Keywords

1 Introduction

This examination deals with the mental maps and basic assumptions underlying Russia’s foreign policy and how these relate to China. I will take issue with the narrative, advanced in particular by Kremlin officials and pro-Putin apologists in the West, that Russia’s “pivot to Asia,” with China as its centerpiece, can be understood as the consequence of the West having rejected Putin’s outstretched hand for close cooperation, Russia’s exclusion from an all-European security structure by pushing NATO’s eastward expansion, and finally the imposition of economic sanctions. This, to complete the account, had left Russia with no other option but to turn to Asia. Such interpretations will be shown to be fundamentally flawed. Putin’s China policies fit squarely into both the Russian power elite’s global strategic outlook and its narrow perception of what is needed to hold on to power domestically. The benefits accruing to Russia from its liaison with China can be found in military, economic, and systemic dimensions, and they are for the most part asymmetric in favor of the Kremlin. The asymmetries may cause problems in the future, but for the time being, they are carefully managed so that they will not spin out of control.

2 Russia’s Global Strategic Outlook

Discussion of Russian policies is often based on “Russia” as a synonym for Putin. This is certainly the equation fostered by his friends and followers, but there is some analytical justification for it. The system he has built has aptly been called the “Putin System.” It is authoritarian and autocratic and increasingly centralized, conforming to the Kremlin’s notion of the “vertical of power” (vertikal’ vlasti). Decisions of any significance in domestic or foreign policy cannot be made without participation and consent of the Kremlin’s chief. That applies even more so to the formulation of basic foreign policy directions.

However, a sharp distinction needs to be made between what could legitimately be considered Russian “national interests” and those advanced by Putin and his colleagues. The latter interests are more narrow, self-serving, and parochial. They flow from other essential features of the system, that of a “kleptocracy” (Dawisha, 2014; Åslund, 2019 and Åslund, 2021, March 14) and a “mafia state” (Galeotti, 2018; Harding, 2011 and 2020), with crime and corruption constituting major “building blocks” of the system (Adomeit, 2018, July).

Finally, the composition of the ruling circle is of considerable importance for any assessment of the essence of Russian domestic and foreign policy. The most important individuals with the foremost influence on domestic and foreign policy decision-making are what collectively have come to be known as the siloviki, literally translated as the “people of force” or “strongmen.” These are former or current officials of the secret and internal security services as well as “law enforcement” agencies forming a “secret services syndicate” (Mommsen, 2017), with the FSB as the “central element” of Putin’s power system (Galeotti, 2021, March 16). Putin learned about wider society as an officer of the KGB. He is a product of that system and deep down will always think like that system does (Belton, 2020, July).

Put in categories of international relations theory, the way Putin and the siloviki look at the world conforms to the precepts of the “realist” school that largely fails to do justice to the reality and realities of world politics and that, in particular, is blind to the cooperative, multilateral, and “win-win” aspects of international relations. Its core elements in the Russian post-Soviet context became visible as early as 1993 as the advocates of “Great Power” policies (derzhavniki), nationalism, chauvinism, and “Eurasianism” combined to dismantle the vestiges of Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking and the transatlantic approach as represented by then foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev. The “new” ideology was devoid of the previous Marxist-Leninist ideological component but restored many of the elements of the Soviet leadership’s ideas about international affairs. These include the followingFootnote 1:

  • Power, prestige, status, and influence of any given country in world affairs depend on the size of its population, geographical expanse, endowment with natural resources, volume of industrial and agricultural output, and access to or control over human and material resources abroad. The most important factor determining the influence of a country in international affairs is military power. The centerpiece of Russian military power and the foundation of its sovereignty are its strategic nuclear weapons.

  • Military threats, whether explicit or implicit, will make opponents compliant. The greater the discrepancy between one’s own military capabilities and that of the opponent(s), the more effective the threat. Both the domestic political orientation and the foreign policies of allies and adversaries can be influenced by external pressure (Westerlund, 2021).Footnote 2

  • In international relations, power vacuums cannot exist for long. “If Russia were to abstain from an active policy in the CIS or even embark on an unwarranted pause, this would inevitably lead to other, more active, states resolutely filling that [geo]political space” (“Vystuplenie na plenarnom,” 2004, July 12).Footnote 3

  • The post-Soviet space is Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence, an area of Russian special or privileged interests. It is politically and culturally part of the Russian World (Russkiy mir), which not only includes ethnic and non-Russian ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation but also 30 million members of the Russian national community (obshchina) and Russian speakers (russkoyazychnye) abroad. In fact, it unites all those who value the Russian language and culture, regardless of where they live, be it in Russia or beyond its borders (Putin, 2012a, January 23).Footnote 4

  • The West is fundamentally and irreconcilably ill disposed toward Russia.Footnote 5 Its aim is to “contain” Russia, maximally to weaken and constrain it, to limit its global and regional influence and even, if it saw corresponding opportunities, to dismember it (“Obrashchenie prezidenta Rossii,” 2004, September 4).Footnote 6

  • The Western governments’ clamor for the universal dissemination of human and civil rights, pluralism, democracy, and the “free flow of information” as well as the deployment of so-called “non-governmental organizations” are part and parcel of hybrid warfare against Russia and designed to subvert its global and regional influence. One of the major techniques used by them are so-called color revolutions, that is, the overthrow of legitimate governments (Putin, 2007, February 10).Footnote 7

The major source of the challenges and threats as perceived by the Kremlin is the United States with NATO as its instrument in Europe. It is this very context that establishes the basic perceptual reference and political framework for Russia’s China policies. That can be convincingly demonstrated by focusing on the origins of the “strategic partnership” between the two powers.

3 Origins of the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”

In contrast to the plethora of “strategic partnerships” both Russia and China have declared to exist as well as the (now defunct) German-Russia and EU-Russia “strategic partnership” (Adomeit, 2021), the partnership between Russia and China bears two distinguishing features: It does indeed possess a strategic quality, and it is, from the perspective of both signatories, directed against the United States.

The “strategic partnership” can be said to date back to 1996. In order to take into account the expanded economic, political, cultural, and security policy dimensions and institutionalized forms of cooperation, the relationship was renamed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2011. The “pivot” post 2014 only accelerated a development that had begun two decades earlier.

In fact, common interests and perceptions between the power elites in Moscow and Beijing were already evident in the mid-1990s and expressed themselves in several agreements and reactions to international developments (Wacker, 2002 and Shtraks, 2015). When NATO in September 1995 had adopted basic principles for the admission of Central and Eastern European countries as members of the military alliance, it sparked loud protests in Russia. It helped first to dilute the pro-Western orientation as represented by foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev and then to stop it altogether in January 1996 with the appointment of Evgeni Primakov, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, in his place. In preparation for president Boris Yeltsin’s visit to Beijing in April 1996, Primakov persuaded the Kremlin chief to propose to Chinese president Jiang Zemin to elevate the term of “constructive partnership,” used since 1994 for Russian-Chinese relations, to “strategic partnership.”

At the same time, relations between China and the United States turned into a crisis. Its peak occurred in December 1995 when Washington responded to China’s missile tests near Taiwan by sending a carrier task force led by the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz through the Taiwan Strait in the largest US show of force in Asia since the Vietnam War. In addition, in early April 1996, the United States and Japan agreed on several measures to strengthen their security alliance.

In the same month, the Yeltsin-Jiang Zemin summit took place. Fourteen agreements were signed, and the two powers declared their intention to develop an “equal, trusting partnership aimed at strategic cooperation in the 21st century.” This intention was reflected 1 year later at the Moscow summit in the Russian-Chinese Joint Declaration on Multipolarity and the Formation of a New Global Order.

Thus, for all practical purposes, the two powers assured each other that they would respect their self-declared spheres of influence, Russia in Europe and China in Asia, respectively, and insulate them against US “interference.” Apparently to provide substance to the mutual assurances and as signals to the United States and NATO, the two actors have increasingly cooperated in several dimensions over the past few decades.

4 The Military Dimension

Putin has characterized the scope and depth of Russian-Chinese military cooperation as follows: “We regularly conduct joint military exercises—at sea and on land in China and the Russian Federation—and share best practices in building the armed forces. We have achieved a high level of cooperation in the defense industry. I’m not just talking about exchanging or buying and selling military products [weapons and equipment] but also about sharing technology, which is perhaps most important. […] Undoubtedly, the cooperation between Russia and China increases the defense potential of the Chinese People’s Army, which is in the interests of both Russia and China” (“Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba Valday”, 2020, October 27).

One of the aspects of such cooperation has been extensive Russian arms deliveries and assistance to China in the licensed production of weaponry.Footnote 8 Another facet is joint military exercises, conducted by units of the Russian and Chinese ground, air, and naval forces in different geographical areas (Gressel, 2018, September 25; Paul, 2019; Gorenburg, 2020; Middendorf, 2021, February 1). Since April 2012, the Chinese Navy has held maneuvers with Russian participation in the Yellow, East, and South China Seas and Russia in the Japanese, Okhotsk, and Baltic Seas with Chinese participation.Footnote 9 In 2018, China took part in the large-scale Vostok (East) maneuvers held in Russia with around 3000 Chinese troops, tanks, air defense forces, and bombers participating. On December 22, 2020, six strategic bombers—four Chinese and two Russian—completed a joint patrol mission over the East China and Japan Seas.

4.1 Parallelism Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan

Russia, throughout 2021, substantially enhanced its threat posture in relation to Ukraine. This was evident both verbally and by means of a series of scheduled and unscheduled maneuvers and troop movements. These began at the end of March and lasted through April, with troop movements and exercises taking place all along the borders with Ukraine, in the Crimea, and the Black Sea, officially to test the “combat readiness” of the armed forces. According to chief of staff Valery Gerasimov, “more than 300,000 soldiers and 35,000 guns, vehicles and special equipment, 180 ships and boats and around 900 aircraft” took part in the exercises (“Bolee 300 tys voennosluzhashchikh,” 2021, April 29). However, based on the discrepancy between the huge number of weapons and military equipment and the number of forces, it is reasonable to assume that the number of 300,000 soldiers was still to be regarded as an understatement (Fel’gengauer, 2021, September 13, and Fyodorov, 2021, September 18). In August, the drills continued primarily on Belarusian soil in preparation for the main Zapad event (Kofman, 2021, September 8).

On September 10–16, 2021, troops from Russia and its neighbor Belarus, with the symbolic participation of military units from several other countries, held their quadrennial military maneuver Zapad (West) in part near the border with NATO member states Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania but also in the proximity of Ukraine (Adomeit, 2021).Footnote 10 The participation of 200,000 troops, over 80 aircraft and helicopters, and up to 760 units of military equipment, including tanks, rocket launchers, and mortars, is noteworthy not only for its officially declared (although exaggerated) enormous size,Footnote 11 including 2 armies (the first Guards Tank Army and the 41st Combined Arms Army) and 3 airborne divisions (Gol’ts, 2021, September 13), but also for the fact that the main action did not take place in Belarus but more than a thousand kilometers to the east in the Nizhny Novgorod and Voronezh regions. Considering that the latter region (oblast’) borders on the separatist republic of Luhansk, it is safe to assume that one of the purposes of the maneuvers was to rehearse military intervention in Ukraine (Adomeit, 2021, September 27, and Fyodorov, 2021, September 18). Its political and military significance was underlined by the fact that the crescendo of the exercise took place at the Mulino training ground in Nizhny Novgorod oblast’ and that it was attended by the top Russian political and military leadership, including president and supreme commander Putin, defense minister Shoygu, and chief of staff Gerasimov.

China did not participate in the exercises on European soil, but on August 9–14, Chinese forces conducted joint drills with Russian forces at a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base in West China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region, the exercises involving as many as 13,000 troops and 400 pieces of military hardware, including 200 pieces of armor, 90 artillery units, and 100 aircraft (Clark & Barros, 2021, September 17). Evidently to signal Beijing’s political support for Russia’s military moves in the European theatre and NATO context, the maneuver on Chinese soil was called the Zapad 2021 Interaction.

Apparently in preparation for yet another round of military pressure, the personnel that had taken part in Zapad 2021 returned to their bases, but their equipment was largely left behind (Gol’ts, 2021, September 13). At the beginning of November, they returned. Thus, components of the first Guards Tank Army were deployed to Maslovka close to the border with the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in the country’s northeast. A further concentration of military vehicles assembled around Rostov, also just east of Ukraine. This last move was presumably to enable Russia to infiltrate Ukraine’s Donbas region, an intention strongly suggested by the high numbers of military transports that arrived at the airport in Rostov-on-Don (Gressel, 2021b, November 17, and Bennetts & Brown, 2021, November 16). Earlier, the Russian High Command had also increased the number of military assets in Crimea (Gressel, 2021a, September).

In conjunction with the military moves and maneuvers, the Kremlin sharpened its verbal threats. In a wide-ranging reassessment of history, president Putin rejected the legitimacy of Ukraine as a sovereign state and charged that its leadership was just willing tools of foreign interests (Putin, 2021, July 12).Footnote 12 Dmitri Medvedev, in his capacity as deputy chairman of the Russian national security council, called it “senseless” to talk to the Ukrainian leaders: It would be a waste time to deal with their “bastardish” (ubliudochnyi) and “moronic” (debilnyi) initiatives (Medvedev, 2021, October 11). The harsh rhetoric links up with earlier warnings by Putin that if Ukraine entered NATO, the country would “cease to exist as a state” (Blank, 2008, May 14, and Socor, 2008, April 14)Footnote 13; in September 2014, that if he wanted, “Russian troops could not only be in Kiev in two days but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw or Bucharest” (Brössler, 2014, September 18)Footnote 14; and more recently, according to foreign minister Lavrov, that “anyone who tries to unleash a new war in the Donbas will destroy Ukraine” (“Interv’yu Ministra inostrannych del,” 2021, April 1).

The Kremlin’s denial of legitimacy for a sovereign Ukrainian state; its claim that Russians, Belarusian, and Ukrainians are one people; and the threat that Moscow will do everything up to and including the use of force to prevent Ukraine from taking a European path of development and associate itself with the EU and NATO find their counterpart in the Chinese leadership’s assertion that Taiwan is just a renegade Chinese province and that, if attempts at peaceful reintegration fail, force will be used to achieve that legitimate aim.

Thus, in a major speech about the “unification” of Taiwan with China, on December 26, 2018, Xi Jinping stated that “We make no promise to abandon the use of force, and retain the option of taking all necessary measures.” These could be adopted if there was “intervention by external forces.” He also said that “Different systems are not an obstacle to unification, and even less are they an excuse for separatism.” Ominously in the light of the dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong, Xi guaranteed that China would respect the Taiwanese people’s religious and legal freedoms in a unified “one country, two systems” framework (Buckley & Horton, 2021, January 1). Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the CCP mouthpiece, the Global Times, also warned: “If US troops are present on the island of Taiwan, China will crush them by force” (Vittetoe, 2021, October 15). Another contribution to Beijing’s threat posture was provided by the Chinese state-controlled magazine Naval and Merchant Ships detailing a three-stage plan to invade Taiwan involving ballistic missiles, fighter jet attacks, and amphibious landings on Taiwan’s beaches (Knox, 2021, July 2). Sub-conflict operations or “gray zone” operations have already begun, including frequent airspace incursions by PLA fighter aircraft, shows of force by Chinese warships around Taiwan, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns designed to demoralize Taiwan’s society and undermine popular support for the government in Taipei. The credibility of such threats is enhanced by the fact the actual use of military force is no longer hypothetical. China has tended to follow through on its warnings and threats. For instance, of all the islets and reefs in the South China Sea it has taken from Vietnam, the Philippines, and other neighbors, China has not surrendered a single one.

Another area where Russia’s interests and policies coincide with and where it acts in parallel with China is the Near and Middle East, notably Syria and Iran.

4.2 The Near and Middle East

The origins of the Russian military intervention in Syria, the cooperation and coordination of policies with Iran in Syria, and the common approach with China toward Iran can be found in Libya. In the first few months after the mass demonstrations against the Muammar al-Gaddafi regime, Russian government reactions were by and large in line with Western analyses (Issaev, 2021). Thus, the foreign ministry discerned the causes of the turmoil in the Arab countries in the socioeconomic and political spheres: the inflexibility of leaders and political elites; the low degree of social mobility; high unemployment, corruption, and other social diseases; and the refusal to embark on urgent reforms (Bogdanov, 2011, July 5, and Lavrov, 2011, May 12). In line with such perceptions, president Medvedev ordered Russia’s abstention from UN resolution 1973 of March 17, 2011, which authorized member states to take “all necessary measures,” including military measures, to protect civilians and areas inhabited by civilians against attack.

This decision and NATO’s extension of the UN mandate, however, were severely criticized by Putin. He called the resolution “flawed and defective” and a “medieval call to a crusade.” After the bombing of Yugoslavia and the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, he charged, it was now apparently “Libya’s turn” (Putin, 2011, March 21). The then Russian chief of staff, General Nikolai Makarov, anticipating by little more than a year the theoretical considerations about alleged Western concepts and the practice of “non-linear” warfare by his successor Gennadi Gerasimov, bluntly claimed that the leaders of some countries wanted to use the techniques of “color revolutions” to eliminate political regimes they disliked, including in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, and to advance their strategic interests in the Near and Middle East. He feared that the same techniques could be applied to Russia and its neighbors (Allison, 2013).

Furthermore, the failure to stem regime change in Libya and Ukraine strengthened Putin’s determination to never again permit another “color revolution,” no matter where it would occur. This manifested itself in the qualitative upgrading of Russia’s political support, arms deliveries, and the dispatch of military advisers to direct military intervention with its own troops and the construction and expansion of military bases in Syria (Kofman, 2020a, p. 38). Putin thereby not only aligned Russia’s autocracy with its “strategic partner” Iran, the theocracy of Ali Khamenei, but also more closely with its “comprehensive strategic partner” Xi Jinping, on a solidly anti-American basis.

As in its relations with other countries, in contrast with China, the form Russia’s engagement in Syria has taken is primarily military. In August 2015, Russia began to send troops, combat aircraft, tanks, and artillery to the Hmeimim airbase near the port city of Latakia and improve facilities at its naval base in Tartus. In September, it actively entered the war with airstrikes from the air base, and in October it struck targets in Syria with long-range cruise missiles from four warships of the Russian Navy’s Caspian Flotilla. Russia is evidently planning to maintain its military presence for the long term. It operates the Hmeimim air base practically on its own and decided to turn it into a component of its permanent military contingent stationed in Syria (“Rossiya nachala formirovat,” 2017, December 26). Furthermore, in 2019 it signed a 49-year agreement to lease the Tartus naval base, thus expanding the facility, and to also entrench its naval forces in the country (Kofman, 2020a, p. 37).

Military aspects also extend to Russia’s “strategic partnership” with Iran. For its cruise missile strikes from the Caspian Sea, it needed Teheran’s consent for them to overfly Iranian territory, which was granted. Even more significant, it was allowed to use the Nojeh Air Base in the western province of Hamadan to strike targets in Syria. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, explained that “Iranian-Russian cooperation to fight terrorism in Syria is strategic, and we share our capacity and capabilities with each other” (Khalaji, 2016, August 17). Russian-Iranian military-to-military ties have involved not only joint maneuvers in the Caspian Sea and the Gulf, but have been extended by Tehran’s offer to Moscow for the use of three naval bases on its Gulf coast (Goble, 2020, October 1).

China’s military and security involvement in the war in Syria has practically been non-existent. In Iran, it has been less pronounced than that of Russia, but has been on the increase. Cooperation has included joint training and exercises, joint research and weapons development, and intelligence-sharing. In December 2019, joint naval drills took place between China, Iran, and Russia covering a wide area in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman. The exercises took place just as tensions between the United States and Iran reached a crisis point (Haider, 2020). In September 2020, China, Russia, Iran, and some other nations held the massive joint military maneuver Kavkaz (Caucasus) in the Astrakhan region of Russia. The series of trilateral exercises, in part with the participation of other countries, continued in February 2021 in the northern part of the Indian Ocean.

Unlike Iranian officials, who generally exaggerate the importance of the exercises, conveying the notion that the drills signal a new triple alliance in the Middle East, Russian and Chinese officials have been more restrained, framing the joint exercises as part of routine anti-piracy operations, highlighting their peacekeeping priorities, and at times even seeking to depoliticize the exercises (“Russia, China, Iran,” 2021, February 9). The message of the troika to the United States to refrain from military moves in the area is nevertheless unambiguous.

Russia’s challenge to the United States in tandem with China even extends to Washington’s “back yard,” the Western Hemisphere.

4.3 Venezuela

Venezuela provides another example of Russian and Chinese involvement that runs in parallel but is in all likelihood uncoordinated. Nicolás Maduro would most likely not still be in power were it not for the support he has received from five countries: Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and Turkey (Rendon & Fernandez, 2021, October 19). These states have provided varying degrees of financial, military, and intelligence support. Beginning in the Chávez years, Moscow has sold the country military equipment in the amount of several billion US dollars, including tanks, fighter jets, and small arms. While many of the purchases involved advance payment in oil, as of 2019 Venezuela owed Russia at least US$10 billion for fighter jets it had purchased. The two countries have also established a factory in the country to produce rifles, as well as a facility to train Venezuelan pilots to fly Russian-made helicopters.

Putin has underscored his support for Maduro through symbolic military gestures. In December 2018, for instance, two nuclear-capable strategic bombers were sent to Venezuela. Three months later, two Russian military planes arrived in Caracas bearing troops and equipment. Furthermore, the Kremlin’s involvement in Venezuela includes the Kremlin-supported paramilitary Wagner Group to help the Maduro regime to survive (“Band of Brothers,” 2020, September 21, and Rendon & Fernandez, 2021, October 19).

China’s involvement, in contrast, has focused more on deriving maximum economic benefit from the engagement. The Chinese, according to Chávez, offered more flexible loans than other countries “without strings attached” (“Band of Brothers,” 2020, September 21). By 2015, China had loaned Venezuela more than US$64 billion, primarily through two of its largest banks. The strings, however, may not always be so readily apparent. As in many other countries worldwide, China has mitigated risk in its state-to-state loans, for example, by collateralizing them through parallel contracts under which the loan recipient would deliver commodities to Chinese importers, including oil and gas, and if the recipient is unable to provide the goods or pay, China would demand compensation in the form of important assets.

Moscow’s involvement in Venezuela, as in other countries, may not be coordinated with Beijing. The fact of the matter nevertheless is that their support for Maduro counteracts US interests, and as in Iran their involvement serves to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela’s oil exports. This obviously serves the Kremlin’s perceived interest to frustrate, to the maximum extent possible, US power and influence.Footnote 15

To summarize, Russia has benefitted significantly from the growing cooperation with China in the military dimension; its exercises with China that have grown in frequency, geographic reach, and substance; the parallelism of its threat of the use of force in Ukraine and China in Taiwan; and more generally the replacement of Russia by China as the foremost military threat to the security of the United States. They have affected not just US perceptions and policies, but also and perhaps even more so those of its NATO allies.Footnote 16 There are, however, important reasons why defense cooperation will not produce a military alliance. When Putin was asked whether he was aiming at the formation of an alliance, he replied that “we have not until now set ourselves this goal, but in principle we are not ruling it out either” (“Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba Valday,” 2020, October 27). That point of view was confirmed by foreign minister Lavrov. He stated that “our relations [with China] are not a military alliance, and we are not pursuing this goal. We regard NATO as an example of a military alliance in the traditional sense, and we know that we do not need such an alliance. […] Our relationship with China is completely different from that of a traditional military alliance. Maybe in a certain sense, it is an even closer bond” (“Interv’yu Ministra inostrannykh del,” 2021, April 1).

The benefits of cooperation in the military sphere can be said to accrue more or less equally to Russia and China. In the economic sphere, matters are more lopsided. The main beneficiary here is clearly the former rather than the latter.

5 The Economic Dimension

One of the main economic rationales of the Kremlin’s turn toward China was expressed quite clearly by Putin in February 2012. The high rates of growth of the Chinese economy were not to be considered some sort of danger for Russia, he told his compatriots, but they opened up “colossal opportunities” for cooperation. They provided the chance to “catch the Chinese wind with the sails of our economy” (Putin, 2012b, February 27). This can be regarded as nothing but an astonishing admission of the asymmetry of economic development between China and Russia.Footnote 17 Thus, a central feature of the economic dimension of the quadrilateral strategic and political relationship between the United States, China, Russia, and Europe is as follows: whereas Russia and China may be politically aligned, they are both more economically aligned with the West than each other. This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that sanctions against Russia, for example, would drive Russia and China economically apart, not together, placing a strain on their political alignment (Kluge, 2021, November 30).

There are several manifestations of asymmetry. Whereas bilateral trade has risen significantly in the past 15 years, with China becoming Russia’s largest trade partner and the trade volume reaching about US$108 billion in 2020 (Kotova, 2021, March 8), the increase was due primarily to the expansion of China’s GDP, much less than that of Russia. After the contraction in trade after the global financial crisis of 2009 and a drop in oil prices in 2014 that coincided with the annexation of Crimea and sanctions on Russia, 2021 represented a record year, as by the third quarter trade reached the levels of 2019, the pre-pandemic high. However, whereas China’s share in Russia’s foreign trade in 2021 was expected to rise to 20–25%, Russia’s share of China’s total trade since the mid-1990s has remained static at about a mere 2% (Kluge, 2021, November 30).

Second, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian arms sales to China were still a significant part of overall trade. In the 1990s, it was estimated to amount to a total of US$5–US$7 billion, increasing into the mid-2000s to US$40 billion. Thereafter, however, the value of arms sales has declined dramatically, with India becoming Russia’s dominant arms importer. Russian arms sales to China went from being perhaps 25 or more percent of the total value of trade in the 1990s, peaking in the early 2000s with a value of over US$3 billion, declining dramatically and amounting to only 3% of the current trade between the two states (Kofman, 2020b, August 6).Footnote 18

Third, Moscow has made significant progress in its efforts at “de-dollarization” of its foreign trade. In 2014, when sanctions were imposed, the dollar’s share in Russia’s export of goods and services ranged between 75 and 80%. Subsequently, Russia reached several agreements on trade in national currencies so that by the end of 2020 the share of the dollar in Russia’s trade fell to 48% (“Dolya rossiyskogo eksporta,” 2021, April, 27). Russia was particularly successful in its trade with China. In 2014, almost all of its trade with that country was transacted in dollars. By 2019, the dollar’s share in Russian exports to China had declined to approximately 35% and in imports to about 70% (Kluge, 2021, November 30).

Fourth, Russia’s trade with China has reflected what president Medvedev in 2009 had called the country’s “centuries-old, humiliating dependency on raw materials,” notably oil and gas (“Poslanie Federal’nomu Sobraniyu,” 2009, November 12). Russia’s main exports to China are mainly raw materials, fossil fuels and lubricants, as well as agricultural products. China’s exports to Russia, in contrast, consist primarily of electronic products, machinery, vehicles, and chemicals (rising share) as well as textiles (decreasing share) (Kluge, 2021, November 30).

Fifth, the Russian reliance and development emphasis on the raw materials sector of the economy also applies to investments. Thus, the bulk of Chinese investments in Russia keeps flowing into fossil fuel projects. The Yamal LNG project in the Russian arctic, for instance, would have been difficult, if not impossible, without Chinese support. China provided financing through loans from state policy banks and investment through a state-owned enterprise. China also used the Silk Road Fund and another state-owned enterprise to invest in Sibur, Russia’s largest petrochemical company. Although 2020 can hardly be considered a normal year, it’s telling that Sinopec’s purchase of a 40% share in the Amur gas processing plant alone accounted for US$250 million of US$1.4 billion in foreign investment into the Russian economy in that year (Gabuev, 2021, March 19).

Sixth, concerning investment, in part as a result of economic sanctions by the West, foreign direct investment (FDI) into Russia contracted significantly starting from 2014. It declined from US$37 billion in 2016 to US$26 billion in 2017 and to US$13 billion in 2018. The “pivot,” however, failed to produce meaningful substitution effects. Thus, although total FDI into Russia in 2019 increased to US$31.7 billion, preliminary data for 2020 suggest that FDI inflows to economies in transition, which include Russia, will decline by about 38% (“Investment flows to transition economies,” 2019, June 19). According to its central bank, the stock of foreign direct investment from China and Hong Kong in January 2019 stood at just US$3.6 billion, or 0.9% of Russia’s total incoming direct investment (Kluge, 2019, August). Since then, there has been no change (Kluge, 2021, November 30).

To conclude, hopes or expectations that the Kremlin may have had for investment winds from China to blow into the sails of the Russian economy and increase its speed have thus far been disappointed. Trade and investments have not only failed to drive the modernization of Russia’s economy but served to freeze the authoritarian, centralizing, and kleptocratic features of the economic and political system. The beneficiary of the “pivot to the East” has not been “Russia” but a narrow circle of Putin’s friends and associates at the apex of the power structure. Their interest is not primarily the modernization of the country, but holding on to power, privilege, and property.

6 The Systemic Dimension

Putin’s Russia has derived major benefit from the Chinese government having consistently, separately or in joint statements, rejected any kind of “interference” in their domestic affairs; opposed or suppressed movements for democratization, liberalization, and emancipation in their respectively claimed spheres of influence; opposed sanctions imposed for human rights violations; and denied legitimacy to any form of UN mandated humanitarian intervention.Footnote 19 The Kremlin, thereby, has been able to avoid international isolation.

At the dusk of the Gorbachev era and for a brief period under president Yeltsin, a huge gap had existed between the “new” Russia’s and the Chinese Communist Party’s patterns of thought and behavior. Nothing could demonstrate better the wide chasm between the two systems of government than the bloody suppression of the Chinese students’ calls for democratic change in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and Russia’s continuation of Gorbachev’s democratization and liberalization drive domestically and engagement with the Euroatlantic community in foreign policy under Yeltsin until about 1993.

The Kremlin’s shift away from that orientation thereafter occurred gradually and erratically, but it assumed a principled and fundamental quality near the end of the “tandem” interval at the apex of the Putin System, that is, the exchange of positions of president and premier between Putin and Medvedev. Large-scale demonstrations had taken place in many Russian cities after the parliamentary election in December 2011 and the presidential election in March 2012, with tens of thousands of people protesting against alleged large-scale fraud and manipulation of the elections, calling the government-supported United Russia party the party of “crooks and thieves” and demanding a “Russia without Putin.”Footnote 20 Evidently, they had taken to heart Medvedev’s calls for comprehensive reform and “modernization” to be achieved in close cooperation with the Euroatlantic world.

The conclusion that Putin and the siloviki grouping in the Kremlin drew from the massive protests was unambiguous and far-reaching (Adomeit, 2017a, January and 2017b, September 27; 2019, May 24). In their perception, the mere advocacy of reformist change in close cooperation with the West had begun to undermine the legitimacy of their rule and grip on power. They now asserted and in all likelihood believed that the West, after having engineered “color revolutions” in Russia’s neighborhood, was now attempting to bring about regime change in Russia itself. As a result, they embarked on a campaign of national-patriotic mobilization against Western influence, discrediting NGOs that had allegedly cooperated with Western counterparts as “foreign agents” and international organizations represented in Russia as “undesirable.” Abroad, they launched “hybrid” warfare with efforts to sow discord, to discredit, and to destabilize liberal democratic systems. Russia’s confrontation with the Euroatlantic world, therefore, has assumed a systemic quality. In conjunction with China, it has embarked upon a confrontationist path of authoritarianism versus democracy.

The perceived necessity by the managers of the two authoritarian systems to defend internal repression and human rights violations in their countries increased in the spring of 2021 as the European Union and the United States imposed sanctions on Russian officials over the poisoning attack and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the EU and the United States in coordination with Britain and Canada against Chinese officials over human rights abuses in China’s far western Xinjiang region. Meeting in southern China, Russian foreign minister Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi called for all countries “to stand together to oppose all forms of unilateral sanctions” and rejected Western attempts at “imposing their own rules on everyone else, which they believe should underpin the world order” (“China and Russia Show Solidarity,” 2021, March 24). Lavrov used the occasion yet again to warn the Europeans if they destroyed all the mechanisms of contacts and exchanges that had been created for many years, “then, probably objectively, this would lead to our relations with China to develop faster than what’s left of the relations with European countries” (“Vystuplenie I otvety,” 2021, March 23).

Moscow and Beijing have justified their support for the dictatorships of, among others, Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, Nicolás Maduro, and Aleksandr Lukashenko arguing that these were the heads of duly elected governments under threat of an externally instigated and organized coup. The justifications, however, are more appropriately to be considered rationalizations of geopolitical and economic interests, with the former uppermost on Moscow’s mind and the latter mainly in Beijing’s focus. Conclusions to that effect, to take just one example, can be drawn from the two governments’ acquiescence to the military dictatorship of Min Aung Hlaing in Myanmar.

That regime had come to power not as a result of popular demonstrations, some “color revolution,” incited not from the outside but by a coup against the existing legitimate government of which it formed a part. Externally, the coup occurred against the background of military cooperation between Russia’s armed forces and those of Myanmar. The latter, for instance, had taken part in the Kavkaz-2020 military exercises on Russian soil. Russia was the source of at least 16% of the weaponry procured by Myanmar (“Russia seeking to strengthen military ties,” 2021, March 26). Furthermore, whereas eight countries, including China, sent their military attaches to attend the ceremony and the military parade organized by the junta to celebrate Armed Forces Day, Russia dispatched a high-ranking delegation under a deputy defense minister.Footnote 21 China, in turn, had deepened its economic engagement in Myanmar with infrastructure investments under the umbrellas of the Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. In January 2020, Xi Jinping visited Naypyidaw to revive stalled multibillion-dollar BRI projects by signing 33 memoranda of understanding. Although the exact volume of China’s BRI investments in the country is difficult to ascertain, a Myanmar government-appointed commission reported that the volume of Chinese foreign direct investment in the country as of March 2020 amounted to over US$21 billion (Myers, 2020, March 26).

In addition to their claim that they are supporting legitimate governments against conspiracies of internal and external actors to manufacture “regime change,” Moscow and Beijing justify their support for dictatorial regimes worldwide by asserting that they are acting in the interest of domestic and international “stability.” Such explanations, too, must be regarded as untenable and self-serving because the “stability” of the Putinist and Xi Jinping’s inflexible and repressive variant often merely serves to extend the life of a brittle system but not secure it forever, the collapse of the outwardly stable and strong Soviet system under Brezhnev being a case in point.

Concerning their own systems, both the narrow circle of Putin’s siloviki and friends and associates at the apex of the Russian power structure and the more broadly based leadership of the Chinese Communist Party acutely feel the “threat” of infection with the virus of “color revolutions.” In fact, they consider it to be an existential threat.Footnote 22 In the Russian case, this is due to geographical proximity to Europe, the huge scale of contacts and exchanges between the two entities, the unbroken attractiveness of European culture and the way of life on Russian citizens, and Russia portraying itself as a European country adhering to the values as codified in the Council of Europe and OSCE, thereby perennially opening itself to charges that it is violating the norms to which it had voluntarily agreed. In the Chinese case, it is the attractiveness of democratic, modern, prosperous, and ethnically diverse Taiwan that constitutes a fundamental challenge to the repressive system on the mainland.

There are, however, also some differences. Whereas the Putin and the Chinese Communist Party’s system of government share authoritarian, repressive, militarist, and “national-patriotic” features, there are also differences in how they operate and how they are affected by international developments.

First, Putin’s Russia has more of a problem providing proof positive that its system is superior to that of the West. Lavrov has argued that “a big debate is underway about which [system] is more effective. The coronavirus infection has taken the debate up a notch.” The question had arisen, therefore, “To what extent the Western democracies have shown themselves capable of opposing this absolute evil and to what extent countries with a centralized, strong and ‘authoritarian’ government have been successful. History will be the judge” (“Vystuplenie i otvety,” 2021, March 23). The more than preliminary verdict, however, is that China has been much more successful than Russia, both in terms of controlling the virus and in economic performance.

Second, related to that difference, the sophistication and extent to which the Chinese government has been able to advance the organizational and technological control of the population by far exceed Russian efforts and possibilities. This extends to the scope to which Beijing has been able to cut the country off from the worldwide Internet by means of firewalls; the employment of IT systems able to control data traffic; and the employment of artificial intelligence, surveillance, and facial recognition technologies for a more perfect control of society.Footnote 23

Third, the Kremlin does its utmost to weaken and undermine Western political and social systems. The means employed are widespread disinformation and destabilization campaigns. Their rationale is exceedingly simple and time-honored since the Soviet era. Attempts are being made to enhance the legitimacy and moral superiority of one’s own system by pointing to the alleged depth of irreconcilable social and political conflicts, instabilities, and moral decay of the adversary. To the extent that the deficiencies of one’s own system are admitted, the propaganda machine immediately provides assurances that everything in the West, or in individual European countries or America, is “much worse.” Correspondingly, with the help of the secret services and troll factories, the Russian government tries to adapt political and social reality in the Euroatlantic countries to such claims. The Chinese government by and large has no particular interest in undermining Western political, economic, or social systems. It is much more interested in changing Western public perceptions and government policies.

7 Conclusion

The role allocated by the Kremlin to the “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China can hardly be said to follow a well-thought-out strategic design. It is easier to discern a general framework of action tied to three basic questions: What will serve to solidify the Russian power elite’s grip on power and resources domestically; enhance Russia’s power and influence internationally; and under the assumption that losses for the United States are gains for Russia, maximally weaken the United States and its allies?

Concerning the military and strategic dimensions, based on a plethora of high-level meetings, numerous military exercises in different parts of the globe, and common positions, Moscow and Beijing convey the notion of close coordination of their policies and the existence of an alliance in all but name. That serves the interests of both leaderships to deter the United States and its allies from “interfering” in their respective domestic policies and counteracting Russian revisionist and Chinese expansionist regional ambitions.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, the demonstrative “even better than alliance” relationship with China is an eminently useful instrument in its toolbox of military threats and pressure. The calculus in Moscow apparently is that its threat posture will create a “Stockholm syndrome” of good will and appeasement, notably among the United States’ NATO allies in Europe and thus far “uncooperative” neighbors, such as Ukraine.

Particularly in Europe and in the Middle East, Moscow is much more eager to show its capacity and readiness to engage in direct and “hybrid” projections of military power than Beijing, which has been much more reluctant to behave as assertively in these regions. Russia, vice versa, can contribute little in military power to China’s cause in the Pacific, while China’s military power projection in Europe is practically non-existent. This does not mean they cannot aid each other, but it will not take the form of direct military support.

The frequent military exercises do not reflect a desire to develop interoperability, or tactical level cooperation, so much as operational or strategic deconfliction, while setting the tone for military-to-military ties at the highest echelons. Exercises have important signaling functions. They are a source of frustration for the United States and allow both countries to project power outside of their respective regions, demonstrating themselves to be great powers. They are important expositions for future potential arms sales, the events help illustrate that neither country is isolated by US political efforts, and they send internal signals within their own establishments that they have threats in common that exceed the potential threat they see in each other (Kofman, 2020b, August 6).

As for the economic dimension of the relations, China provides a huge market for Russian raw materials, notably oil and gas. In that way, the state of affairs that has existed for centuries between Russia and Europe, first and foremost with Germany, is being replicated. There is a major difference, however. The Medvedev approach of forging “modernization partnerships” with the EU, Germany, and other EU member countries and close cooperation with the United States (Poslanie, 2009, November 12), if managed properly, had held the promise of pulling the country from the category of a “transition economy” based on raw materials to a modern industrialized economy producing internationally competitive high technology goods. Putin’s “pivot to the East” does not have such a design feature. It has failed to contribute meaningfully to the modernization of Russia’s economy, let alone of society and the political system. It has tied a stagnating economy and hardened political system to a dynamic “partner” that is increasingly likely to turn into a competitor.

Russia’s confrontation with the West and the “partnership” with China have systemic dimensions. Propagandistically, this manifests itself in the diatribes against “color revolutions” at home and in their claimed spheres of influence. One of the dilemmas for Russia, however, is that historically and culturally, it is a European country. Its Far Eastern province is a piece of Europe in Asia, founded in part at China’s expense. As a member of the Council of Europe, it professes to adhere to European values. Its narrative is not that it had developed a new system of authoritarianism, autocracy, and collectivism that it wants to spread to the transatlantic countries, but that the West had abandoned traditional Christian values to which Russia continued to adhere. In that sense, tying itself to China is not at all helpful.

Until recently, it was reasonable to conceive of the relationship between Russia and China as an “in tandem” arrangement in the sense that Putin and Xi Jinping sat on a tandem bike for a common journey. They would have had to agree, but obviously didn’t, as to who got to sit in front and decide on the speed and direction of the journey. It was more appropriate, therefore, to see them traveling in parallel on separate bikes but on the same bumpy road of Via Antiamericana. The Russian troop movements in close proximity of the Ukrainian borders and on Crimea and the Chinese threats and frequent violations of Taiwanese airspace by fighter aircraft in 2021, however, may be an indication that separate but parallel measures have been replaced by a coordinated approach to deter US countermeasures.