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ABSTRACT
In the last several years, both Russia and China have launched ambitious regional projects that are promoted as a means to strengthen linkages with neighbouring states. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) joins member states in an integrated single market providing the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour. China’s ‘one belt, one road’ (OBOR) is composed of two parallel projects, one maritime and one over land. These two ventures focus on the construction of large-scale infrastructure endeavours, financed by the newly established Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. My purpose in this article is twofold. On the one hand, I seek to assess and compare Russian and Chinese narratives on the EEU and OBOR as well as to examine the status of their decision, initiated in May 2015, to link the two projects. On the other hand, I am also concerned to locate this development in the context of Russia and China’s extended foreign policy goals, and its implications for the Russian–Chinese relationship. I argue that these initiatives exemplify the tensions – many of them latent – that exist between Russia and China, which are largely a consequence of the growing power disparities between the two states.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I am grateful to David Lane for emphasizing this point in an earlier version of this article.
2. Putin Envisions a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone (2011, November 25). Spiegel Online. Retrieved December 30, 2015, from http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html.
3. See ‘Nursultan Nazarbaev, president Kazakhstana: Evraziiskii soyuz – ot idei k istorii udushchego’ (Nursultan Nazarbaev, President of Kazakhstan: the Eurasian Union – from an Idea to the History of the Future), Samruk Kazyna, n.d. Retrieved October 6, 2015, from http://sk.kz/topblog/view/44; and ‘N. Nazarbaev: Dlia Kazakhstana evraziiskii ekonomicheskii soyuz – eto neobkhodimost’ (N. Nazarbaev: the EEU is a Necessity for Kazakhstan) Kazaakhstan 2050, n.d. Retrieved October 6, 2015, from http://strategy2050.kz/ru/news/5935.
4. However, in December 2015, the Armenian government announced that it was resuming talks with the European Commission on the signing of a free trade agreement with the EU. See Lavnikivich (Citation2015).
5. Meeting with Wang Yiwei, Senior Fellow, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University, Beijing, 13 May 2015.
6. According to Gabuev (Citation2015e), the Kremlin’s unwillingness to endorse the AIIB was largely a consequence of bureaucratic politics and the lack of coordinating mechanisms in government ministries.
7. In late 2014, Alexander Gubuev, then an editor at Kommersant and currently a Senior Associate and Chair of Russia in the Asia Pacific Program at the Moscow Carnegie Center, was instructed to put together a group of experts at the Ministry of Economic Development to discuss ways to cooperate with China. The product of this research was eventually transmitted to Shuvalov. See Lukin (Citation2015b, p. 36).
8. Interview with Alexander Lukin, Head of the International Relations Department of the Higher School of Economics, Director of the Center for East Asian and SCO Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Moscow, 30 June 2015.
9. Russian-Chinese trade, however, decreased substantially in 2015. Chinese exports to Russia fell by 34.4 percent to 64.2 billion dollars, Russian exports to China decreased by 19.2 per cent to 31.4 billion dollars, and the overall trade turnover dropped by 27.8 per cent to 62.2 billion dollars (Moscow Times, Citation2016).
10. ‘Chinese State Planner Sees 2015 GDP Growth Around 7 Percent, Okays More Big Projects’, Reuters, 12 January 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2016, from http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-planning-idUSKCN0UQ0BH20160112.
11. Remarks made by Maria Snegovaya, columnist for Vedomosti at the event Cooperation or Competition?: Chinese and Russian Eurasian Projects, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, 14 October 2015. Retrieved October 17, 2015, from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/cooperation-or-competition-chinese-and-russian-eurasian-projects/.
12. These include Toward the Great Ocean or the New Globalization of Russia (Citation2012), Toward the Great Ocean-2, or Russia’s Breakthrough to Asia (Citation2014), and Toward the Great Ocean-3: Creating Central Asia (Citation2015).
13. ‘Chinese Fund Invests in Russia’s Yamal LNG’, 1 January 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2015, from http://maritime-executive.com/article/chinese-fund-invests-in-russias-yamal-lng.
14. The document (China’s Military Strategy, Citation2015) notes that ‘some external countries are also busy meddling in South China Sea affairs; a tiny few maintain constant close-in air and sea surveillance and reconnaissance against China’.
15. In fact, the United States only has one military base in Africa, also based in Djibouti.
16. It is notable, however, that the EU member states have joined individually rather than through the structure of the EU.