The recent trip by the Chinese president highlighted the strained and asymmetrical nature of the relationship between Beijing and Moscow.Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Moscow on 20–22 March 2023 was the first meeting of the two leaders that either has hosted since Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Despite the effusive public respect that always marks their summits, it revealed mismatches in power and interests exacerbated by war and exposed tension between Russia’s needs and China’s choices.
Russia’s war against Ukraine now dominates its resources and attention. Moscow is increasingly organising every aspect of domestic and foreign policy around this. The war has also laid bare Russia’s weakness in every domain of power: military, informational, cyber and economic. Russia is more diplomatically isolated and sanctioned than at any point during the Cold War and its leader is an indicted war criminal. Rarely has the test of war changed perceptions of a major power so quickly and drastically. With a diminished capacity and narrowed focus, Russia is behaving like a regional power.
By contrast, China has a global portfolio of major interests. Some it shares with Russia, especially the desire to form a bloc against Western power. They also share a paranoia of ‘colour revolution’ regime change – a concern highlighted in the joint statement that concluded Xi’s visit. To this end, China is now reportedly helping Russia to block YouTube, a major source of anti-war digital content.
But China retains strong economic interests in relations with the West, which it must balance its Russia relationship. This means that China will probably not be willing to incur significant costs or risks to support Russia’s war. In this sense, it falls far short of being an ally.
The Russia–China joint statement exposed these differences in at least four ways. Firstly, near the beginning it notes that Russia ‘firmly supports’ China’s position over Taiwan, and any actions it might take to ‘protect its state sovereignty and territorial integrity’. In the very last section, below the language on biodiversity, Russia merely ‘welcomes China’s readiness to play a positive role’ in ending the war in Ukraine. The power asymmetry in this uneven commitment to respective priorities is clear.
Secondly, reflecting Chinese concerns that Russia could escalate to nuclear use, the two countries reaffirmed the January 2022 five-power declaration that a nuclear war ‘cannot be won and should never be fought’. They also agreed that nuclear states should not deploy nuclear weapons outside their national territories. Yet two days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would do in Belarus. This will not have pleased Xi.
Thirdly, the statement calls for greater economic cooperation, especially in combatting trade protectionism and defending the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Yet Russia is uncompetitive on most WTO-regulated trade with China. Indeed, the week before Xi arrived in Moscow, Russian fibre-optic cable producers called for higher tariffs to protect them from cheaper Chinese imports. But most significant of all, China is posing as a mediator, not an ally, in the war. Putin said he had ‘carefully reviewed’ the 12-point peace plan that China published on the anniversary of the invasion. His failure to endorse it runs much deeper than any reservations about its details. For Russia, a ‘great power’ – a term at the core of its national identity – decides its own fate. Its fate is not mediated by others.
While the two leaders probably agreed more than they made public, there was no apparent final deal on the Power of Siberia 2 natural-gas pipeline despite Putin’s claim that the details were almost agreed. He is eager to launch the project because it would enable him to redirect gas eastward that once flowed to Europe. Nor did China recognise the annexation of Crimea or of the four additional areas of Ukraine over which Russia asserted sovereignty in September 2022.
Russia’s position is weak: it believes it can win a long, attritional war but, as the West provides growing support to Ukraine and imposes more sanctions on Russia, it increasingly needs China’s help to do so. It has nowhere else to go. It can sell China more energy and some advanced technology and cooperate on building transport infrastructure. But Russia is an unpredictable partner with relatively little to offer.
China’s position is correspondingly strong. It can bargain hard on economic issues, as it did in reaching favourable terms for the first Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline in May 2014 after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine. But its overriding interest is for the war to end quickly before its risks escalate. Yet it is unclear what pressure China is willing or able to impose on Russia to achieve this. While the defeat of a fellow authoritarian regime by a Western-backed state would set a profoundly unwelcome precedent, China risks prolonging the war and alienating the West if it provides militarily useful support to Russia to stave off its defeat. And at present it is only a half-mediator, presenting a ‘peace plan’ but engaging at the highest level only with China, not Ukraine.
The contrast with Putin’s exuberant visit to Beijing in February 2022 is stark. Then, the Sino-Russian ‘friendship without limits’ – a formula not reiterated last week – appeared stronger than ever. Last week’s summit, to which China sent an unexpectedly small delegation, was, in the words of veteran Kremlin correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov, ‘joylessly warm’. A year of war has not brought the two countries closer. On the contrary, it is a more uneasy relationship: Russia is more desperate, while China faces more dilemmas.
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