One of the most noteworthy aspects of the May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany is how much Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized their two countries’ historical and other ties. Although Russian and Chinese officials no longer profess ideological solidarity based on a shared Marxist-Leninist ideology, their statements have displayed a remarkable harmony of ideas and expression. In practice, their political systems also more closely resemble each other, exposing shared vulnerabilities.
Chinese presidents had attended Victory Day parades in 2005 and 2010, but this was the first time that members of China’s military honor guard participated in the procession. Xi’s presence was even more visible due to the fact that almost all Western leaders boycotted the ceremony this year to protest Moscow’s involvement in Ukraine’s civil war. In the absence of a major Western leadership presence, Chinese and Russian leaders and media embraced a narrative of the two countries’ wartime partnership in Asia. In an article published in the government-run Russian Gazette, Xi praised what he described as Russian-Chinese military cooperation in “the Anti-Fascist War” against Germany and Japan. While he was in Moscow, Xi also bestowed medals on Soviet veterans of the war against Japan.
In fact, some prominent Chinese communists, including the son of Mao Zedong, did fight as volunteers in the Soviet army. But under Josef Stalin, who denigrated China and treated the Chinese Communist Party as a subservient Soviet foreign policy instrument, the Soviet Union resisted joining the Allied war against Japan until a few days before Tokyo’s surrender. Stalin’s Red Army then took advantage of Japan’s military exhaustion to seize and then loot large parts of northeast China as well as northern Korea and Japan’s Kuril Islands. Mao had to struggle for months to secure a Soviet military withdrawal; Russia continues to administer the Kurils despite Japan’s protests.
The Russian and Chinese state-run media have neglected these inconvenient truths in their current messaging. For example, the Chinese state-run daily Global Times described Xi’s presence at the Moscow celebrations as providing “spiritual support” to Putin in the face of the Western leadership boycott. Another Chinese state-run media outlet released a video a few days before Xi’s trip that recorded seemingly ordinary Chinese making complimentary comments about Russia and as well as expressing their admiration for Putin and Xi as strong leaders.
Such mutual admiration may be genuine, at least between the two countries’ leaders. Putin and Xi have met almost a dozen times at bilateral summits and on the sidelines of multinational conferences and events since Xi made Russia his first foreign destination just eight days after becoming president in March 2013. Official statements regularly use these occasions to describe bilateral ties as being their “best ever.” Russian leaders publicly welcome China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military weight in the world as an unavoidable development that in any case offers Russians many benefits. Chinese leaders have described their goal for relations with Russia as the creation of a new type of great power relationship based on “non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and common development through win-win cooperation.” Whatever their private feelings, Chinese leaders make sure to show public respect for Russia and Putin’s achievements, while the Chinese media has emphasized Xi’s knowledge of and admiration for Russian history and culture.
The Russian and Chinese governments have also described their WWII-era and current partnership as helping to prevent further military aggression, with the implicit reference being to the United States and its allies, such as Japan. However, both governments are now the most influential revisionist powers seeking to alter the U.S.-designed economic and political order created after WWII, which they see as inadequately recognizing their current status or ensuring their security and other national interests.
Citing international law, Russian and Chinese officials regularly call on all actors to respect a strict and robust interpretation of national sovereignty, equal rights and democracy in international relations among states and non-interference in countries’ internal affairs. They also call on all actors to prioritize states’ territorial integrity against ethnic or religious separatism—though to China’s unease Russia’s behavior in Ukraine has not been consistent with this principle—and to accept the primacy of the United Nations Security Council, where Moscow and Beijing enjoy veto rights, in global crisis management efforts.
Under Xi, Chinese government statements more closely resemble the anti-Western rhetoric that Moscow has adopted since around 2007, and Xi has echoed Putin in asserting that “No country should seek absolute security [for] itself at the expense of others.” Chinese leaders have also seemly given more credibility to Moscow’s warnings that the West aims to stir up “colored revolutions” and regime change through its support for friendly nongovernmental organizations and other agents of influence, whose activities have been increasingly restricted in both countries.
The Russian and Chinese political systems have arguably grown more similar under their current presidential administrations. Putin quickly suppressed the limited political and economic pluralism that emerged under the weak presidency of Boris Yeltsin, while in China, Xi has effectively ended collective leadership for many important national security decisions and assumed the kind of political power and public persona seen under China’s earlier strong leaders like Mao and Deng Xiaoping.
Yet this means that the two governments also share vulnerabilities and inefficiencies common to authoritarian regimes. They both suffer from a reluctance of lower-level officials to take initiative, for instance. Their authoritarian domestic policies and assertive foreign policies have negated efforts to promote more attractive international images; polls show both countries have lower average global approval levels than the U.S. and other Western countries. Above all, these personalized political systems under the control of a single dominant leader are vulnerable to the sudden incapacity or elimination of that leader and are prone to crises when the leader retires from the political arena, though China has had a better record in recent years in achieving the constant rotation and renewal of its political elites at least once each decade.
The Russian and Chinese leaders are moving closer in their public narratives and domestic policies due to genuine shared interests as well as artificial media manipulation. But their foreign policy cooperation still lags behind, with even the economic and defense deals announced last week in Moscow having only limited scope and application. Meanwhile, their political systems have also begun to resemble each other more closely, resulting in deep vulnerabilities that will serve as natural limits to their foreign policy adventurism.
Richard Weitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a World Politics Review senior editor. His weekly WPR column, Global Insights, appears every Tuesday.
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