China-Russia relations: Xi wears the trousers

“Putin is coming here to demand from Xi:  x, y, and z….” reported a correspondent from one of the 24-hour international news channels ahead of the Xi/Putin meeting in Uzbekistan. 

Demand? “Beg” might be a better word, except Putin doesn’t really do begging. Perhaps we can settle on “Ask”.

So, it’s reasonable to assume that at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO) meeting in Samarkand he asked the Chinese President to buy more gas, oil, and coal. He will have asked Xi to keep paying in roubles and yuan to keep up the foreign reserves. He probably also asked if Xi could perhaps supply Russia with some replacements for the industrial scale of military equipment it has so carelessly lost these past six months. If so, the response will have been: “Yes, yes, and, not a hope in hell”.

China will not cut Russia adrift, but nor will it overtly break U.S. sanctions against Russia and so risk having similar restrictions placed on itself. Beijing is quite happy to buy the Russian oil and gas that Europe is trying to wean itself off, especially at the prices Putin is offering. It can pay in yuan because that helps boost it as an international currency. And if Russia consumers become reliant on Chinese goods – so much the better. Four weeks from his probable coronation for a third term at the 20th Party Congress, and one week after the Russian retreat from Kharkiv is not the time for Xi to be handing out favours to the man whose reckless war of choice has damaged the long-term plan for a new world order to overturn the post WWII governing architecture.

China, with Russia as a junior partner, was going to weaken NATO, split the EU, and cow the Americans. Instead, Putin has managed to reinvigorate all three and keep the US wedded to the defence of Europe at a time when it was beginning to drift. What is Mandarin for “Nice work Vladimir”?

In the short term, all Putin can get from Xi is money to keep the Ukraine war effort going, and relatively bland statements about the conflict. China has blamed NATO for causing the invasion of Ukraine but has stopped short of endorsing it.

However, Beijing does not want Russia to be roundly defeated, nor for Putin to be deposed. A weakened Russia means a less useful ally and a strengthened West able to focus on China more closely. An alternative to Putin is unlikely to be a democrat or pro-Western, but they might be a person the West “could do business with”. China also values Russian support at the UN Security Council. And so, Beijing treads a fine line.

The balancing act was on display in Samarkand. Xi said “China is willing to work with Russia to play a leading role in demonstrating the responsibility of major powers, and to instil stability and positive energy into a world in turmoil,” 

“Responsibility…stability….positive energy” you say? It’s difficult to see where the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state fits with that – as Xi well knows.  

Putin made the best of it. “We highly value the balanced position of our Chinese friends when it comes to the Ukraine crisis,” he told Xi, on this their 39^th meeting. He then revealed that China had “questions and concern” about the situation in Ukraine, but quickly moved on without explaining what this entailed. Perhaps Xi’s remarks were enough explanation.

Those remarks will have gone down well with Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian Republics in the SCO. Like Ukraine, they too are former Soviet territories, in effect, part of the 20th Century version of the Russian Empire. They have refused to support Moscow’s invasion. Kazakhstan, which has a large ethnically Russian minority population, is particularly concerned. En-route to Samarkand, Xi stopped off in Kazakhstan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will have been pleased with Xi’s remark at the SCO that “China will always support Kazakhstan in maintaining national independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”. China, which invests heavily in Central Asia as part of its global Belt and Road economic plan, does not want Moscow questioning Kazakhstan’s “territorial integrity” or indeed anyone else’s.

Pre-Ukraine, it was clear that China was the dominant partner in the China/Russia relationship. The war has magnified this and increased Beijing’s leverage over Moscow. Russia is busy forfeiting a degree of its strategic autonomy in return for a lifeline from sanctions. It hasn’t just shot itself in the foot – it’s shot itself in its sovereignty.

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