By: Asia Sentinel Correspondents
The May 16 summit between Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia on the face of it represents a major achievement for both, and for Xi in particular, coming on top of his visit to Europe where President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition in seeking to transform his country’s relationship with China allowed Xi to also embrace the two European leaders most loathed around the EU for their Russia-leaning and illiberal ways – Hungary’s Victor Orban and Serbia’s. Aleksandar Vucic.
However, the Xi-Putin embrace could also be seen as reflecting their individual weaknesses, Russia’s in particular. The visit will shore up China’s de facto support for Putin’s Ukraine war, which has lately been going somewhat better than previously thanks to the efforts of America’s right-wing congressmen, but seems ultimately to end in stalemate roughly along current lines with anywhere from 300,000 to 450,000 of his troops dead or wounded and, according to the CIA, its military modernization program set back by 18 years. Beijing’s claim to neutrality in the Ukraine conflict has long been threadbare but it is now clear that the longer that war goes on, the less time and money the west will have to address other issues which directly concern China. It also makes Russia more dependent and gives China added leverage in negotiating prices for oil and gas.
But it also shows the slippage in China’s attractions. Its economy is no longer an exemplar, it no longer has so much money to burn on buying friends in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and Putin’s Russia is not a widely admired nation in the so-called Global South which Xi has been attempting to court. Meanwhile in Asia from India eastward, concerns about Chinese power have not begun to abate despite rising doubts about the reliability of the US as an ally. For sure, neither Japan nor South Korea can watch a Sino-Russian entente without an unease which will help them overcome their own mutual suspicions. Those suspicions are not helped by the flotilla of dozens Coast Guard and fishing vessels Beijing has floated to seek to push Filipino fishermen off a disputed shoal in its drive to claim the entire South China Sea for its own in the ace of international law.
In the wings remains an issue which could be an embarrassment for Xi. Russian claims of a close relationship which could last for generations fit oddly with China’s claims on territory ceded to Russia in 1868, which included Russia’s major Far East cities Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Beijing can forget this for now for tactical reasons but not all nationalist Chinese are so willing to forget the “unequal treaties” or the 1929 so-called Karakhan Manifesto by which revolutionary Russia promised to return seized territories. If Taiwan remains too difficult a goal for now – although Filipino fishermen are not – how about a push to regain the thinly populated parts of Manchuria and Siberia lost when Russia was strong?
While Putin has pushed west in his attempt to revive the Russian empire, he also sees Russia as a continent in itself straddling Eurasia, Russian-led but with other nationalities. But it is not an idea which appeals to many non-Russians, least of all the central Asian “stans” or the restive Caucasus republics or to China but may be a necessary adjunct to cutting so many ties with Europe with its onetime satellites pushing to join the European Union or even NATO.
The west’s conundrum
That it is not to understate the importance of the Xi-Putin axis given the decline of western influence and hence the apparent success of any anti-western alliance. Most immediately the west’s problem is Gaza. The issue here is not just that most of the rest of the world can see that the US remains unwilling to restrain the ally it supports with vast quantities of weapons and money and is revulsed by the deaths of thousands of Palestinian women, children, and noncombatants. The US now owns the Gaza massacres, and Joe Biden is increasingly owning them politically, a blow to his political fortunes in November. It also owns the fact that 57 years after it launched the 1967 war, Israel is still in possession, more or less, of the West Bank and Gaza, and continues to colonize the West Bank. No serious effort has been made by the west to bring about a two-state solution, arms and diplomatic support being more than enough to enable colonization to continue.
There are now about seven million Jews and seven million Palestinian Arabs in the combined territories. The inequality of their situations is stark. Meanwhile, western funding of a useless, corrupt, and undemocratic Palestine Authority has been a recruiting tool for Hamas and other extremists. It is not for nothing that leaders of non-western countries such as those of Brazil and South Africa lose respect for US claims to represent democracy and liberty when faced not just with Gaza but the 100-year history of Palestine/Israel.
Gaza apart, with new tariffs against China and its own subsidies for favored investments, the US is already giving notice of a less-outward-looking posture. If the Gaza war helps Trump return to the White House by spurring Democrat abstentions at the polls in the November general election, the card deck will be re-shuffled again. How to reconcile a soft approach to Russia with a stronger anti-China, pro-Taiwan policy? How to keep the western alliance together if Trump, as he has threatened, takes a trade war with the EU as well as cosseting Russia?