RUSSIA-CHINA: Different Objectives For A Multi-Polar World

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Apr 25 1997 (IPS) - Russia and China have sent a powerful joint message to the self-declared ‘global policemen’ who would rule the post Cold War ‘New World Order’.

One major result of Chinese president President Jiang Zemin’s current five day visit to Moscow, has been a joint pledge of support for a ‘multi-polar world’, dominated by no single bloc or ‘superpower’. No names were mentioned, but the list of suspects was short — the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

However Russian observers have warned that Russia has more to gain from China than vice-versa, and urge Moscow not to tie itself to Bejing’s agenda in hopes of propping up its own faltering global power status.

Jiang and Russian president Boris Yeltsin both described the seven-point document, signed Wednesday, as a landmark, not only in terms of their nations’ relations, but also as a step to redefine the global political landscape.

In clear reference to the U.S.-led NATO, the pact noted that “the sides express concern over attempts to expand and strengthen military blocs, since this tendency may bring a threat to the safety of specific nations, and may compress the tensions both in regions and the world”.

“Russia and China and the 1.5 billion people they accommodate want to live in a global house ruled, not by the iron fist of a world policeman, but by a broad consensus reached through the good offices of the United Nations system,” as a Russian official put it. In reference to the United Nations, the declaration said the world body should play a greater role in arbitrating international disputes.

And to illustrate the two’s new found ability to tackle security problems together, Russia and China — along with three Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan and Tajikistan — also signed a demilitarisation pact to cover the 7,000 kilometre border between China and the former Soviet republics.

The military build-up in the region, accompanied by occasional armed clashes, had, over the past few decades, created the largest and probably most potentially dangerous border stand off in the world.

In contrast to the lower-key coverage accorded last month’s U.S.- Russian Helsinki summit, the Russian media covered every corner of the pomp and circumstance surrounding Jiang’s trip, which was scheduled to end Saturday.

“It (the pact) enhances the idea of building a multi-polar world as of particular relevance today, an idea previously blocked by the inertia of Cold War mentality and the attempts to direct the development of international relations towards one pole,” commented Russia’s semi-official ITAR-TASS news agency.

The tour comes a year after Yeltsin’s own visit to China in April 1996, where both sides claim they want to develop bilateral relations on the principles of ‘strategic partnership’.

A year of preparation later they think they are clearer to specifying what this ‘strategic partnership’ means.

For Russia, accord with China addresses its own personal post Cold War reality; its inability to stop NATO’s eastward expansion to its borders and the loss of military credibility it suffered when its armed forces were humiliated by Chechen separatists last year.

Accordingly Moscow has recently turned its sights towards Asia and the Middle East in search of new allies as a counterweight to the West.

“‘Strategic partnership’ is not here meant to be a mere synonym for ‘normal relations’. It rests on several key principles,” says Alexander Goltz, Moscow Itogi magazine’s political analyst. “One is common or similar points of view on the goals of development. Another is a mutual interest in each other’s interests and well- being. Understanding of the problems of each other is also a must.”

“The visit is enormously significant, possibly even historically significant, because we are wisely determining the fate of the start of the 21st century,” Yeltsin told reporters.

But China, in much less need of bulwarks against Western pressure, took a much less fervent view when assessing the impact of the ‘multi-polar’ declaration.

“The new type of Russian-Chinese relation has no meaning other than bilateral cooperation and friendship,” Jiang said in remarks to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. “These relations are not an alliance. They are not aimed against any third party.”

“This agreement is a traditional Soviet-era gesture aimed at the United States,” said a dismissive Yevgeni Volk, director of Moscow’s Heritage Foundation. “Yeltsin wants to score political points, although in the long term, it is not all evident that these points are actually scored”.

“The Chinese say they ‘understand’ Russian resistance to NATO expansion,” said Goltz, “but then, when talking to Polish leaders they say they also ‘understand’ Poland’s wish to join the Atlantic Alliance.”

China is the largest importer of Russian industrial equipment with contracts worth 2.4 billion dollars signed for 1996. Russia will also participate in the building of what will be the world’s largest hydroelectric power station on the Yangtse river and a nuclear power station in the Chinese province of Tsiantsu.

More contracts are possible; in the 1950’s the then Soviet Union built more than 150 industrial enterprises in China, which became the backbone of Chinese industry. Most are now waiting for modernisation.

But even if these projects are implemented and the annual bilateral trade reaches 20 billion dollars by the year 2000, as Yeltsin says he hopes, it will represent only about 10 percent of Chinese exports.

“It looks like Russia needs China more, than vice versa,” commented Dmitry Mosyakov, head of the North-East Asia department of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. “In these circumstances Moscow should not try to present China as its full- fledged political ally, expecting reciprocity.

“We need a totally pragmatic policy, focused on the economy and including development of the Russian Far East, as the only way to take the country out of the doldrums and back into the ranks of first division international players.”

This imbalanced relationship could cause other problems for Moscow, he says, warning that Russia could at some point find itself hostage to territorial rows in the region and Sino-U.S. disputes, notably over Korea and Taiwan.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that Russia has become the main arms exporter to China, selling Beijing dozens of fighter jets, missile systems and four submarines in the past five years alone.

Furthermore Moscow’s declarations of loyalty of China are unlikely to concern the United States, which has its own uneasy but steadily developing relationship with China. And further to that, say others, too much attention given to Chinese concerns could lead to a damaging absence of care for Russian interests.

“Russian political leaders should think less about the impression their friendship with China will make on Washington and more about their priorities in the Russian Far East,” snapped analyst Dmitry Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Centre.

“The Far East badly needs investment, a solution to transport and energy problems and active migration policies. No concrete strategies have been worked out to attain these goals”.