Out now: China’s Complex Relations with Russia: Tracing the Limits of a “Limitless Friendship”
Beijing and Moscow are aligned when it comes to fighting the US-led world order. But beyond this common aim, there are many points of bilateral friction. In my new article, co-authored with my colleague Una Berzina-Cerenkova, I explore the limits of the Russia-China friendship.
Read the full article in English.
Read the full article in German.
“President Vladimir Putin is my closest foreign colleague and my best bosom friend, and I treasure this deep friendship with him.” Thus spoke Chinese President Xi Jinping, on a state visit to Moscow in June 2019, to describe his relationship with his Russian counterpart. US-China relations were then already at an historic low; Washington and Beijing were in the middle of a trade war. An alignment of Russia and China seemed reasonable. As an old Chinese proverb says, though, “a friend is never known till a man has need.” And a lot has happened since to put their “friendship” to a test.
Most importantly, in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a country with which China had concluded a strategic partnership. Earlier that month, Putin had secured a written agreement with Xi, which declared that the Sino-Russian friendship knew “no limits.” Ever since, China has continuously replicated Russian propaganda arguing that NATO’s enlargement constitutes a legitimate security concern of the Russian Federation, which led to the war. In a position paper published in February 2023, China fell short of identifying Russia as the aggressor—though China’s perception clearly did not fully mirror Russia’s stance.
Almost exactly four years after Xi had made his remarks quoted above, Putin certainly needed good friends. The mutiny of the Wagner Group, a private military company with close ties to Russia’s military secret service headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, undermined Putin’s authority. However, China stayed silent at first before finally issuing a statement that called the “Wagner Group Incident” a matter of “Russia’s internal affairs.”
How close, therefore, is this friendship really?
Read the full article in English.
Read the full article in German.
