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More than neighbours, less than friends?

Pallavi Aiyar

The relationship between China and Russia is tactical rather than strategic. This allows them to cooperate where possible and compete where necessary.

CHINESE PRESIDENT Hu Jintao's three-day visit to Russia beginning on Monday brings into focus the shape of bilateral ties between the world's second largest exporter of oil and its second largest consumer. As two giant-sized neighbours with a border stretching thousands of kilometres, China and Russia have historically had a close, if tumultuous relationship. Communist allies turned rivals, the two countries were hostile to each other for much of the second half of the 20th century. Recent years, however, have led to a rapprochement with the deepening of military, security, and energy cooperation. More often than not, Beijing and Moscow have also found themselves allying with each other on international issues.

In August of 2005 Russian and Chinese armed forces carried out joint military exercises for the first time in decades only a few months after the two Presidents announced that it was their joint intention to oppose a unipolar world. A year earlier in October 2004 the neighbours had also resolved all lingering disputes over their 4,300-km-long border. Their joint leadership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) moreover has added an extra dimension to bilateral ties.

Chinese state media have announced that deals for oil, ships, buses, steel, and real estate worth a weighty $4.3 billion will be signed during Mr. Hu's visit. A political document will also be issued elaborating bilateral ties and clarifying joint stances on a range of international concerns from reform of the United Nations to the nuclear issues related to North Korea and Iran.

In the run-up to his visit, Mr. Hu declared that China-Russia ties were at "their highest ever level." Much political capital has, in fact, been invested in imbuing the Chinese President's trip with a positive momentum. Nonetheless, beneath the upbeat rhetoric, deep-seated suspicions and conflicts of interest mean that even in the newly sweetened atmosphere Russia and China make for uncomfortable bedfellows. Their cooperation thus remains opportunistic and tactical rather than truly strategic. While in the short term a convergence of some interests has helped them to put to rest the overt hostility that characterised ties in the previous century, in the long term it remains far from clear whether a true Russia-China partnership is sustainable.

Three main areas of China-Russia cooperation have emerged in recent years, two bilateral and one multilateral: energy, military, and the SCO.

Russia is China's largest supplier of weapons. Exports of arms to its southern neighbour comprise almost half of Russia's total sales abroad. Since 2000 China has bought a range of Russian weapons including fighter aircraft, submarines, and destroyers amounting to an average of $2 billion annually. Yet underlining the continued suspicions that Moscow harbours towards an increasingly powerful Beijing, Russia has consistently refused to sell its most sophisticated state-of-the-art military technologies to China. Moreover, Moscow does not sell Beijing assault hardware such as tanks or multiple launch rocket systems. China is unhappy that Russia has no such reservations vis-à-vis India.

Similarly, China is unhappy at foot-dragging on Russia's part when it comes to stepping up energy cooperation from its current levels. Russian oil, in fact, only makes up some eight per cent of the total Chinese imports. The Persian Gulf and Africa continue to be far more significant sources of energy for China.

Moreover, Moscow has often actively worked to scupper China's attempts to invest in Russian energy interests. For example in 2002 the Russian Parliament prevented a bid from the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to acquire Slavneft, a major oil producer, even though CNPC was willing to pay 75 per cent more than the winning Russian bid.

The two sides have in recent years begun to talk about constructing oil and gas pipelines from Russia to feed both China's western Xinjiang province as well as its north-eastern areas. The Russians have, however, remained non-committal on specifics, frustrating the Chinese. Last year China's then top energy planner Zhang Guobao called the slow movement on pipeline construction "regrettable." Even on specified and agreed upon commitments Russia has failed to deliver. Thus, last year Russia delivered only 10 million tonnes of the 15 million tonnes of oil it had pledged to China, ostensibly due to "technical difficulties."

As a result, China does not view Russia as a stable long-term energy supplier and is working hard to diversity its sources. For natural gas Beijing is looking to Australia and Indonesia, for oil to its African and West Asian suppliers. Crucially, China is also extending energy cooperation with Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan. For Moscow, the growing cosiness between the Central Asian republics — which it has long considered as rightfully belonging to a Russian sphere of influence — and Beijing is cause for alarm.

The joint participation of China, Russia, and four Central Asian countries in the SCO sets out the real nature of the new Beijing-Moscow collaboration. The SCO provides a forum for the two to send out a clear signal that U.S. influence in the region is far from unchallenged and a platform for the demonstration of the "multipolar world" both Moscow and Beijing advocate.

At the same time, there are limits to the substantive nature of this alliance. The Central Asian republics continue to play off China and Russia against the U.S. when it suits them. Moreover for Beijing ties with the U.S. with whom trade stands at over $200 billion are deeply important despite a range of ongoing disagreements. It is extremely doubtful that China is interested in forming a genuine anti-U.S. alliance with Russia, a country with which its trade stands at just over $33 billion and which it hardly views as trustworthy.

China's interest in the SCO comes more from the markets and energy sources in Central Asia that the forum helps it access. For Russia, its participation in the SCO allows it to keep an eye on China's wooing of countries in its backyard while providing it with a notional counterbalance to the U.S. This gives Moscow a certain strategic flexibility. Thus, ultimately Russia and China have different objectives for their participation in the SCO beyond a sketchy consensus on the undesirability of American "hegemony."

For Russia, long used to being the superior power, the rise of China and with it the prospect of being relegated to junior partner in the relationship is one to be avoided at all costs. For China, Russia is simply one of several important powers it is trying to maintain friendly relations with. Moreover, Beijing is aware that Moscow is at best wary and at worst jealous of its growing power, and is thus always likely to be unpredictable.

This is not to imply that none of the developments in recent years that have deepened cooperation across the border is significant. With a settled boundary, growing — albeit still modest — trade and shared positions on a range of international issues, the China-Russia relationship in the 21st century is indeed at a "high point" as leaders in both countries often point out. However, none of the improvements amounts to a genuine "alliance." In many ways, the current China-Russia equation has a parallel in the China-India relationship. Growing trade and an improved political environment have led to a definite upswing in India-China ties but mutual suspicions linger and a lack of fundamental commonality in geopolitical objectives prevents the emergence of a substantive partnership.

It is perhaps indicative of a new post-cold war order, that nations such as China, India, and Russia are purposefully pursuing tactical cooperation that enables them to maintain an "independent" foreign policy, rather than a long-term strategic partnership that ties them down to a set of predetermined commitments that would limit their options. As these countries begin to grow in economic clout, tactical cooperation allows them the room for manoeuvre. This allows them to take decisions based on judgments of national interest on a case-by-case basis, cooperating where possible and competing where necessary. It is within this context that China-Russia relations should be viewed, as neither a full-bodied anti-western alliance nor an empty and fragile relationship liable to collapse at any moment. Rather it is the tactical coming together of two large, important, and ambitious neighbours who while cooperating in the pursuit of certain common goals simultaneously hold other objectives that may be in conflict. This is not an easy balance to achieve but both countries have much at stake and neither would benefit from a deterioration of ties. Thus ensuring a certain stability to what remains a contradiction-ridden relationship is in the national interest of both China and Russia.

Mr. Hu's visit will be the latest in a series of measures intended to aid the task of containing nascent tensions and guaranteeing that the China-Russia relationship remains on an even keel for the foreseeable future.

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