Xi Jinping wants to work with Russia
Next month, Western leaders will be
conspicuously absent from President Vladimir
Putin's military parade to mark the 70th
anniversary of the Allied victory in the Second
World War.
President Barack Obama and EU leaders are
staying away from the Red Square
commemoration to express their outrage at
Russia's role in Ukraine.
Alongside a selection of autocrats including
Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Islam
Karimov of Uzbekistan, President Xi Jinping of
China will be the guest of honour.
Until recently, President Putin was promoting
a Eurasian vision, a union which would run
"from Dublin to Vladivostok".
But as the Ukraine crisis has deepened and
the year-old US-led sanctions against Russia
bite, China is now the only major economy
outside the sanctions regime and Russia and
China are closer than at any time in half a
century.
Russia's ambassador to China, Andrey
Denisov, said: "President Putin and President
Xi met five times last year. They will meet at
least as many times this year. This shows the
importance of the political dialogue."
President Xi and President Putin describe
themselves as "good friends".
Both like to present themselves as strong
national leaders who will rebuild past glory.
Long-standing enemies
But the ambassador and I were talking in the
same embassy greeting room where Chairman
Mao met the leader of the Soviet Union Nikita
Khruschev in 1959, and the ambassador
acknowledged that despite the smiles and
warm language on that occasion, a
precipitous decline in relations was just round
the corner, one which left Moscow and Beijing
mortal enemies for the best part of two
decades.
Chairman Mao oversaw a decline in relations
with the Soviet Union
Nikita Khruschev viewed China as an enemy
Chairman Mao even ordered the residents of
the Chinese capital to dig air raid shelters and
an underground city in preparation for attack.
But nowadays Beijing's foreign policy puts
pragmatism above ideology.
Its diplomats are well practised at exploiting
differences between Moscow and Washington
to China's advantage, and the Ukraine crisis
has offered a valuable opportunity.
This is not to say that Ukraine hasn't
presented Beijing with challenges.
China claims its central foreign policy
principles are sovereignty, territorial integrity
and non-interference.
If these principles were driving Chinese policy,
it might have been expected to condemn
Russian actions in Ukraine.
But a more important tenet still is an
unspoken one, not to criticise friends in
public.
Between Ukraine and Russia, Beijing refused to
take sides.
This month, Russian media reported the
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying
sanctions make the Ukraine situation worse:
"China has stuck to an objective and unbiased
position on the Ukrainian crisis.
"From the beginning we have insisted that
settlement should be carried out exclusively by
political means."
Chinese advantages
In fact, the Ukraine crisis has substantially
advanced Chinese national interest.
As it lost friends in European capitals,
Moscow has urgently needed markets and
friends in the East, and last May it signed a
30-year gas deal worth $400bn (£266bn) with
fuel-hungry China.
The Power of Siberia project, the largest in the
world, had been stuck in negotiation for 10
years due to arguments over price.
Russia's diplomatic isolation made the
difference and most analysts concluded that
China had got a good bargain.
China has not criticised Russia over the
unrest in Ukraine
Again in November last year, the two sides
signed a framework agreement on a second
gas pipeline, this time from western Siberia to
north-west China.
As important, the Ukraine crisis advances
China's strategic agenda.
Along with the multiple unfolding emergencies
in the Middle East, it helps distract the US
from a coherent focus on East Asia, and by
driving Moscow into a firmer Chinese embrace,
it secures Beijing's back so that it can give its
full attention to frustrating US leadership in
the Asia Pacific.
Put simply, China needs Russia to provide
natural resources and a stable strategic
hinterland, and Russia is now signed up to
that project.
Dimitri Trenin, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre,
says this is a triangle in which Beijing rather
than Washington is in the commanding
position: "The US needs to realise that it's
most serious competitor in the 21st century
can now rely more than ever on the resources
and support of its 20th century adversary.
"We're talking about a new Eurasia emerging
with China very much the centre of it - and
Chinese-led projects are changing the face of
Eurasia more than anything since the days of
Genghis Khan."
Banking initiative
One of those projects is the Chinese-led Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
The AIIB is still on the drawing board and
hasn't issued a single loan, but it has already
delivered a sharp diplomatic blow to the
United States.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
agreement was signed in October by 21
countries, including China
Ignoring Washington's opposition, many US
friends applied to become founder members .
The shock was almost as great in Beijing as it
was in Washington.
Chinese negotiators had never imagined old
US allies like the UK and Australia falling into
their arms.
As that was so easy, China's strategic
planners will now be thinking of other ways to
test American leadership in the region.
They don't have to look far. In January's State
of the Union address, President Obama urged
Congress to help him secure a trade
agreement for Asia:
"China wants to write the rules for the world's
fastest-growing region. That would put our
workers and our businesses at a
disadvantage. Why would we let that happen?
We should write those rules."
Indeed President Obama is trying to write
those rules as part of his strategic foreign
policy initiative, the "pivot to Asia".
President Obama made closer relations with
Asia a key priority of his first term
His administration is promoting the Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would cover a
dozen countries.
China is not included and Beijing sees the
TPP as an attempt at economic containment.
Unsurprisingly, it is working on a rival trade
deal and to prepare the ground, it has
carefully toned down some of the
confrontational tactics and rhetoric which
alarmed neighbours around the East and
South China Sea this time last year.
President Xi has moved from strategic military
initiatives to strategic economic ones, rolling
out a vision for a Silk Road Economic Belt
which promises multi-billion dollar loans to
build energy and transport infrastructure for
Central Asia, and a parallel Maritime Silk
Route which will do the same for South East
Asia.
This week the Chinese president has been out
on a charm offensive, in Pakistan promoting
the first vision and in Indonesia pushing the
second.
Meanwhile President Obama's TPP project is
bogged down in Washington's congressional
politics.
As time runs out for the Obama
administration and the focus shifts towards a
presidential election, regional allies worry that
the US is distracted, disengaged and even
dysfunctional in face of the challenge from
China.
But the US seems relaxed about the evolving
China-Russia relationship, viewing the
marriage of Russian bear and Chinese dragon
as a marriage of convenience where claws will
soon be unsheathed by one side or the other.
President Obama said ( to the Economist) last
August: "Russia I think has always had a
Janus-like quality, both looking east and west,
and I think President Putin represents a deep
strain in Russia that is probably harmful to
Russia over the long term….But I do think it's
important to keep perspective."
Dynamic ambition
The difference is dynamic Chinese ambition in
the region.
Chinese leaders believe the US will never
willingly surrender its status as the pre-
eminent power in Asia.
Their own long-term policy is to squeeze the
US out.
Regional initiatives on development and trade
are as much a part of that game plan as
military modernisation.
A "strategic partnership" with Russia is a big
piece of this puzzle, securing more than 4,300
kilometres of shared border, delivering Central
Asia to the Sino-centric economic blueprint
and stalling Japanese attempts to find
partners to counteract Chinese territorial
claims.
When President Obama came to office in 2009,
his stated foreign policy objectives were to
reset the relationship with Russia and to
"pivot to Asia" .
But as he nears the end of his second term, it
is China which has reset the relationship with
Russia, and Russia which has pivoted to Asia.
Hear Carrie Gracie's special report on the
future of Chinese Russian relations, on Friday
24 April on the World Tonight , on BBC Radio
4.