴⁵

China-Russia relations

Deng rushed to announce the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations at the meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev on 16 May 1989, which came at the height of the student movement for democracy and just over two weeks before the Tiananmen Incident. However, the preconditions that he set for Sino-Soviet normalization were not met. ⁴⁶ The Soviet Union disintegrated two years later. As the remaining communist great power and the perceived target of the US's “peaceful (colour) evolution,” China began to seek a strategic partnership with Russia with various ends in mind: to counterbalance US containment and hegemony, to create a new world order more to its liking, to procure Russian military technology to modernize the PLA, and to gain access to Russia's resources to sustain China's economic growth.

To this end, in the early 1990s, China rushed to solve its century-long territorial disputes with Russia by making concessions in new territorial treaties that were based on original versions signed by Czarist Russia and Qing China. The governments of both the Republic of China (ROC) before 1949 and the People's Republic of China (PRC) before the end of the Cold War have persistently called those treaties “unequal” and refused to accept them, which partially contributed to the long-term deadlock in territorial negotiations. China's compromise incurred widespread criticism by the Chinese people, who believed that these new treaties “betray[ed]” the Chinese interest, ⁴⁷ although Chinese authorities defended them as “pragmatic” and “best” for China's post-Cold War interests. ⁴⁸ Some Chinese academics argue that the settlement of the border disputes removed “the largest barrier” to the creation of a China-Russia strategic partnership ⁴⁹ and resulted in a pledge made by the two countries to not target their nuclear weapons at each other. ⁵⁰

Their partnership notwithstanding, during the 1990s China and Russia faltered in intensifying their cooperation, particularly in geostrategic and military terms, due to their divergent foreign policy priorities and competing geopolitical interests, especially in Central Asia and eastern Siberia. ⁵¹ Since then Russia has responded increasingly positively to China's call for strategic cooperation, particularly since the early 2000s when it was faced with US containment of its resurgence. ⁵² The enhanced collaboration between China and Russia is due first, to the removal of their border disputes, and second, to the growing systemic pressure from the US's unipolarity. ⁵³ As Marcel de Haas and Bobo Lo claim, ⁵⁴ the Eastern Expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its PFP Program in Central Asia demonstrate the US's intention to contain Russia. They presume that this is why Russia has increasingly reciprocated Chinese advances in strategic cooperation.

China and Russia announced in 2011 their intention to establish a “comprehensive strategic partnership” ⁵⁵ with the explicit objective to contain US unilateralism and create a new international order by coordinating their stances on major international issues. ⁵⁶ China and Russia both perceive the US threat and containment as more imminent and menacing than any geopolitical competition that they may have. The George W. Bush administration's conceptualization of China as a “strategic competitor” in early 2000 and US military belligerence reflected in Iraq and Afghanistan also exacerbated China's concerns over US unilateralism. ⁵⁷ China perceived these wars as testament to the US pursuit of unilateralism and power politics under the guise of democracy promotion and anti-terrorism, all of which increased China's sense of insecurity. Alexander Lukin has concluded that the US policy of diktat and constant bombing reveals that the ideology of “democratism” is often employed to cover up attempts to establish political dominance. ⁵⁸

Against this backdrop, there are increasing calls in China for an intensification of the strategic partnership and even a military alliance with Russia. In 2001, China and Russia transformed the “Shanghai dialog mechanism” into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with the participation of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Chinese IR scholars view the motivations behind the SCO as first, to stabilize China-Russia border areas, and second, to contain the US presence and influence in Central Asia. ⁵⁹ Additionally, in 2006, Russia proposed to hold an annual meeting of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) to help coordinate their foreign policies on major international issues. An IGO, the BRIC was re-named BRICS after South Africa's participation in 2010 and its annual meeting was upgraded to the summit level. As a group of rising powers in the global system, the strategic objectives of the BRICS have been defined to jointly push forward the existing international order towards “a fairer and more rational direction.” ⁶⁰ As part of their shared efforts to create a new world order, Russia, China, and other BRICS member states established the BRICS Development Bank in July 2014 under Xi's “personal coordination and promotion.” ⁶¹ Shortly afterwards, China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with Russia as the third largest shareholder. These banks have the potential to grow as rivals to US-dominated institutions, such as the World Bank, and as precursors to challenging US financial dominance. ⁶²

China and Russia have fast-tracked their strategic partnership, especially since the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the US's “pivot to Asia” that shifted more than 60 percent of American military forces to the Asia-Pacific region. Due to their perceived containment by the US, both Russia and China increasingly view their strategic partnership as a necessity, rather than an option, given the fact that the US has the upper hand in the highly asymmetrical and triangular relationship among Russia, China, and the US. A united China and Russia can contain the US threat and reshape the world order more to their liking; divided, their respective security and interests would be in jeopardy. ⁶³ From the perspectives of Chinese foreign policy elites, the dynamics of the three-way geopolitical “tussles” between the US, China, and Russia have long impacted their foreign policies and the global strategic balance. Moreover, the collaboration between China and Russia during the Korean War and the Vietnam War limited the US strategic offensive in the Asia-Pacific region, and the collaboration between China and the US in the late 1970s and 1980s contained Soviet expansion in Asia. Where US unilateralism, hegemonism, and interventionism is concerned, especially amidst the growing rivalry between the US and China, Chinese foreign policy elites define the China-Russia partnership as the “ballast” for world peace and strategic stability, ⁶⁴ which explicitly warns the US of the risk of being involved in wars against China and Russia simultaneously.

In February 2022, Putin arrived in Beijing for a meeting with Xi. Although Putin claimed the meeting was regarding the 2022 Winter Olympics (which US government officials boycotted in protest of China's human rights record), it was actually devoted to coordinating the countries’ stances on major international issues. The summit was held amid growing tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and other issues, and between China and the US over their hegemonic competition. Both Putin and Xi announced in a joint statement that the world is trending towards a “redistribution of power” and that Russia and China should intensify their strategic cooperation in the changing geopolitical environment. ⁶⁵ Putin and Xi reaffirmed their mutual support for their countries’ core interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and opposition to external interference in their internal affairs. Putin himself and the Russian government affirmed the One China policy and accused the US of being “provocative” after Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in August 2022. ⁶⁶

In return, Xi and the Chinese government reaffirmed Beijing's support for Russia, claiming that the two states share a strategic partnership with “no limits.” Xi expressed his support of Russia's proposal to create long-term and legally binding security guarantees in Europe. The Chinese government refers to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as the “Ukraine issue,” rather than a war or invasion, and calls for peace talks. Notably, there are convergent opinions among the Chinese foreign policy elites that at its baseline, this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine but rather a proxy war between Russia and the US that fans the flames of war as it serves to weaken Russia. ⁶⁷ It is worth noting that for the Chinese foreign policy elites, NATO (headed by the US and composed mainly of the EU members) serves as the US instrument of hegemonism and interventionism. This explains why China is strongly against the group's expansion and the creation of a “NATO” in the Asia-Pacific region. This also explains why China views the Russia-Ukraine conflict as the aftermath of NATO's expansion, rather than the result of Russia's invasion. China denounced the Western sanctions on Russia and purchased large amounts of Russian crude oil, in part to support Russia economically.

China-Russia economic cooperation and trade regained momentum after years of stagnation, with the two-way trade volume rising to $146.8 billion in 2021, representing an increase of 35.9 percent from the previous year. ⁶⁸ China has dramatically increased Russian imports (e.g., oil and natural gas) and exports (e.g., microchips and electronic components with military applications) after Russia invaded Ukraine, in a move to sustain Chinese economic growth and frustrate US efforts to cripple the Russian economy and military. The Wall Street Journal, quoting Chinese customs, stated that the value of chip shipments from China to Russia more than doubled to about $50 million in the first five months of 2022 ⁶⁹ compared with the previous year, while exports of other components, such as printed circuits, had double-digit percentage growth. Expediting the strategy of “pivot East,” ⁷⁰ export volumes of aluminum oxide, an important material in weapons production and aerospace, are four hundred times higher in 2023 than in 2022.

Following the sanctions the US imposed on it after the Ukraine invasion, Russia has allowed Chinese investment in its resources and energy industry. ⁷¹ The Chinese government encourages outbound investment in Russia and elsewhere in the hopes of increasing its allies’ capacity for international trade and enabling them to upgrade from labour-intensive manufacturing to capital- and technology-intensive systems. ⁷² The master plan, the Blueprint of China Manufacturing 2025, designed by the Chinese government, emphasizes “manufacturing capability based on high technology” as the key to moving up the global value chain and becoming one of the most advanced nations by the mid-twenty-first century. ⁷³

For nearly twenty years, armed forces from China and Russia have held joint military exercises under bilateral and multilateral frameworks. Since its first iteration in 2005, the joint naval drill “Peace Mission” has been held at locations around the globe, such as the South China Sea, the North Pacific, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Baltic Sea. These exercises reflect China's motivation to hone the PLA's skills and become not only a regional but a global power. Equally importantly, they showcase Russia and China's military prowess and “signal to the United States…their stance against the latter's unilateralism and containment.” ⁷⁴ In June 2019, Xi and Putin signed the Joint Statement on Strengthening Contemporary Global Strategic Stability, in response to the US deployment of anti-missile systems and the long-range strike weapons as part of their “Prompt Global Strike” effort. The same month, China and Russia held their first joint patrol, launching their long-range, nuclear-capable bombers, accompanied by jet fighters and surveillance aircraft, over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan. This action demonstrated the likelihood of joint action in the event of conflict with the US. Moreover, Russia is currently helping China with a missile launch detection system, which, in Putin's view, marks “an allied relationship in the full sense of a multifaceted strategic partnership.” ⁷⁵ The military cooperation between China and Russia has expanded to include cooperation in sensitive fields, such as strategic missile defence, hypersonic technology, and nuclear submarines. ⁷⁶

The perceived incentives

Chinese foreign policy makers and economists expect that the intensified partnership with Russia will help increase their country's economic cooperation and trade with a country rich in natural resources. Putin has stated that Russia and China “have reached the highest level of trust,” ⁷⁷ facilitating the creation of a memorandum of understanding on trade promotion indicating the two countries’ intentions to substantially increase their trade volume over the next decade. ⁷⁸ In addition to bilateral trade, China needs to find overseas investment opportunities for its enormous foreign exchange reserve of more than $3 trillion. China's FDI in Russia in 2017 alone reached $2.2 billion, with projects such as the China Trading Center, Great Wall Auto Factory, and Jetliner CR929 (a planned long-range 250- to 320-seat wide-body twin-jet airliner jointly built by China's Commercial Aircraft Corp and Russia's United Aircraft Corp) set to be implemented in Russia. ⁷⁹ Data released by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce show that more than one thousand Chinese enterprises are now in operation in Russia and government policy aims at motivating further economic cooperation and trade between the two neighbours. ⁸⁰ Sustained economic growth supports the livelihoods of average Chinese people and, hence, legitimizes the communist regime in Beijing. ⁸¹ This ultimate end goal explains why accessing overseas markets and investment destinations has become an increasingly significant element of Chinese diplomacy in the new century.

Russia's energy and resource abundance influences China's commitment to the strategic partnership, as China's domestic resources are hardly able to sustain its growth. China's energy demand has been rapidly escalating, dramatically augmenting its dependence on oil imports. In 2020, China's oil imports skyrocketed to 542 million tons, accounting for 73 percent of its aggregate consumption of crude oil. ⁸² This figure may further rise by 2040 as “demand is expected to grow faster than domestic supply.” ⁸³ Chinese political leaders and economists have expressed their concerns with China's over-dependence on overseas oil, as they are acutely aware of the country's vulnerability to external risks. ⁸⁴

The interminable political turmoil in the Middle East and Africa, China's two largest oil suppliers, has posed a seminal threat to China's energy security and motivated it to diversify its energy suppliers. Russian oil accounted for 15.7 percent of China's total crude oil imports in 2018, with two oil pipelines between Mohe and Daqing entering commercial operation and providing an average daily supply of 3 million barrels per day. ⁸⁵ In the first seven months of 2022, China imported from Russia 48.45 million tons of crude oil, up 4.4 percent from the previous year. China imported liquefied natural gas from the Yamal project, in which Russia, China, and France are invested, and will import more after the China-Russia gas pipeline between Heihe and Shanghai begins operating. ⁸⁶ Chinese economists conceive energy cooperation with Russia as an avenue to expanding the role of the Chinese currency, RMB (commonly known as yuan), in international oil and gas markets.

The Chinese political leaders and economists see the non-convertibility of the yuan as a barrier hampering China from rising as a power in global finance. ⁸⁷ The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, has doubled its efforts to increase the use of yuan as an international currency in global trade and investment, including through the establishment of offshore trading centres overseas. ⁸⁸ Since the early 2010s, China has tried to trade its yuan for Iran's crude oil, with Iran using the revenue to pay for goods and services purchased from China. ⁸⁹ Gazprom Neft, Russia's third-largest oil producer, is now, among others, settling all of its crude oil sales to China in yuan (which Saudi Arabia does not do), ⁹⁰ which has, to a large extent, helped Russia become China's top oil supplier. ⁹¹ Settling these deals in yuan rather than US dollars is a significant step towards establishing a “petro yuan,” and China hopes that its other energy partners will follow suit. ⁹² China opened its own domestic market for trading crude oil futures contracts in yuan in early 2018 in the hopes of promoting the use of yuan in global trade. ⁹³

Apart from economics and trade, their partnership serves to intensify China-Russia political and strategic cooperation in the world arena. A prevalent conception runs in Chinese foreign policy and IR circles that the more powerful China becomes in terms of its economic and military prowess, the more containment it might encounter from the US. ⁹⁴ Given what the world's history teaches us, particularly since the British Industrial Revolution, IR scholars are generally of the view that the transitional periods of global hegemony are characterized by intense competition and, much worse, hegemonic wars for dominance, influence, and interest. ⁹⁵ Some IR scholars worry that competition between China and the US may escalate and eventually result in a vehement clash of interest. With the US's “pivot to Asia” and the ongoing trade war, the likelihood of China-US clashes for regional and global dominance has dramatically increased.

John Mearsheimer, a US political scientist at the University of Chicago, asserts that “China cannot rise peacefully.” ⁹⁶ He predicts that “should China become especially wealthy, it could readily become a military superpower and challenge the United States.” ⁹⁷ A number of Chinese political and IR scholars share the view of Henry Kissinger, state secretary under Richard Nixon, that US-China relations will never return to what they were. ⁹⁸ They predict that the relationship between these two superpowers may become quite bad given their growing hegemonic competition and trade war. ⁹⁹ Some international scholars and analysts argue that the US would like to see China rising in Japan's mode: cooperative economically and politically, but dormant strategically and militarily. ¹⁰⁰ Otherwise, “there's no worse fate than getting touted as the next global superpower.” ¹⁰¹ Some Chinese scholars share this view and advise China to abandon “the illusion of American partnership” and “face squarely the hegemonic competition.” ¹⁰² The belief in an inevitable clash of interests between the two nations accentuates the need for the China-Russia partnership to break out of US containment.

An appraisal of the China-Russia partnership

Chinese foreign policy makers and IR scholars are generally appreciative of the China-Russia strategic partnership and view it as “the ballast stone” for global peace and stability, one that favours China's rise. Xi perceives his presidential tenure as the most vital decade for China's systemic rise, ¹⁰³ which requires the Chinese economy to maintain sustained growth. Since 2016, trade between China and Russia, especially in the Russian energy resources that are imperative to China's economic growth, has gained significant momentum. Finding itself in an implacable confrontation with the US-led West, Russia had no choice but to embrace China to resist Western sanctions. ¹⁰⁴ It is safe to conclude that in the current atmosphere, China may reap economic dividends from its expanding cooperation with and investment in Russia.

China may find it hard to reap geopolitical dividends from its partnership with Russia due mainly to the lack of trust in China-Russia relationship, as IR academics in both China and Russia acknowledge. ¹⁰⁵ The mistrust arises primarily from their long-term territorial disputes over Russia's Far East that the Chinese people insist was part of Qing China and annexed by Russia in the late nineteenth century, the beginning of the Chinese “century of humiliation.” The lost territories remain a trauma for the Chinese public and one of the factors underlying the country's current growing nationalism. Many Chinese people at home and abroad refuse to accept the territorial treaties signed between China and Russia and accuse Beijing of betraying Chinese interests. Contrary to Chinese perceptions of history, the Russian public believes that the mid nineteenth-century treaties are a “restoration of historical justice.” ¹⁰⁶ They worry that China might break new treaties in the future and take back its lost territories, especially given the large population of over 100 million living in the northeast region of China (Manchuria) that abuts Russia's Far East. ¹⁰⁷ With China's rise contrasting Russia's declining power, this concern has been drastically deepened by the widening economic and demographic imbalance across the Heilongjiang (Amur) River. ¹⁰⁸

The two countries’ deep-set mistrust and their geopolitical competition in Central Asia result in discrepancies in each state's strategic objectives, as neither Russia nor China wish to see a powerful neighbour. Putin expressed his concerns, stating: “when such a potentially powerful country as China begins to demonstrate rapid growth rates, it becomes a real competitor in world politics.” ¹⁰⁹ This explains why Russia has intensified its military cooperation with India and Vietnam, despite China's dissatisfaction. ¹¹⁰ This also partially explains why China is showing increasing interest in intensifying its political and economic relations with Central Asia, including the republics of the former Soviet Union. China is attempting to restore its political and economic influence in Central Asia through initiatives to revitalize the ancient “Silk Road” that connects China to Central and West Asia where Russia has long enjoyed much influence. ¹¹¹

Arguably, it is the containment that the US imposed on China and Russia that drives the latter two to transform, if not remove, their domestic hurdles and intensify their strategic partnership. ¹¹² Some assume that, should the US containment disappear, the China-Russia partnership might lose its momentum or even give way to their geopolitical competition. However, the possibility of the US reducing its containment of either China or Russia is rather slim, given the American strategy of precluding any rising powers from challenging US hegemony and dominance. This strategy has led to escalating rivalry between the US and Russia, and the US and China, which makes the China-Russia “marriage” more strategic than convenient. ¹¹³

President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump removed a host of Chinese companies from the US supply chains to try to decouple the US economy from China's. ¹¹⁴ This led some Chinese companies, such as Huawei, and the Chinese economy as a whole, to suffer enormously from the spiralling trade war. Xi is masterminding the transformation of Chinese economic growth from export-oriented to a “dual-cycle” pattern that is designed to be “dominated by [the] Chinese domestic economic cycle” and “facilitated by the cycle between China and overseas countries.” ¹¹⁵ This pattern is devised as such to help guard against the worst scenario of economic disconnection from the US. At the same time, over the last decade China has sped up “free trade” with its global partners, such as the member states of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), in a move to diversify its trading partners. As a result, since 2020 the ASEAN has replaced the EU and the US as China's largest trading partner, with annual trade volumes of around $1 trillion. Though it might be a bit of exaggeration for Henry Kissinger to claim that US-China relations are now in the “foothills of a Cold War,” ¹¹⁶ growing tensions between the two superpowers, followed by the decoupling of their economies, may eventually make such a scenario possible.

Concluding remarks

The main argument of this paper is that the strategic partnership between China and Russia demonstrates China's intention of boosting its re-emergence as a superpower by supporting its “peaceful” rise at the global systemic level. To this end, in the post-Cold War era Chinese political leaders have intensified the China-Russia strategic partnership, in which they have to date invested far more than has the wider Chinese society. In so doing, the Chinese political leadership wishes to achieve three objectives: first, sustain China's economic growth by gaining access to Russia's resources, markets, and investment destinations; second, safeguard China's security that, from its perspective, has been drastically aggravated by the US's “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea and its Indo-Pacific strategy; and, third, usher in a new world order that China deems conducive to its rise.

However, China's security and strategic objectives do not completely match Russia's; further, a militarily powerful China is hardly in Russia's interest, and vice versa. ¹¹⁷ The China-Russia strategic partnership is essentially driven by their perceived containment by the US which is unlikely to diminish in the foreseeable future. Russia's security concerns regarding its Far East region relate to the historical Chinese claim to this area and on the possibility that, as an uncontained superpower, China may press this claim in the future. The disparity in their national interests and the mistrust entrenched in Sino-Russian relations may, in the long run, negatively impact their relations and preclude them from creating a meaningful and enduring strategic partnership.