In the shadow of Ukraine, four curiosities concerning China in relation to Russia
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
On November 11, 2022, on the margins of the 14th Convention of the Russian International Studies Association (RISA), the Center for Comprehensive Chinese Studies and Regional Projects at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations held an online roundtable discussion titled ‘Russia-China Partnership through China’s Eyes’. Dr. Piyush Mathur was invited to that discussion as a guest commentator. In this article, Dr. Mathur elaborates upon the four questions that he had raised to the panelists from China. (None of these questions had received any responses at that meeting.)
Dr. Mathur is Research Scholar at the New Jersey-based Ronin Institute; he can be contacted here.
Although Trump-instigated right-wing authoritarianism has finally been pushed over the cliff in the United States (US), several other major polities (including Russia, China, and Iran, for instance) remain embroiled in their own struggles with their own versions of state-led and/or personality-led authoritarianism and worse. While Russian citizens remain trapped inside a presidential rule that instigated a war that was as sudden and unwanted for them as it was for the rest of the world, Chinese citizens have to contend with an unusually long-term ruler who could not be persuaded to end his long-running ‘dynamic zero’ Covid policy without recourse to major protests. In Iran, there is no stopping yet of a months-long bloody repression of its revived women’s movement for some very basic rights—a movement that comes on top of a range of civil protests that have been erupting there since the 2010s.
The Economist, meanwhile, sounded alarm that Türkiye—a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—has the potential to soon turn into a dictatorship (except that an interim loss of over USD 38 billion owed to the seismic damages has left that country’s heavy-handed leader considerably weakened since The Economist’s alarm). Here we might be just getting started, of course, given that I haven’t even mentioned Saudi Arabia and Egypt—or relatively minor polities such as North Korea, Afghanistan, and Myanmar; I have also left out countries from Latin America and Africa (other than Egypt). And as for India—that shining example of South Asia’s democracy (world’s ‘largest democracy’ as it is often called)—has been busy curtailing freedom of expression with particular zeal through the past 10 years and more; the rise in its authoritarianism, however, has not prevented it from coming ever so closer to the West. And let us not even mention India’s utterly beleagured neighbour that also borders China as well as Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, against the above global backdrop of precarious geopolitics, one cannot help but watch out for how polities that have long accumulated a reputation for authoritarianism might collaborate with one another—and end up warping, even devouring, democratic and quasi-democratic polities the world over; or how they may end up encouraging authoritarian tendencies, even if as reactions to them, inside reputed democracies. While geopolitical observers have been interested in the above theme since the Second World War, their interest has only intensified since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine—came as it did soon after Trump, Brexit, Covid-19, and a ludicrous American exit from Afghanistan, and within the context of rising economic tensions and a worsening climate crisis. This invasion runs the risk of slowly escalating into a larger regional war, even a world war (which, in turn, might even see some type of a nuclear event); and in any of these scenarios, authoritarian polities would, one way or another, collaborate among themselves even as many democracies and quasi-democracies would be forced to be opportunistic about the evolving geopolitics.
As of now, Russia has extents of support from all sorts of polities, including bona fide democracies such as South Africa and India—which share an apprehension of the West whose racist colonial rule and disastrous post-colonial interventions, as recent as the one in Afghanistan, remain a matter of concern to them. Aside from their deep-seated apprehensions of the West, these democracies also depend on Russia, to different degrees, economically and even in terms of military supplies. But to the extent that Russia is unlikely to be supported militarily or strategically by these democracies in its war against Ukraine, they do not concern the West too much, which is anyway focused on building an alliance against a resurgent China, a non-compliant North Korea, and a theocratic Iran (among other reputably authoritarian polities). Another way to look at the above might be that the West highlights these authoritarian supporters of Russia—while going soft on its democratic and quasi-democratic allies and quasi-allies—to reinforce Russia’s image as an authoritarian aggressor against Ukraine.
But of all the infamous non-democratic polities, the two whose mutual interactions are of the greatest interest today are Russia and China—except that these two are not currently in a relationship of equality. Resources wasted on the invasion of Ukraine, (suppressed) internal dissent, and economic marginalization by the West have left Russia weakened. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will continue to make surprising moves here and there—including winning ones—but even if he succeeds in bringing Ukraine under control, Russia would remain considerably weaker for a while in comparison with other major global powers, including China. The point is that aside from the bruising that it has been receiving from a determined Ukraine, Russia has also been facing the consequences of its preclusion from key dimensions of the global economy that the West controls; meanwhile, Russia’s militaristic reputation lies in ruins—and the West has been actively supporting Ukraine anyway, whereby weakening Russia further. All of the above have set in a motion a certain dynamic for Russia in regard to China—which is not only the topmost economy in the world based upon the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) measure but also another authoritarian (albeit ‘post-colonial’) nuclear power with a seat at the Security Council.
While those traits ensure that China remain a long-term ideological challenge to democratic polities (especially Western ones) even while cooperating with them on specific undertakings, they also situate it (just as they do North Korea), almost by default, as an alternative source of support to a West-isolated Russia. Meanwhile, to the extent that China also shares a historically contentious border of some 4,209.3 kilometres with Russia—and a stretch of Communist ideological past with the Soviet Union (which had Russia at its core)—it has to be watched more closely than any other country in reference to a Russia at war with another one of its neighbourers that was also a member of the Soviet Union. Moreover, to the extent that its invasion of Ukraine started more than a year ago, Russia evokes little raw curiosity on other issues as of now. There is merely an excruciating feeling regarding Russia today—of some deferred relief pertaining to its invasion of Ukraine, under the assumption that a war will always end as some type of a state of non-war, at the very least.
Owing to the above factors, the centrepoint of the global geopolitical curiosity right now is not even how Russia and China must interact here on out, but rather how China chooses to play its cards in reference to Russia—which cannot help but lean on China, on a priority basis, even as China must aim to get the maximum that it could from a needy Russia. Ergo, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, any move that China makes regarding Russia would be—and has so far already been—at or very near the top of the global geopolitical watch. As important as it might be to track these specific moves, though, there are some four long-term or deeper themes relating to China’s involvement with Russia that make (or should make) the world curious—in that there are no ready and certain answers to them. These curiosities, listed below, are to be appreciated against the very general, surely debatable, backdrop to the China-Russia situation that I have crudely sketched up until now:
1. Taiwan: It is common knowledge that China views Taiwan to be its part; as to why that is or might be, is not a story that the global media tends to repeat—except that it is a story that is certainly worth reading up on one’s own (via research-based books and articles in political history). That story—tied up as it is into a history of brutal exogenous interventions into Greater China and their unresolved domestic outcomes—might make its contemporary readers a bit more understanding, if not supportive, of China’s claim on Taiwan (while also preparing them to appreciate why the latter should also feel righteous in making a similar claim on the former, just in case they decide to make that claim). As it happens, the US did, in fact, validate China’s claim on Taiwan via the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations of January 1, 1979—which includes the following statement:
The United States recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China. Within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.
In the above statement, Taiwan is called ‘Taiwan’ because the US would no longer refer to it as the ‘Republic of China’ (ROC)—which is the term it used to employ for Taiwan up until then (in distinction from the ‘People’s Republic of China’ (PRC), which is contemporary China; Taiwan, incidentally, still officially calls itself the ROC. In other words, the US had conveniently de-recognized the ROC as a sovereign territory via this Joint Communiqué—and China and the US had both agreed to sign it partly out of their common fear of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, via the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)—passed into law on the 10th of April that very year (though retroactively applicable since the 1st of January of that year)—the US had also ended up committing itself to supporting and protecting Taiwan unofficially via the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT), a non-profit organization established for that purpose. A House Report (96-71) on TRA filed on March 24 the same year had also declared that the American ‘decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China’ was contingent ‘upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means’.
There has thus been a standoff of sorts between China, on one side, and Taiwan and the US, on the other. In this standoff, the Soviet Union had been supportive of China’s claim on Taiwan—a policy that Russia would retain after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Closer to our times, around 6 months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin himself had vocalized his support for the so-called ‘One China’ principle as well as his opposition to ‘provocations by the US and its satellites in the Taiwan Strait’. A little over a year into that invasion, which is where we are right now, Russia and China are perceived to be at their closest since May 1989 (when the Sino-Soviet split had come to an end via Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to China).
The point of the matter is that Russia’s attempt to keep China close to its bosom (and China’s acceptance of the same) in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine has left Russia with little wiggle room, at least for the next 5 years, to criticize any aspects of China’s possible attempts at taking control of Taiwan. That, of course, does not mean that Russia could possibly have a reason to criticize China on that count anyway, nor does it mean that Russia has much influence in that region. It should be comforting, however, for China to know that it does not need to worry about any Russian objections to howsoever it may seek to take control of Taiwan in the near future anyway. In other words, the Russian situation since the invasion of Ukraine is apt to have left China emboldened, in some specific ways, regarding its plan to take control of Taiwan (even if via hostile means—which is not exactly how Putin officially anticipates how Taiwan’s takeover by China might enfold).
That having been said, Russia’s sudden invasion of Ukraine had also complicated any plans that China might have had for invading Taiwan around that time, and may have even as of this moment. To the extent that a dragged-out Russian invasion has already been contributing to the destabilization and weakening of the global economy considerably, China can be expected to be even more circumspect now about invading Taiwan—given that such an action would not only generate unpredictable militaristic geopolitics but also very negative economic consequences for all. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about Xi Jinping’s resolve regarding One China Principle. Since at least 2021, there has also been plenty of talk among American intelligence and defence executives and retirees regarding Xi’s challenge to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to prepare itself to take over Taiwan by 2027.
Thus, the Number One curiosity regarding China right now is whether it would venture to take control of Taiwan against the (long or short) backdrop of this hitherto unresolved Russian invasion of Ukraine—and in the long shadow of the global economic crisis that has been worsened by that invasion. Now, inasmuch as China would be a taking a huge risk by making an aggressive move toward Taiwan at this point in time, it would be enough of a risk for the West as well—which is tied up into the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
2. Communist leadership: The Soviet Union, which once led the global communist movement, died on December 26, 1991; far prior to that, China, under Mao Zedong, had begun to diverge from the Soviet brand of communism on the grounds that the latter had revised itself into socialist imperialism. The Sino-Soviet ideological split had implied that China would rival the Soviet Union in attempting to lead the communist movement globally—both in economic and political terms. But by the time Deng Xiaoping would have wrapped up his visit to the US in February 1979, China would have brought itself much closer to the US diplomatically, via the Joint Communiqué mentioned above; it would have thereby also attempted to leave behind its self-image as a communist revolutionary economy at conspicuous variance from the capitalist West.
Deng, however, had ensured that China’s economic reforms would not weaken the CCP’s political control of that country; indeed, the CCP had to guide the reforms. Fast forward to Xi Jinping, and it is no secret that Communism is at the core of his domestic political vision—which is quintessentially about keeping the CCP in control of the Chinese military, and thus retaining the one-party rule in place; the party itself, of course, won't let go of its monopolistic rule. In other words, as far as the domestic scene is concerned, China is to remain a Communist polity in the foreseeable future. However, with the Soviet Union long dead, and with Putin—its picky sympathizer—at his weakest, what is the status of China's historical commitment to the global leadership of Communism (or 'socialism', as its Constitution describes it)?
While China has not been aiming to promote Communism or socialism, per se, it is officially a ‘socialist’ polity with one-party rule; it has been enjoying good relations for the past several years with other socialist/Communist polities such as Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea—while having remained in a state of territorial tension with India; and it remains the key source of external support for socialists and Communists worldwide. China's official stance is of course that it does not intervene into the domestic affairs of other sovereign polities; but, of course, like other sovereign states, it does support those polities and non-state actors economically and militarily that are aligned with its own interests; besides, it has been pushing its territorial claims in the South China Sea, in South Asia, and elsewhere—and has been expanding its global power base for more than 2 decades. Meanwhile, particularly since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic—though not entirely because of it—China has also been losing Western goodwill that it had otherwise been cultivating fairly steadily, on commercial grounds, for almost two decades prior.
Under these circumstances, and notwithstanding the fact that its last official conflict was in 1979 (with Vietnam), China—at its mightiest since the end of the Russian, Japanese, and Western control of its territories historically—cannot help but influence, to varying degrees, the domestic affairs of many polities. The recent tensions between the US, Canada, on one side, and China, on the other, regarding the spy balloons are only a superficial example; since those balloon incidents, China has already come closer to Russia, whereby raising fears in the West that it might tip the balance in favour of Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and for that matter, in regard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Meanwhile, inasmuch as it stands to gain some regional power in association with a post-communist Russia-in-turmoil, it remains a matter of long-term curiosity whether, to what extent, and in what shape, China might seek to lead communism itself as a global political movement from this point on.
Would ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ simply remain buzzwords inside China’s domestic territory—or would China seek to encourage similar political models globally once it has developed enough global clout for that type and scale of geopolitical/geoeconomic influence?
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI): In the Final Report published by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) on March 1, 2021, the US officially recognized China as its Number One futuristic rival in Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as some technologies and research arenas of strategic importance. Previously, in his September 1, 2017 address to Russian school children, Putin had ended up being the first state head to publicly acknowledge AI’s futuristic strategic significance. A lot has changed since March 2021—and much, much more since September 2017. While China (already far ahead of Russia in AI) currently has an upper hand over Russia in the wake of Putin’s shoddy gamble in Ukraine, it has enough to gain by collaborating with Russia in AI and strategically important technologies that would serve as a front against the US and its allies.
In a May 12, 2021 article published on the Observer Research Foundation’s website, Nivedita Kapoor provides an incisive sketch of how China and Russia had begun to increase their cooperation in strategic technological and research fields since 2010; this cooperation ‘gained momentum in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, with Russia shedding its earlier reluctance to sell latest technology to China’. Then, ‘in 2019 the two countries declared their intention to jointly build an International Scientific Lunar Station’; they also ‘agreed to cooperate in peaceful use of GLONASS and BeiDou navigation, in order to promote interoperability of the two systems.’ By 2021, the cooperation between Russia and China had ‘expanded to include Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, 5G, robotics, digital economy, biotechnology, and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).’ Kapoor stresses that while ‘Russia remains behind China’, it ‘continues to produce high-quality research’ in AI; China thus seeks to benefit from Russia’s fundamental research and talent in AI while aiming to sell AI’s industrial applications to Russia.
By now, China and Russia are significantly closer to each other geopolitically than where they were in 2021, when Kapoor published her piece. But Russia is also considerably more isolated and weaker than China, whose exclusion from the West has also worsened. However, since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has also seen sizable brain-drain from fields relevant to AI. This raises a curiosity about how China would now optimize its utilization of Russia as a partner (and customer) in AI and emergent technologies as well as research arenas of strategic significance. An option for China would be to lure technologists and researchers looking to leave Russia-in-a-state-of-war into its own laboratories and research centres; however, this is a game that the West might also play well, albeit selectively and cautiously.
At any rate, how far would China go in pursuing collaboration with Russia in AI—deemed to be a game-changer for the AD 2000s—when it knows all too well its complicated past and historical conflicts with Russia? A 2nd curiosity related to China-Russia collaboration in AI is thus this: In trying to stitch together an AI, futuristic techno-research front with Russia against the US-led West, what safeguards would China retain against Russia itself? There should be little doubt that, in the coming years, some cutting-edge investigative research in the regional geopolitics would explore the above theme.
4. Post-Putin Russia: As Putin began to flounder in Ukraine last year, speculations regarding the end of his political rule began to do the rounds mainly in American, British, and Australian journalistic outlets and think-tank webpages. In that context, journalists created several lists of possible contenders (and/or replacements) for Putin’s job; there were many overlaps, of course, among these lists—which included biographical profiles of these possible contenders/replacements. Some of these reports also included (more or less) probable scenarios under which Putin would stop being the Russian president (including, say, by getting assassinated, for example), and they briefly reflected upon the direction that Russian politics might take depending upon who replaces him and as part of which scenario.
Most of these scenarios indicate that a post-Putin Russia would yet be under the command of a Kremlin insider; and that, though some of them may be more amenable than others to opening up to the West, none can be expected to reform Russia’s political system toward a more open democracy. There is also a scenario in which a small team of Kremlin insiders might choose to share power, for sometime, toward governing a post-Putin Russia; the least probable scenario would appear to be people’s revolution that might catapult a currently imprisoned dissenter to the presidential seat. Suspension or opportunistic modifications of the current Constitution is not considered improbable in a post-Putin Russia. These speculative scenarios and prospective individuals aside, one can be sure that a post-Putin Russia won’t be governed by Putin himself! Whoever replaces Putin would be more or less different from him—and this successor would have to face an effectively different set of circumstances (and they are likely to be quite difficult, given how Putin’s legacy is shaping up when he is 70+ already).
Now, under Xi, China’s diplomatic build-up toward Russia has, by default, been a response to Putin (who has been ruling Russia, directly or indirectly, for 22 years anyway). But beyond this default of Putin’s long rule, there is also the unmistakable factor of a rapport between him and Xi (who has himself already ruled China for 10 years and has also managed to remove the two-term limit on presidency from that country’s Constitution, presumably to allow himself to rule it as long as he can). The point is, China’s long-term authoritarian ruler (with a domestically secure long-term future) has had to articulate a diplomatic response to Russia’s even longer-term authoritarian ruler (whose political future is less secure than Xi’s). What that implies is that China cannot be expected to be ready, as of now, to see itself beyond Xi—and that it is this China that (of course via Xi himself) has articulated a diplomatic front toward a Russia that Putin has for long remanufactured in his own image.
To the extent that Putin is located inside a turbulence that he has created, he is not terribly secure; but can Xi’s China see Russia beyond him just yet?
Suppose China’s mandarins can, then it leaves us with this curiosity: What might be China’s plan or framework for a post-Putin Russia?
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