Moscow and Beijing: The Uneasy Partnership

In June, shortly before his official visit to Shanghai, Russian president Vladimir Putin published a lengthy article promoting Sino-Russian cooperation on economics, energy and international security.  Such a partnership is perceived as a nightmarish prospect for Western geopolitical interests.  Indeed, the two countries have made a recent point of obstructing Western initiatives in international organizations: Russia and China have thrice exercised the rare double veto on sanctions against Syria, and China’s refusal to follow Iranian sanctions has rendered them largely ineffective. Additionally, Western interests might potentially suffer if the rapidly expanding Chinese economy guzzles Russian oil, creating greater contention in the global political arena.
Nonetheless, while it seems poetic that history’s most famous socialist powers would ally against the West, the alliance itself might not be fundamentally strong.  Although both countries are governed by shrewd leaders, they share little ideological common ground.  Richard Rousseau, chairman of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Khazar University, tells the HPR, “Russia and China’s cultures differ greatly, their interests in Central Asia will sooner or later clash, East Siberia is potentially a flash point, and China’s military buildup is frightening Moscow.”  Moreover, China gives little indication that it will consider Russian interests when determining its otherwise pragmatic, economically-driven and nationalistic foreign policy, especially given that Chinese leaders are frequently offended by the conduct of Russian political elites.
Overall, though an ideological union between Russia and China against the West seems far-fetched, the geopolitical stakes of Sino-Russian cooperation are strong enough to merit some demystification and exploration of how relations between these two giants could cause headaches for the West.
Energy Politics
In Russia, fossil fuels and political power are inextricably connected phenomena, both domestically and abroad. Over a third of government revenue is collected from Russia’s state-owned oil and gas companies, and in the foreign policy domain, Russia derives bargaining power from its overwhelming dominance in European oil and gas markets: 90 percent of European natural gas and over half of European oil flows through Russian pipelines.  Furthermore, in January 2009, a dispute with Ukraine over unpaid debts led Russia to shut down European-bound gas supplies, for which Russia suffered no serious repercussions. Even more alarming, Russia has on several occasions used its clout to cancel the construction of a Trans-Caspian Pipeline, a proposed project that would deliver oil directly from Central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia completely.
Although Russia and China both have much to gain by increasing their energy trade cooperation, they have not always cooperated on the issue. Erica Downs, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Horton China Center, tells the HPR, “The Russians wanted to construct a pipeline in the late 90s, when oil prices were low and the Russian economy needed jumpstarting, but at the time China wasn’t interested in spending money on energy security projects.  Looking at late 2002 to 2008 there was great interest on the Chinese part because their imports were growing quite rapidly, but the Russians, feeling empowered by the rise of oil process, were less interested.”
Only after the global financial crisis did hard-hit Russian oil companies and energy-thirsty China finally provide mutual support for the construction of a Sino-Russian oil pipeline.  The history of the pipeline reflects Sino-Russian energy dynamics, as both Russia and China are inclined to play the needs of the other to their own respective national advantages.  Providing further evidence for this competition of interests, the first oil pipeline to cross the Sino-Russian border, completed in January 2011, was funded largely by Chinese loans.
A Bolstered Russia
There are two potential scenarios that could play out in global politics as a result of accelerating trade on the Sino-Russian border.  In the first, less likely scenario, energy trade with China would increase geopolitical cooperation between the two countries, allowing Russia even greater leverage in international organizations.  Such a scenario is perhaps plausible in the near future, given that close economic cooperation with Russia will be critical for China to meet its rapidly growing energy demands: not only does Russia have vast oil and gas reserves, but it also has the nuclear expertise to improve China’s nuclear energy production, which is quite small relative to other developing countries.
This scenario entailing planned cooperation in geopolitics would pose a notable threat to certain Western interests. With Chinese support, Russia will retain the bargaining power necessary to veto sanctions on Syria while selling arms to Damascus.  In the same manner, China has the capacity to bolster Russia’s stance on the Iranian nuclear program, especially given that China’s resistance to complying with Iranian sanctions undermines their efficacy.
An Independent China
The second, far more likely scenario to emerge is that China benefits from improved energy security while remaining independent of Russia in foreign policy decisions.  Unlike Europe, China is unlikely to be strangled by a preponderance of energy imports from any one country. According to Downs, “The Europeans are far more dependent on Russia as a supplier of natural gas than China is on Russia as a supplier of oil.”  In fact, China’s natural gas imports from Russia are effectively nonexistent, and the rest of its energy portfolio has been strategically diversified in recent decades.  Thus, it is probable that even as a net importer of Russian oil, China will continue to act independently of Russian interests in the global arena.
Furthermore, it should not be assumed that Sino-Russian trade will grant Russia any strategic advantage over China whatsoever.  Russia certainly derives international leverage from its natural resources. Nonetheless, with China this leverage could be outweighed by dynamics that favor China.  In reality, Russia, like the United States, is dependent on Chinese imports, but lacks many of the technological advantages characteristic of the U.S. that could offer it a strategic advantage.  An article in Pravda actually questions the accuracy of the balanced trade relationship described in Putin’s article. Pravda writes: “For China, Russia has become a supplier of raw materials and metals.  In return, Russia imports technological products from China,” which reflects a Russian fear of becoming an energy appendage to China, rather than an equal trading partner.
This fear is particularly pronounced in that Russia, historically a world-leading net exporter of military technologies, is rapidly losing its advantage in even this specialized industry.  Nadiya Kravets, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, tells the HPR, “The Chinese barely import any technology from Russia.  The military technologies that Russia used to export to China, the Chinese are now able to produce themselves.  In the case of high-end technologies that the Chinese need, they are not able to get them from Russia, because the Russians themselves are not innovating fast enough.”  Accordingly, in April 2010, the Russian military imported foreign arms for the first time, signing contracts with France and Italy to import advanced military vehicles.
Accounting for the Obstructionism
Given the consistently pragmatic nature of China’s foreign policy and that Russia’s energy advantage cannot effectively pressure Chinese policymakers, both nations are unlikely to forge a strong geopolitical alliance.  Nonetheless, the two countries do share one tenant of national political philosophy that might be responsible for the false perception of them as allies: a rigid belief in absolute state sovereignty, manifested by their common obstruction of any foreign interventions proposed in international organizations such as the United Nations.
With this in mind, both giants will act similarly on certain geopolitical issues in coming years, but these joint actions do not necessarily reflect a concerted partnership.  China’s refusal to accept sanctions in Iran should therefore be interpreted simply as an independent attempt by China to bolster its energy security.  Russian opposition to intervention in Syria should, likewise, be interpreted as an attempt to maximize Russian arms exports and influence, validated by Russia’s ideological opposition to intervention in sovereign states.
To explain how this shared definition of sovereignty encourages Sino-Russian opposition to Syrian intervention, Kravets explains: “The Chinese have bandwagoned so much on Russian beliefs in part because the West has tolerated Russia acting as a great power.  However, the Chinese have bandwagoned not just because this is convenient, but also because the actually believe that the U.N. should not intervene in Syria, and that the Syrian government has to negotiate with the rebels itself to come up with some sort of peaceful solution.” As such, Russia and China will almost certainly continue to oppose certain interventionist goals in coming years, but their opposition will be independently motivated, not derived from a strategic alliance against the West.