The US bid to crush Russia and China economically by sanctioning them has only driven them closer, with bilateral trade between the nations reaching a new record of $227 billion in 2023.
Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Thursday for his first international visit since beginning his new term as Russia’s president. To understand the dynamics behind Russia-China cooperation and the impact of US efforts to hinder their development, respected experts in economics, international affairs, and security were consulted.
After meeting with President Xi Jinping, President Putin highlighted Russian-Chinese cooperation as “one of the main stabilizing factors in the international arena.” He emphasized that the two countries are jointly committed to upholding a fair and democratic world order, reflecting the emergence of global multipolarity.
“It is of fundamental importance that the Russia-China relationship is not opportunistic and not directed against anyone,” Putin said, noting that “Russia and China are successfully cooperating in the United Nations, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as the G20.”
“We are determined to further harmonize integration processes in the Eurasian space, to match the potentials of the Eurasian Economic Union, and, my dear friend, your One Belt One Road Initiative,” Putin told his Chinese counterpart.
On the economic front, Putin highlighted that bilateral trade reached a new record of $227 billion in 2023. He noted that Russia is climbing the ranks among China’s top trade partners, with a focus on cooperation in energy, industry, and agriculture.
Warm relations between Russia and China are crucial, and President Xi repeated Putin’s view of this, stating that a stable relationship will be “conducive to peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and the world.”
A model of mutual respect, candor, harmony, and mutual benefit, Russia-China ties have “become stronger over time,” according to Xi. They have also “stood the test of international storms and clouds.”
The Chinese leader mentioned the “Cold War mentality…unilateralism, hegemonism, bloc confrontation, and power politics” pursued by some governments today as challenges to peace and international security, while also pointing to Beijing and Moscow’s shared commitment to “fairness and justice” in relations.
“A mountain is formed by the accumulation of soil, and an ocean is created by the accumulation of water,” Xi said, using a Chinese proverb to refer to the state of Russia-China ties. “After 75 years of solid accumulation, lasting friendship and all-round cooperation between China and Russia provide a strong impetus for the two countries to forge ahead despite wind and rain,” Xi assured.
US Foreign Policy Gurus Spinning in Their Graves
Less than 48 hours have passed since the US imposed harsh new 25–100% tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods, including lithium batteries, semiconductors, solar power cells, ship-to-shore cranes, electric vehicles, medical products, and critical minerals, steel, and aluminum. This is President Putin’s 18th visit to China to date. The limits were denounced by China’s Commerce Ministry as a serious “violation” of Washington’s pledge “not to seek to suppress or contain China’s development.” The announcement came after a review of Trump-era policies that amounted to a multi-trillion-dollar US trade war against Beijing.
Sanctions against China threaten to be the final nail in the coffin of the grand strategy Washington has pursued about both countries for much of the second half of the 20th century. These sanctions complement the thousands of sanctions Washington and its allies have imposed on Russia over the past ten years. The goal of the strategy, as outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, was to keep China and Russia apart so they couldn’t combine their advantages to threaten American hegemony.
In his 1997 treatise “The Grand Chessboard,” Brzezinski wrote that “a grand coalition of China and Russia united not by ideology but by complementary grievances” would pose “the most dangerous scenario” as far as threats to US hegemony are concerned. This builds on and echoes of work begun by Kissinger in the early 1970s to institute his famous “triangular diplomacy” doctrine about Beijing and Moscow.
This tried and tested strategy appears to be being sabotaged by modern US foreign policy leaders, who have begun by sabotaging relations with Russia, staging coups along its perimeter, and ignoring Moscow’s security concerns by expanding NATO. They have also initiated a trade war, strengthened anti-China security alliances in the Asia-Pacific, provoked Beijing over Taiwan, and most recently, have flirted with the idea of transforming the AUKUS security alliance into a new anti-China “Asian NATO.”
“Both nations find themselves targeted by a long-standing, aggressive US foreign policy of encirclement and containment, making cooperation together a logical choice,” veteran foreign affairs analyst and former US Marine Brian Berletic said, commenting on the “practical and symbolic” significance of Putin’s Beijing visit.
“For many years Russia, China, and a growing list of other nations targeted by US-led sanctions have been working on alternative financial, economic, and trade mechanisms to sidestep such sanctions and continue building both national and regional self-sufficiency as well as economic strength,” Berletic explained. “These efforts have finally reached a critical mass, displacing dependence on the US dollar and allowing Russia, China, and many other nations to now insulate themselves from the impact of Western sanctions,” he emphasized.
Western attempts to use economic pressure to force countries into submission are less successful in this new world and, according to Berletic, “more likely to isolate the West itself rather than the nations it is targeting.”
The former soldier asserted that economic cooperation is essential to Russia and China’s partnership because it provides “a solid foundation for both nations to develop other essential areas of national and mutual growth,” allowing them to both elude Western attempts to contain and encircle them while also benefiting from the complementary features of one another’s economies. According to Berletic, China’s massive industrial base and Russia’s abundant natural resources “represent more than a match for the collective West’s economic power.”
Thus, he said, “the critical mass required for Russia and China’s multipolar vision to permanently overtake the US-led unipolar world order” will eventually be built through their cooperation as well as actions taken by other countries that are being targeted and pressured by the West as a whole to join this new economic pole.
On the security front too, the ex-Marine emphasized that Beijing undoubtedly recognizes Washington’s push to expand NATO to the Asia-Pacific region, resulting in “the same destabilizing and destructive effects NATO has already had across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and even as far as Central Asia. US policymakers are already crafting policies for anti-China proxies in the Asia-Pacific region such as Taiwan and the Philippines based on Washington’s use of Ukraine as a proxy against Russia in Eastern Europe.”
The more allies China has in such a security situation, the better.
Perfect Timing
Wang Yiwei, director of the People’s University of China’s Institute of International Affairs, says that Putin’s visit, which coincided with the announcement of the US tariff hike, could not have come at a better time. It gave Beijing a reliable economic partner in an unpredictable world and gave Russian producers new opportunities to increase their market share in China.
“Regardless of who comes to power in the United States after the elections, difficulties in US-China relations are most likely to persist. This relationship will continue to face many challenges. In these conditions, ensuring the stability of foreign economic cooperation and supply chains, cooperation with countries with which there is a high level of strategic mutual trust, especially with neighboring countries, is a priority area of development for China,” Wang said.
Wang notes that trade turnover between the two nations is getting close to $300 billion and feels that the possibilities for Russian-Chinese economic collaboration are truly endless. “If we take into account the potential of the two countries, I believe that there’s still room for further growth.”
As relations between China and Russia enter a “new era,” it is reasonable to anticipate that collaboration will spread into other fields, such as agriculture. Wang says this is the right time to do it.
“It’s well-known that Russia is a large exporter of agricultural goods, and while China previously mainly purchased agricultural products from the United States, the negative impact of customs duties by the American side has forced the country to look for new reliable exporters,” he explained.
Wang underlined that in terms of commerce in an era of global economic instability, Russia and China are a match made in heaven, noting that their capacity to steadily and safely trade overland rather than by sea affords them the chance to significantly “reduce risks in global trade.”
Undermining the Dollar
According to Thomas W. Pauken II, a seasoned author, trade and economics expert, and Asia-Pacific affairs consultant, Washington’s attempts to use punitive economic tools to limit the development of China and Russia may appear to be the best way to limit both nations’ growth, but they are counterproductive and threaten the very foundations upon which America’s economic prosperity rests.
“Because of sanctions, the dollar actually ends up getting hurt because people are going to be a little bit more reluctant to use the dollar if there are threats of sanctions. Countries have to adapt, and they have to figure out ways to do cross-border trade and financial transactions without relying on the US dollar,” Pauken said.
“So we’re going to see a growing trend of more countries finding ways to support cross-border trade and international financial transactions outside the US dollar, such as, maybe not using Swift as much, but trying to set up new technologies to improve, to have bank wires that are not really connected to the US and not connected to the US dollar. So we’re going to see more of that, but it’s going to take time for this technology to develop so that it becomes very efficient. I would anticipate it’s going to take another 3 to 5 years for countries to adapt to the new ways of trading without the US dollar,” the observer predicted.
Regarding the short-term potential for China-Russian cooperation, Pauken stated that areas to truly keep an eye on in the upcoming years include energy, agriculture, and technology. The observer said, “These kinds of agreements are going to create a much stronger partnership.”
In the long run, that will strengthen both nations’ resilience.
As recently reported by GreatGameIndia, Putin’s gold strategy, implemented in early 2022 by tying the value of the ruble to gold, has successfully countered sanctions, aided by Russia’s status as the world’s second-largest producer of gold.
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