The most instructive aspect of the meeting was Putin’s explicit acknowledgment of the different roles played by Moscow and Beijing in international politics, say these academics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a ceremony at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China on Oct 17, 2023. recently attracted fewer heads of state or senior officials than the previous forums in 2017 and 2019. There were 11 European presidents and prime ministers at the 2019 forum. But last week’s forum attracted only three.
He was keen to remind his audience of Russia’s credentials as a United Nations security council member, together with China, responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. He also noted that he and Xi had discussed both the situation in Gaza and the events in Ukraine, describing these situations as “common threats” which strengthen Sino-Russian “interaction”.
Putin described the Russia-dominated Greater Eurasian Partnership - a concept Moscow has promoted as a response to the Belt and Road Initiative that would fuse the Eurasian Economic Union with the BRI - as a regional or “local” project. Meanwhile he happily described the BRI as “global” in scale. China’s agreement, if confirmed by a contract, would have been the most clear signal of Beijing’s strategic support for Russia, especially given Gazprom’s shrinking European market. By prolonging negotiations, China seems to be trying to extract specific concessions from Russia, related to the price of gas, possible Chinese ownership of gas fields in Russia, or Beijing’s acquisition of shares in Gazprom.
In the 1990s, Russian officials regularly warned of the dangers of becoming a “raw materials appendage” to China. Today the economic benefits that Russian elites gain from hydrocarbons mean this danger has now become a reality. Russia has locked itself into an economic partnership in which it is the supplicant, a role that Moscow seems happy to play.
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