China and Russia share a border more than 4,000 kilometers (circa 2,485 miles) long. Their economies complement one another, with energy and raw materials going into China, and industrial products moving from China to Russia.
China’s parliamentary body, the National People’s Congress, was in session in Beijing last week. When the country’s Premier Li Keqiang eventually met with media last Friday after the session, journalists asked how Chinese officials were feeling about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “On Ukraine, indeed the current situation there is grave, and China is deeply concerned and grieved,” the senior politician said. “The pressing task now is preventing tensions from escalating or even getting out of control.” However he did not criticise the actual Russian invasion and also said that China’s relations with Russia were “rock solid.” Li also complained about the international sanctions against Russia, saying they could hurt the world economy.
China and Russia share a border more than 4,000 kilometers (circa 2,485 miles) long. Their economies complement one another, with energy and raw materials going into China, and industrial products moving from China to Russia. Both are ruled by authoritarian regimes that take pride in their tales of historical greatness. And both countries are united in their rivalry with the US.
“For China, geopolitics is crucial when it comes to its relations with Russia,” explained Maximilian Mayer, a junior professor of international relations at the University of Bonn in western Germany. In fact, that is what is at the heart of the two countries’ partnership, Mayer told DW. It is “a form of strategic cooperation that seeks to push against what Moscow and Beijing see as American hegemony, and to push for the formation of another, oppositional pole in a multi-polar world order,” Mayer said. This “strategic cooperation” was outlined in a joint statement from both nations, issued on February 4 of this year. It spoke of a friendship with “no limits.”
The statement was published three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping used the opening ceremony of the winter Olympics in China to demonstrate unity. In the statement, China supported Russian demands that Ukraine shouldn’t be admitted to the military NATO alliance.
The two countries were also critical of the “AUKUS” alliance — between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US — saying it was counterproductive to security policy. They also called upon NATO to abandon its “Cold War” approach. The two countries said they sought a different world order. The Chinese-Russian joint statement also talked about universal values, human rights, peace, equality and justice. Beijing is engaged in a tricky balancing act. On one hand, China is emphasising the territorial integrity of all states, as it usually does. On the other, it says that Russia’s legitimate security concerns about NATO expanding eastwards are “legitimate.” And if that weren’t clear enough, then China’s abstention from a vote in the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated what was happening: Beijing is on Russia’s side. This decision reflects how China’s political elites see themselves. Mayer explains that, to them, China is also a “normative power” with its own values. These values may be different from those of the West, but they form the basis of Chinese global coordination and diplomacy.
“In contrast, we are now seeing politics based purely on hard power from the Russians,” Mayer continued. “Despite that, President Xi has clearly decided to sit in the same boat as Russia.” Andrew Small, an expert on China at the German Marshall Fund, told DW that this has consequences for how China is seen by the rest of the world.
