Sino–Russian Relations Status Exchange or Imbalanced Relationship?

Abstract

Sino–Russian relations stand as a puzzling interaction of collaboration and competition. Realists have argued that if Russia and China should form a viable alliance, the balance of power in international politics would be altered. There has been little evidence of this taking place, however. Attempts to see the relationship as a harbinger of a new multilateralism also fail to find evidence of growing interdependence between the two. This article explores whether Russia and China can be seen as mutual status-granters. It suggests that through rapprochement and treaty building, Russia and China have shed apprehensions over time, and that this is a partnership based on mutual respect, honor and status-seeking.

Notes

1. The 2005 summit declaration flagged the SCO as a multilateral effort to fight terrorism and separatism regionally, and China and Russia demanded that the United States set a time-limit for its presence in Central Asia. The Russian press has regularly referred to this exercise as having taken place under a “Taiwan scenario,” thus underlining the distinct challenge to U.S. interests (Mukhin 2010).

^2. China provided 8,000 of the total 10,000 troops involved in the exercise.

^3. The first Contact Group meeting on Afghanistan was held in Beijing in November 2005; there the SCO pledged economic and humanitarian support for Afghanistan. See MFA 2005.

^4. Russia’s Rosneft took up a loan from China to buy the remainder of the YUKOS Company in 2004, and committed itself to export of oil to China by railroad. The ESPO supplanted this export (Flikke 2009). The ESPO is part and parcel of the strategic energy partnership flagged by Vladimir Putin in 2003, intended to boost Russia’s exports to Asia from a mere 3 percent to 30 percent by 2020; but, this ambitious strategy notwithstanding, Russia has had several disputes with China over oil prices since 2009, notably in 2011 (Christophersen 2012).

^5. This point is made by Wilson (2015, 1178–79). See in particular the interesting comparison between institutes of Confucianism and Russkii mir centers.

^6. This point is made explicitly by Jeffrey Mankoff, who sees the continuous tug-of-war between Russia and China on the utility of the SCO as a clear indicator of its limited significance in regional security (Mankoff 2009, 196–97)

^7. Asked in 2011 whether the SCO had military personnel taking part in operations preventing drug trafficking in Afghanistan, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov simply responded: “as mentioned, the most important factors are development of economic cooperation, and humanitarian and cultural cooperation within sports and education,” adding that “the SCO as an organization would not have such operations as a task” (Lavrov 2011).

^8. Russian–Chinese SEZ cooperation on forestry dates back to November 2000.

^9. Deborah Bräutgiam and Tang Xiaoyang (2012) argue that there is little evidence that China’s 19 SEZs are used for energy-security purposes. However, with Russia, there is a correlation between the number of SEZs (three) and significant Chinese investments in the natural resources sector.