The Russian-Chinese asymmetry

Photo: Michał Zieliński

And China? When did you first start taking an interest in it?

Similarly, in 2006, I went on a continental trip to China via the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was a great lesson in humility, as the trip was a complete cognitive disaster. I stayed there for two months and saw a lot, but I didn’t understand anything about the country. I spoke two words of Chinese, and I had a lot of difficulties as a traveller. As they usually do, these difficulties stemmed from not knowing the language, the cultural codes, or both. I was tormented by the fact that I knew nothing about the country and was aware of my ignorance. Later, as a student of Far Eastern studies, when I began to familiarise myself with the basics of Confucianism, I learnt that the path of the sage (I am far from being a sage!) starts with feeling ashamed of being a simpleton and wanting to change that. I felt that shame. I realised that I was an ignorant backpacker.

Let us move on to the main thread of our conversation, Chinese-Russian relations. Can the process of China gaining an advantage over Russia be considered finished? Can we point to a specific moment when this advantage began and became permanent?

These are difficult questions, especially regarding the origins of this process. One such defining moment was 2008 and the global economic crisis that hit Russia, ending a period of optimism that had existed since the early years of Vladimir Putin’s rule. The source of that optimism was the belief that Russia had regained its position as a superpower based on energy commodities. The crisis was a severe blow to Russia. It hit Russia even harder than the West, where it is still remembered today. China, on the other hand, emerged from this crisis strengthened. From this point onwards, this Russian-Chinese asymmetry was clearly visible.

What happened next, in the second decade of the 21st century?

Between 2008 and 2012 we observed some hesitation on the part of Russia, which can be viewed as a continuation of its previous policies. Since 1991 Russia has not been able to clearly define whether it is more afraid of China or more willing to cooperate with it. During Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, we saw a reset of relations with the West on the one hand, and a deepening of ties with China on the other. All that time, however, one could speak of a certain dichotomy in Russia’s approach to China. Then came the breakthrough. The protests on Bolotnaya Square in Russia, Putin’s return as president in 2012, and Xi Jinping’s rise to power in China all happened in the same year. At that moment, Russia bet on China, burying its fears of being dominated, exploited and reduced to the role of a vassal.

In other words, it has not entirely gotten rid of them.

Yes. They are still there today, just hidden away. One day, they will re-emerge. However, Russia decided that it was the West, or more precisely the United States, that was the threat. And if that is the case, Chinese domination has to be accepted, especially since it has certain advantages for Russia.

Then, maybe, we should name these advantages…

China’s primary advantage over Russia is that it is an adversary of the United States. The second advantage is that China respects Russia. That is why Russians can claim equal relations with them, as both countries describe themselves as superpowers. Russia is a big power. China does not publicly humiliate Russia, in fact, it supports it, it does not condemn killings, and it treats them as an internal Russian matter. Hence, Russia gradually acquiesced to various things under the guise of equality in perceived relations. In reality, however, they were already increasingly dominated by China.

What are the examples of that domination?

The ETSO oil pipeline is one example and the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, is another. The overall Russian approach to the Russian Far East has also changed. As recently as 20 years ago, the Russians were saying that the Chinese would invade Siberia, but nothing like that happened. On an ideological level, the strategic partnership between the two countries was signed as early as 1996, and appended in 2019 with the phrase “for the New Era” (in Chinese: 新时代, xin shidai), which is Xi Jinping’s main slogan. It is hard not to notice the asymmetry here since Xi Jinping’s idea has now been written into the official formula of Russian-Chinese relations. Once upon a time, it was the Chinese who had to glorify Stalin, and 70 years later, these are the Russians who have to glorify Xi. Nevertheless, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has concluded the process of China gaining hegemony over Russia.

Why?

For many years, economic ties with Asia were an insurance policy for Russia, an emergency exit in case of the collapse of Russia’s relations with the West. But this is the first time anyone in the Kremlin has thought these relations would crumble to such a degree. The scale of sanctions and “de-Russification” in the West took Russia by surprise. In March 2022, Dmitri Trenin (Russian political scientist – editor’s note) wrote outright that the Russians did not expect the Germans to behave as they did. In other words, Trenin’s writing shows the extent of the Russian elite’s surprise at the West’s reaction, and it was at this point the Asian insurance policy was pulled out. The Russians had to accept China’s terms and, in the case of oil, India’s. These conditions are much worse than what Russia had with the West, but in Russia’s view, the most important thing now is to win the war, and then somehow, they hope to make a deal with the West. As a result, they have to cosy up to the dragon as if it were their choice and pleasure.

And what did the dragon do about it?

The dragon, in Asian reserved manner, embraced and accepted the courtship, yet did so warily. The Chinese keep their distance but will issue the cheque sooner or later. Maybe not now, because for China, Russia is important in the competition with the US. One Chinese analyst (Wang Xiaoquan) called Russia “half the sky” (半边天, ban bian tian), referring to China’s security. In other words, as long as the US is China’s problem, Russia will come in handy on many levels, from the geographical to the psychological.

In your recent book, you disprove China’s alleged threat to Siberia. This issue, however, comes up from time to time during discussions on Russian-Chinese relations. Is Siberia not an object of territorial ambitions for China?

The Chinese currently have no territorial claims there. But at the same time, China remembers that in the past, a part of Siberia was Chinese. But it is not a clear-cut situation, because this part of Siberia was, in fact, not Chinese but Manchurian. It is a subtle but important difference. There is a feeling that these territories were unjustly taken in the 19th century. So, we have two issues overlapping here. On the one hand, the Chinese are not planning to reconquer Siberia. On the other, they feel that the loss of that land was unjust. What is more important, however, is why China will refrain from trying to get these territories back. It is the issue of security, which I referred to earlier by invoking the quote “half the sky” metaphor. What would any hostile action in Siberia give the Chinese? Under any scenario, the Chinese would come out with Russia hostile to them, meaning they would lose half the sky. On top of that, Taiwan is the most important issue for China. Then there are the islands in the South China Sea. Then there are other areas that in the minds of the Chinese are as secondary as Siberia, and which would be much easier to recapture. Mongolia, for example, is one such territory. Northern Myanmar is another example. The same can be said with parts of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. If the Chinese were interested in this, they have many places to choose from that are emotionally as important as Siberia but are much weaker. The Chinese also do not need new territories or to reclaim old ones. Naturally, they have a great thirst for prestige and status, but they do not need conquering territories, they are not Russia. If we look at China’s actions towards the Russian Far East, they contradict the logic of reconquest, because China mainly exploits these territories economically. They extract timber, fish and other raw materials. They are plundering the area, just as they do in northern Laos. These are not the actions of a country that wants to conquer parts of another.

Then there is the question of colonisation and the occupation of the territories in this way rather than through armed force.

This approach is a myth and a very silly one at that. No matter how much data you can provide someone with, some people still cannot be convinced. When I went to Siberia in 2006, I also thought millions of Chinese were there. To my surprise, they were not.

At all?

There were between 200,000 and 400,000 Chinese in Siberia. I suspect that today this number is closer to 200,000. Let’s remember that the 1990s migration was economic. Migration flows almost always take place from poorer countries to richer ones, except in emergencies such as wars. Back then, Russia was indeed still richer than China. But this is no longer the case. Northeast China is one of the poorest regions in the country, but still, the people there are more prosperous than the Russians. So Russia is not attractive to them anymore. In Poland, we often root for China to take something away from Russia, which is foolish. I prefer Russia to focus on the East for as long and as closely as possible. If the Chinese took Siberia, we would have a problem because Russia reacts badly to the loss of territory. It would make it all the more interested in making up for the loss in another part of the world. In this case, our national Russophobia harms us because it prevents us from seeing and understanding our own national interests.

You devote a lot of space in your book to intercultural relations and differences. However, does this process of rapprochement between Russia and China influence any cultural exchanges and mutual perceptions between the two nations?

The geography of the brain drain in Russia forces people to go either to Moscow, St. Petersburg or Vladivostok or, internationally if they live in Siberia/Russian Far East to South Korea, Japan and China. In this context, the “Asianisation” of Russia is a natural process. Many Asian countries have developed and it is normal that now people are going there to look for work. On top of that, there are also some quite mundane issues, like holidays in Thailand. It is a very interesting cultural change, as Russians had an Orientalist approach toward Asia for years. On the one hand, they had a chip on their shoulders regarding the West, presenting themselves as something distinct, trying to turn their weakness into strength. Towards Asia, on the other hand, they behaved like the worst European chauvinists, behaving as if saying “We are civilisation, and you are savages”. A copy-paste version of western colonialism.

Is the rise of China at the expense of Russia something positive from the point of view of Central and Eastern Europe? After all, it is not so desirable from the perspective of the US, as China and the US compete with each other. If so, there is a fundamental split at the strategic level between countries such as Poland, and the United States, which will expect its Central European allies to take a stand on Taiwan in line with American interests. 

With regard to the American issue I agree only in part. On the one hand, I believe Poland should not allow itself to be dragged into the potential conflict surrounding Taiwan. The occupation of Taiwan by China would be the end of pax americana and would have bad consequences for Poland (see below) as well yet it would not mean the end of the world for Poland. And here we have an apparent contradiction in US-Polish interests, as the US would like all its allies to be prepared to die for Taipei. On the other hand, potential aggression on Taiwan would automatically deteriorate our strategic position. This is because China, as part of its feud with the United States, is giving Russia a free pass in our world. For them, Russia always comes first in these calculations. Therefore, if necessary, the Chinese will sacrifice us without a blink of an eye. Therefore, this Sino-Russian entente is not good for us. It undermines the international order that we live in and may not be entirely happy about it, but it is one that is fundamentally beneficial to us. This order restrains Russia and allows us to develop. So, the intentions to change this order – which is what China wants and is pursuing evolutionarily – are bad for us. The moment the Chinese launch an attack on Taiwan and the Americans move to its rescue, the Russians will use it to profit from the hegemon’s distraction.

Nevertheless, the Chinese are trying to recognise these smaller pawns on the chessboard in the form of Central and Eastern European countries and have been trying to develop relations with them for some time. So far, however, the track record of Chinese efforts in this part of the world since the beginning of Xi Jinping’s rule has been rather unspectacular. The expectation at that time was that China would come here with a strategy that it would successively and meticulously implement. Meanwhile, we have seen more of a trial-and-error approach.

Let me start with the mental aspect. Outside the bubble of sinologists and China-watchers, hardly anyone knows China. Many positive and negative stereotypes about China still circulate. Perhaps the most famous example to illustrate China’s perceived far-reaching planning is when the Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was asked in 1972 what he thought of the impact of the French Revolution, to which he replied that not enough time had passed since. Meanwhile, he was referring to the 1968 student revolt in Paris, which is described in Chinese using the same phrase, geming, revolution. So, he was referring to an event from a few years ago and not 200. The myth, nevertheless, remains and persists. My point here is that China often serves as an analytical shortcut to encapsulate one’s dreams and fears. As for China’s activity in Central Europe, the 16+1 format alone showed how unfamiliar the Chinese are with the region. Artificially linking the Baltics, the Western Balkans, while at the same time excluding Belarus and Ukraine, makes no sense. They have treated it as the Global South, which is OK for me, but many Eastern Europeans would find it insulting. This Chinese bid turned out to be ill-tailored entirely to the needs of countries such as Poland, because where the Chinese wanted to be present they were restricted by EU laws, making them uncompetitive. They were able to achieve some success where the EU law did not restrict them, i.e. in the Western Balkan countries that are outside the EU, namely Serbia, Montenegro and to a lesser extent Albania. China also marked its presence in Hungary as a result of a purely political decision by Viktor Orbán, who needed China for his games with the EU. Later, Greece was added to this format, which economically put it in a position where it was easier for the Chinese to lease the port of Piraeus. In principle, the weaker countries agreed more to the Chinese terms of cooperation, but these tended to be countries on the periphery of the region. In contrast, the countries at the centre of the region generally remained quite distanced from the Chinese project. Poland had its moment of enthusiasm in 2014-2015, which quickly became disillusionment when it became apparent that nothing particularly significant would come and that there were no clear benefits of cooperation. Then came the period of the presidency of Donald Trump, who told us to “choose”. Notably, Trump came after the disillusionment, making the choice easier.

But this was not the case for Lithuania…

Lithuania is an interesting example. The question is, was their Taiwan gamble a good decision? I come across extremely different assessments of this issue. Economically, it probably lost out. The Chinese took revenge on the Lithuanians through Germany by imposing a sanction that hit the Lithuanians hard. This was something the Lithuanians did not expect. Bilaterally, they expected some minor losses as Lithuanian-Chinese trade was by no means large. But the Chinese targeted the Germans and that hurt Lithuanians. From a security perspective, on the other hand, I was once told that the Lithuanians were much better informed than Poland by the Americans about Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s actions when he unleashed the migrant crisis on Belarus’s borders with Lithuania and Poland. The rejection of Chinese cooperation was undoubtedly a spectacular move on Lithuania’s part, but it remains to be seen whether it was definitely worthwhile. From another perspective, when I lived in Taiwan in 2022, everyone now knows Lithuania. I had the opportunity to teach students in Taipei and tell them about the historical Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and it turned out that for them, Lithuania was the better known country.

I am looking for a way to close our conversation. The conclusion that emerges is that the Russian-Chinese alliance is resilient to shocks and can be regarded as something sustainable in rather uncertain times, at least until there is a significant reshuffle in the world. Is this cooperation really so resistant to change?

At the end of the book I wrote that this Sino-Russian relationship could change radically if the Chinese suddenly go mad and start exaggerating. And now they are exaggerating a bit. They recently published a map of China on which the Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island (Heixiazi dao), now Russian-Chinese, is marked on the map as Chinese. The context is that, according to international law, this island should belong to China as it lies closer to the Chinese shore, but at the time of the delimitation of the border, Russia requested several exceptions and this was one of them, stemming from the fact that the island lies close to Khabarovsk. The Chinese agreed to this as part of a compromise in 2004, as they did with Abaigatu, another island that should also be all-Chinese but is Russian-Chinese. At the time, nationalist circles considered this to be a concession going too far. It was quickly hushed down but, the sentiment remained.

Why are the Chinese dragging this out now?

I do not know why it was published this way. Territories of other countries, such as India, were treated in the same way on these maps. So it is not clear whether this is an example of a grassroots initiative that went too far or whether it is part of some larger game, where the Chinese try to see how far they can go. If this is part of a wider game, it would contradict the image of the Chinese as stone-cold players, devoid of emotion. They have nationalists too, and Sinocentrism is a powerful force that the authorities need to restrain. This map contradicts what the Chinese have done so far with Russia. And so far, they have managed to keep Russian fears at bay. At the same time, it is a bit pointless, because half of the two islands is not worth teasing Russia over.

Michał Lubina is an associate professor of political science at the Institute of the Middle and Far East at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is the author of ten books, three on Russia-China, including Niedźwiedź w objęciach smoka. Jak Rosja została młodszym bratem Chin (Bear in the embrace of a dragon. How Russia became the younger brother of China) published in 2022.

Maciej Makulski is a contributing editor with New Eastern Europe.