BY PETER HARRIS

Part I can be read here.

Russia regards the five former Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as part of its sphere of influence. So far, Russia has tolerated and benefited from Chinese initiatives in the region such as the aforementioned Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, China’s moves within the region are increasingly being seen as competitive by Russia. In 2021, China announced it was going to construct an outpost for its elite police force in Tajikistan. Moscow views this as an infringement on Russian influence as Tajikistan is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization which Russia set up as a counterbalance to NATO and hosts Russia’s largest military base situated abroad. China has also replaced Russia as the principal trading partner of all five Central Asian nations which is a strong temptation to them to align themselves more closely to China.

Chinese power in Central Asia can only continue to get stronger as its economy grows. As spheres of influence are essential to the Russian conception of its security needs, augmenting Chinese influence in the region has the potential of turning cooperation and competition into hostility.

The Arctic

Finally, Russia is consternated by Chinese ambitions in the Arctic. About a fifth of Russia’s expansive territory is within the Arctic where it has built up a substantial military presence.  Moscow has significant interests in the domain. This is due to the untapped fish and fossil fuel reserves that can be found there, and which are becoming easier to extract due to the warmer Arctic climate. Putin has therefore declared the Arctic to be a region of major importance to Russia. Furthermore, the Arctic is in Russia’s backyard and so, according to the notion of sphere of influence, Russia ought to have a determining say over it.

It therefore must seem audacious to the Russians that China, while possessing no Arctic territory, has designs on making itself what it calls a near-Arctic state. In 2018, the Chinese proposed creating a Polar Silk Road as a northern parallel to the Belt and Road Initiative. There has been cooperation between Russia and China in the region in energy projects but there has been suspicion also. Russia at first opposed allowing China to join the Arctic Council because of concerns over what China’s long-term ambitions are for the Arctic region. In 2012, Russia closed the Northern Sea Route to prevent China’s ships from conveying scientists to the region to conduct research into its resources. As the search for fossil fuel reserves becomes more acute as traditional supplies deplete, the potential for future competition between Russia and China in the Arctic remains large.

An Asymmetrical Relationship

To the world and to themselves, Russia and China have presented themselves as equal partners in the reshaping of the world order. But as Russia stagnates and even declines, it is becoming clear that China will be, or already is, the dominant partner. This will inflame existing tensions between the two powers as Russia realises that it is less useful to the Chinese and becomes resentful at being treated as a second-rate power.

In terms of the economy, technological ability and military power, China is further ahead than Russia or rapidly catching up. In 2021, China’s economy was measured as being ten times the size of Russia’s. The International Monetary Fund expect China’s GDP to reach almost $30 trillion by 2027 while the IMF predicts Russia’s GDP to be less than $2 trillion. In 2020, China outspent Russia fourteen times on research and development. Consequently, China is ranked twelfth on the Global Innovation Index, whereas Russia comes in at a humble forty-fifth, one place below Vietnam. With a stagnant economy, Russia is not able to match China’s military budget spending. In 2021, Russia spent approximately $64 billion on its armed forces; China spent $270. If the military partnership between Russia and China is to work, Russia must find some way of increasing its military spending and modernising its armed forces. The fact that the US and its Indo-Pacific allies collectively spend 3.7 times more on defence than Russia and China combined makes Russia’s relative military weakness more serious in Chinese eyes.

What the future may hold

For the time being, Russia and China have more reasons to cooperate than not. Maintaining their status as regional powers and being the catalysts for a transition away from a unipolar to a multipolar world bind both nations together. They both have territorial aspirations that the West and its allies do not recognise. Yet, the fault lines in the relationship are clearly visible. Clashes of interest and rivalry in the Far East, Central Asia and Arctic where Russia is the established power and China the revisionist one, have the potential to reduce cooperation between the two powers and even sour the relationship, even if the relationship still holds to some degree. If the two powers see it is in their interest to maintain cooperation, then negotiation is possible within these areas of possible dispute.    

Of the causes of disruption to the Sino-Russian relationship, the most likely is the growing inequality between the two states economically, technologically and militarily. This is a source of humiliation to Putin whose nationalist ego is very fragile because the Soviet Union he served as a KGB officer lost the Cold War. Restoring Russia to its former greatness is one of his ambitions and he and his undoubtedly like-minded successors will not tolerate playing the junior partner to Xi, particularly if that means being influenced or even pressured by Xi over matters of policy.

There are some indications that resentment at this imbalance have been voiced within Russian government circles. In 2022, the then Russian foreign minister Andre Kozyrev opined that China will never regard Russia as an equal partner or ally. If top ministers are acknowledging this, there is a sense that the Russia-China axis is a marriage of convenience rather than a long-term merging of interests.

The disparity within the relationship is not only a matter of prestige but one that will sharpen the existing rivalries in the three regions already discussed. Chinese economic, technological and military superiority, which can only grow over time, will mean that tolerable rivalry could become intolerable pressure for the Kremlin. At that point, Russia may conclude that China poses a direct threat to Russia and cause a full pivot away from China.

Such a turn would necessitate on Russia’s part of finding or intensifying relations with another great power in the making. In the case of Russia, there is the alternative of India, a nation that has consistently refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and which has helped Russia blunt the impact of sanctions by buying Russian oil. Closer ties between Russia and India would be very problematic for China as China and India have a long history of border disputes that have erupted into small scale violence, the most recent being the 2020 border brawl between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley that left several dead on both sides. It is not in India and China’s interests for any flare-up to turn into war and diplomacy has calmed tense and violent situations. But clearly closer ties between Russia and India as a counterweight to the Chinese giant puts China at a disadvantage. The fact that strategic cooperation between India and the US has deepened since 2014 because of the threat posed by China does not mean that India will not respond to Russian overtures. Non-alignment is India’s policy as Delhi seeks to take advantage of a range of good relations with nations in an increasingly multi-polar world.  

With closer ties between Russia and India and continuing hostility from the US, its allies in Asia and Australasia and its European partners, the Chinese might seek to restore better relations with Russia or India or even the US. Simultaneously, it might pursue a more aggressive foreign and self-arming policy as a reminder to foes of its great and latent power. Certainly, it would invite closer connections with its existing allies such as Pakistan, Iran and Cambodia and with nations that have benefited from trade with China such as Saudi Arabia.

In Summary

In the post-Cold War epoch, the world is no longer divided into two camps by the two superpowers whose power was so much greater than any other nation that many nations felt obliged to take sides. Although the world is not yet truly multipolar and the US remains the globe’s singular world power, China and India are closing the gap and Russia remains a credible regional and daunting nuclear power. India, for instance, has refused an invitation by the US to join an anti-Houthi naval taskforce because it is confident that it has sufficient naval power to play its role in policing the Red Sea and the North Arabian Sea. Other nations that are rising in terms of economic and military power such as Poland and the Philippines, provide additional partners to choose from alongside traditional choices such as the UK and France. In such a context with a range of nations from which to choose as principal partners and ideological commitments no longer locking nations into firm allegiances, diplomacy has entered a new stage of complexity in which short term and loose agreements between nations whose interests have converged have to some extent replaced fixed alliances. NATO, for example, is an exception to this, but even NATO appears less cohesive than it has traditionally been with member states such as Hungary, Turkey and Spain pursuing idiosyncratic policies. Russia and China’s connections seems to characterise this new era. They are a partnership of convenience rather than long term interest and ideological commitment that carries with it much historical baggage, is fraught with regional rivalries and is increasingly weighted in China’s favour. Will this relationship eventually fall apart? There is good reason to think so as China concludes that Russia is more a liability than an asset, particularly if Russia keeps the territory it has captured in Ukraine and is thereby encouraged to be more aggressive in its foreign policy. As for Russia, the day may come when it is too humiliating to play the junior partner to a burgeoning China. Nostalgia, revanchism, even self-pity are powerful forces in Russian politics and foreign policy. Within such a fluctuating, less predictable, more pragmatic and opaque international order, it would be wise for the West to maintain its unity through a shared value of democracy and human rights, show flexibility in cooperating with those whose values in some ways differ to help further Western interests and maintain jointly the most powerful military to deter those powers and conglomerations of power that would make themselves the world’s greatest force.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).