China-Russia relations have markedly improved since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but potential problems between the neighboring giants loom on the horizon. David Shambaugh, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, published an opinion piece this week in The New York Times saying that “the 20-year honeymoon may be ending, with both countries reverting to their traditional suspicion and competition.”
China and Russia are known to vote the same way in the United Nations Security Council and possess somewhat similar world views. In the past two decades, the countries have signed bilateral agreements on military affairs, energy cooperation, trade and investment, and successfully demarcated their 2,700-mile border. “But the fact that China’s global equities and responsibilities are growing while Russia’s are minimal and declining may impinge on their solidarity,” Mr. Shambaugh points out.
“Although the dragon and the bear have been getting on in recent years, beneath the surface all is not well. Historically rooted suspicions mix with contemporary tensions – the arms trade, for example, is a central complaint for both…
“China is also viewed as making inroads into Russia’s ‘near abroad’ in Central Asia and the Caspian region. Beijing’s failure to support Russia’s incursion into Abkhazia and South Ossetia last summer has irked Moscow.
“Finally, Russian strategists are very concerned (as are Europeans and Japanese) about recent discussions of a U.S.-China ‘G-2,’ given the Obama administration’s calls for a Sino-American global partnership.
“The real challenge for the United States and Europe is to engage both Russia and China in a broader global partnership and to break the Beijing-Moscow duopoly that often splits the U.N. Security Council. The Council’s unanimous condemnation of North Korea last week was a good beginning to an era of global partnership.”
Photo from Ng Han Guan/Associated Press.
