Russia-China 'quasi-alliance' stronger than a formal alliance

© Fotolia / Zerbor

As the world is still sobering up to Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, China’s ambiguous position gives rise to the wildest speculative theories. On the one hand, many Chinese companies have complied with the flurry of Western sanctions that have been slapped on Moscow. On the other hand, Beijing didn’t condemn Russia but only urged the two parties [Russia and Ukraine] to end the conflict through dialogue and peace talks.

Rather than embracing the Western view that Russia should be treated as a pariah, Beijing chose to walk a tightrope of preserving important economic ties with Western countries as well as the strategic relationship with its northern powerful neighbor.

“In the first five months of 2022, Gazprom's pipeline gas supply to China increased by 67.5% compared to the same period last year.” — Gazprom President Alexey Borisovich Miller

For that purpose, China has now the wherewithal to expand economic ties with its sanctioned ally, in a way that can bypass Western sanctions, and as expected, these ones have not impeded the steady growth of bilateral trade volume between the two neighbors. Without any surprise, the trade volume reached $65.813 billion in the first quarter of this year — an increase of 28.9% year-on-year. Likewise, the volume of yuan traded on the Moscow exchange rose 13-fold between February and May to $270 million per day.

As a result, the strong upward trend of all trade numbers have made policymakers of the two countries very sanguine about the prospect of enhanced cooperation, so much so that they already expect the Sino-Russian trade to hit $200 billion by 2024.

“The 100 million tons of Russia’s trade in goods with unfriendly countries will now be redistributed. It is perfectly understandable that this freight volume will be redistributed to our trade with the BRICS. On this issue, the most important and the most technically prepared is China.” — Alexander Osipov, administrator of Russia's Transbaikal Krai

China did well to jump on an opportunity to gain significant increments of power in the economic sphere. Not only has China bolstered the yuan as a reserve currency, but Chinese companies are also cashing in on the situation to fill the vacuum left by many Western companies that have withdrawn from the Russian market.

“The trade representative office continues to receive proposals from many Chinese companies that provide not only products but also technologies to replace Western products in Russia.” — Russian Federation Trade Representative to China Alexei Dakhnovsky

Also, by ramping up its purchases of discounted Russian oil, the country has strategically reduced dependence on energy imports from the Middle East which must be shipped through the Strait of Malacca.

Had China been bound to Russia by a formal military alliance that the country should wade into a conflict of little to no interest for her, and perhaps could even lose out tremendously.

Indeed, while it’s true that China’s economic dynamic is good, the East Asian juggernaut is still in the process of modernizing its armed forces [to close the gap with U.S. armed forces], and still need to catch up with Western cutting-edge industries in sundry key technological sectors, ranging from airliner aircraft manufacturing to advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

See as examples:

• China’s recent development of its own DUV lithography machine

• SMIC’s move to 7nm node capability

• the development of a home-grown mRNA Covid-19 vaccine

• the construction of a space station, the launch of its third EM-catapults-equipped aircraft-carrier

• the first pre-delivery flight test of the narrow-body airliner COMAC C919

The damage wrought on China’s economy resulting from sanctions akin to those meted out to Russia would certainly stop this good technological momentum. And since Russian companies have been cut off from Western technology suppliers, they have therefore a vested interest in that China remains neutral and that nothing hinders its innovation potential. Chinese companies must smoothly continue leapfrogging technologies and then export them to Russia.

“We are ready to supply Russian airlines with spare parts for aircraft, we will set up the cooperation. Now, airlines are working [on this], they have certain channels, there are no restrictions on the part of China.” — Chinese Ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui

In addition, the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] cannot easily deploy troops in Ukraine owing to its lack of overseas military bases — although Russia doesn’t really seem to need help. This one has perfectly weathered the storm of sanctions that were aimed at stymying its economy and is now inching toward victory. Putin also stunned many by managing to stalemate the so-called ‘most powerful military alliance’ [NATO] into a state of impotence and many Western economies are now reeling from the economic repercussions of their own sanctions.

Ironically, NATO is holding back countries [Poland and the Baltic states] against the very enemy that it’s supposed to contain. Those countries for sure crave more support to Ukraine; perhaps in the form of a military intervention. But other member states of NATO [Turkey, Hungary] prefer to stick to a more balanced and neutral stance. Yet, beholden to NATO’s collective defense obligations, the most hawkish countries cannot proceed lest they drag the whole alliance into the conflict and thereby surely escalate tensions beyond the nuclear threshold.

As can be seen with NATO, it can be assumed that committing itself to an excessively far-flung military alliance may become a liability for some defense pact signatories, as dovish members will burden the most hawkish. By the way, to some extent, China itself should also be considered like a de facto military alliance. The PLA must already safeguard the safety and interests of 1.4 billion people over a territory which is much larger than Europe’s, so what else could it be?

Given that China and Russia [or rather the CSTO] are two big military alliances per se, they shall not forge a bigger defense pact so long as diverging interests in other parts of the world remain [like in Ukraine]. That doesn’t doom the prospect of China fighting alongside Russia one day if need be. In the case of Ukraine, China will not recognize the two breakaway Republics of the Donbas, with a view to maintaining coherence and upholding its territorial claim over the island of Taiwan. But nor will it interfere directly in Ukraine because of its long-standing policy of non-interference in other countries.

However, a Russian military intervention in Taiwan shall not be excluded. And that’s precisely why that makes Russia-China ‘quasi-alliance’ so powerful, because the two neighbors can selectively pick their battles in an unpredictable manner. Only battles threatening the very survival of the two like-minded partners ought to be fought together.

Take Taiwan as an example, the fall of China after a clash with the U.S. would also serve to contain Russia and to blunt its supremacy in the Arctic. Moreover, Russia’s mighty Pacific Fleet and deadly arsenal of hypersonic anti-ship missiles could prove a decisive factor by mowing down the fleet of enemy warships. So why not using it ?

“"We totally support the claim on unification with Taiwan, and I think we will supply China all the aid or infrastructure that we possess in order to do that.” — Aleksandr Dugin

As an illustration, Russia reiterated ‘One-China policy’ in a joint statement with China and Russian FM Lavrov started to use the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ for the first time, all suggesting that Russia’s core of attention will shift eastward to the Indo-Pacific soon after the end of its operation in Ukraine. In the same vein, Xi emphasized during a conversation with Putin that his country was “willing to continue mutual support with Russia on issues related to sovereignty”.

In short, the ‘quasi-alliance’ turns out to be at least as ambiguous as U.S. own ‘strategy of ambiguity’ and must not be underestimated. Policymakers in Washington have not finished scratching their heads.