In search of the ‘Other’ in Asia: Russia–China relations revisited

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Russia and China are partners of consequence and that the neglect of the normative dimension of the Sino-Russian relationship has led its impact on global governance to be undervalued and misunderstood. Following a constructivist approach, the paper examines the shared norms underlying an ever closer Sino-Russian partnership, despite divergent interests in a number of areas. A first section examines how shared norms lead Russia and China to define their identity similarly, facilitate joint actions, and constrain their individual policy choices. For Russia, elaborating its own unique identity is crucial to its claim to global status, though complicated by interactions with multiple ‘Others.’ Russia's effort to engage Asian partners is often viewed as hedging against China, but as second section argues that Russian engagement in Asia is better understood in terms of Russia's effort to define an Asian identity. A third section highlights the securitization/desecuritization dynamic in Sino-Russian economic relations. Xi Jinping's efforts to redefine China's global role reinforces its tendency to desecuritize the vulnerabilities that lead China to seek economic cooperation with Russia. Russia, fearing becoming a ‘resource appendage’ of China, then securitizes economic relations with China.

KEYWORDS:

• Sino-Russian relations
• self-other
• identity
• hedging
• securitization
• Asia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kamila Kolodynska for her research assistance, Stephen Hanson and Jean-Marc Blanchard for their comments on earlier drafts, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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2. Statement by PRC President Xi Jinping, September 11 2014, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46598.

3. Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, July 24 2001, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/t15771.shtml.

4. Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.

5. Joint statement by the Russian Federation and the PRC (in Russian) May 8 2015, http://kremlin.ru/supplement/4969.

6. ‘Sensible strategic move by Russia to give Assad support’, October 14 2015, accessed at http://en.people.cn/n/2015/1014/c90000-8961578.html, December 16 2015.

7. ‘Putin talks Syria, Ukraine, G20 Ahead of Summit in Turkey’, November 13 2015 accessed at https://www.rt.com/politics/official-word/321857-putin-talks-syria-g20/, December 16 2015.

8. ‘FACT SHEET: President Xi Jinping's State Visit to the United States’, September 25, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/25/fact-sheet-president-xi-jinpings-state-visit-united-states.

9. ‘Sensible strategic move’.

10. Andrea Chen, ‘China to Stay on Sidelines in Turkey-Russia Tensions’, November 26 2015, accessed at http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1883428/china-stay-sidelines-turkey-russia-tensions, 16 December 2015.

11. Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.

12. ‘China may allow Russian grain’, The Western Producer, June 12 2014, accessed at

http://www.producer.com/2014/06/china-may-allow-russian-grain/, 3 July 2015; ‘Sino-Russian Agricultural Cooperation,’ China Daily, April 19,2013, accessed at http://english.agri.gov.cn/news/dqnf/201304/t20130419_19472.htm, 20 June 2015.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Wishnick

Elizabeth Wishnick is a professor of Political Science at Montclair State University, where she is also the coordinator of the Asian Studies Undergraduate Minor. Since 2002, she has been a senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Professor Wishnick's research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and non-traditional security. Her current book project, China's Risk China's Risk: Oil, Water, Food and Regional Security (forthcoming Columbia University Press) addresses the security and foreign policy consequences for the Asia-Pacific region of oil, water, and food risks in China. Professor Wishnick also writes about great power relations in East Asia and is working on several articles about contemporary Sino-Russian relations as well as a policy study on China's interests and goals in the Arctic for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. She is the author of Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow's China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001 and 2014). Professor Wishnick was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Spring 2012 and a fellow at Columbia's Center for International Conflict Resolution from 2011 to 2013. She received grants from the National Asia Research Program fellowship (2010), the Smith Richardson Foundation (2008–9), the East Asian Institute (Seoul, South Korea, 2007), and the East-West Center (Summer 2005 and 2004), and was a Fulbright scholar in Hong Kong (2002–3). She was previously a visiting scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, the Hoover Institution, and the Davis Center at Harvard University. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University, and a B.A. from Barnard College.