News Highlights:
- Recently, China and Russia unveiled a broad, long-term blueprint for their deepening relations.
- Both Countries pledged to work together to push back against the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy and attempt to “politicise” multilateral platforms.
China-Russia Relations:
- Historical Background:
- Relations between China and the former Soviet Union were frosty, marked by mistrust and doctrinal differences for most of the Cold War decades.
- The change came in 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit China since Nikita Khrushchev in 1958.
- Russia and China declared “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence” as the basis of their bilateral relations.
- USSR disintegration
- A decade after the Soviet Union broke up, disappointed and humiliated by the way the West had downgraded it and deep in an economic crisis, Russia turned to China.
- In 2001, the close relations between the two countries were formalised with the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a twenty-year strategic, economic, and controversially implicit military treaty.
- Latest developments:
- The United States sanctions against Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea helped push Russia to a warmer relationship with China.
- This was also the turning point in Russia’s ties with China, which revealed the relationship’s possibilities, potential, and limits.
- Russia opened its doors wide for Chinese investments. It struck a USD 400 billion deal for Gazprom, the Russian state monopoly gas exporter, to supply 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) annually to China for 30 years from 2025.
- Earlier in January 2022, the two countries signed a deal for another pipeline, Power of Siberia 2, which will add 10 bcm of gas to the annual supply for 30 years.
- Trade and Infrastructure:
- Since 2016, trade between the two countries has gone from USD 50 bn to over USD 147 bn.
- China is now Russia’s largest trading partner. Towards a modus vivendi in Central Asia, the two countries agreed to work towards speeding up the linking of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
- The implication of the Ukraine crisis:
- With their ties closer than ever, the Ukraine crisis has allowed each country to express solidarity with the other’s grievance against the US.
- The recent joint statement backed the Russian opposition to any expansion of the Western military alliance in Europe.
- Russia reaffirmed support for the One-China principle and opposed any form of independence for Taiwan.
- The statement also hit “against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region” and “the negative impact” of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
Russia & China’s difference in interest:
- No formal security alliance
- As several observers have pointed out, the China-Russia compact is neither a formal security alliance against the West nor a romantic partnership.
- China’s abstain in UNSC:
- Back in March 2014, in the vote on UN Security Council resolutions on the referendum in Crimea.
- China had abstained — despite the recent bonhomie and has not recognised Crimea’s accession to Russia.
- The difference in Security interests:
- China’s main security interests lie in Asia; Russia’s are in Europe.
- From Russia’s demands in ongoing negotiations with the West, it is clear that Russia is seeking to restructure European security.
- Russia seeks to be a great power:
- Russia, which wants to be recognised as a great power again, has positions independent of China on many issues, including its relationship with India.
- Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a tenth of China’s as a smaller economy.
- Still, with a strong memory of its lost superpower status, Russia is unwilling to become China’s junior partner.
- China’s hard bargain
- China drives a hard bargain. Russia is conscious that its gas exports to Germany and the rest of Europe get much more revenue, and China has other pipelines to tap.
- China EU trade:
- China and the EU are each other’s biggest trading partners — China’s trade with Russia is small by comparison.
- China will not fight the war if it breaks out, but it will find negotiating messy and complicated.
China-Russia relations’ Impact on India:
- Balancing power:
- India is faced with issues in handling relations between an ancient enemy and an old friend, while the warming China-Russia relationship undermines the Western-led world system.
- Defence relationship with Russia:
- The Sino-Russian partnership’s effects on the India-Russia defence relationship, a crucial fulcrum of relations between New Delhi and Moscow, essentially motivate India’s interests.
- According to the theory, strengthening Sino-Russian strategic and commercial ties and India’s strategic and security cooperation with the US could lead Russia to lose interest in future defence supplies and possibly halt crucial deliveries of equipment and spare parts during emergencies.
- Increased military cooperation between China and Russia due to the alliance could endanger Indian security by enhancing their military prowess.
- China’s growing influence:
- The necessity to limit China’s growing influence in the region apprises Indian foreign policy in Eurasia.
- There are numerous economic and security convergences between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union program and India’s outreach to Central Asia, especially on counterterrorism.
Way Forward:
- India should rebalance its defence imports to reduce the risk associated with reliance on a single source, according to an essential lesson learned from the situation in Ukraine.
- As China gains significance for Russia, it is crucial to preserve the strength of that country’s relationship with India to counterbalance its growing economic reliance on Beijing.
- India has great potential to help and supplement the Russian economy in general. It also has reasons for wanting to continue having access to Russian energy and defence supplies.
Pic Courtesy: The Hindu
Content Source: The Hindu