Difference between revisions of "Sino-Russian Entente"

Latest revision as of 04:30, June 16, 2026

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comment during Q & A at the Leaders of Russia Management Competition, Moscow, March 19, 2022.^[1] NYT journalist Tom Friedman joked, "Grandma always said never fight Russia and China at the same time."^[2]

The Sino-Russo Entente refers to a series of diplomatic, economic and military ties between the Peoples Republic of China and the Russian Federation in the early 21st century.

Writing in 1997 former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski forewarned, "A grand coalition of China and Russia united not by ideology but by complementary grievances would pose the most dangerous scenario as far as threats to United States hegemony are concerned."^[3][4] China and Russia are linked by a common understanding of the threat to their sovereignty from US unipolar hegemony.^[5][6] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it expressed that the core of the Russia-China relationship revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods system. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in cryptocurrency.^[7]

Background

NATO expansion and what the United States called its "pivot to Asia" produced a growing, openly hostile presence, headed by senior U.S. combatant commanders, on the peripheries of both Russia and China that aimed at militarily containing both. Not surprisingly, both pushed back. Moscow escalated its objections to further expansion of the American sphere of influence represented by NATO and warned that it would have to react militarily if this were not halted. Beijing renewed its drive to end the division of China produced by U.S. military intervention in the Taiwan Strait to separate the combatants in the Chinese civil war that ended in 1949. Sino-American hostility grew apace.

As the 21st century began, Russia had no acknowledged sphere of influence in Europe, though its European neighbors (other than the newly established state of Ukraine) remained careful not to provoke it. But, as the newly globalized American sphere of influence (represented in Europe by NATO) neared its borders, Moscow became obsessed with strategic denial of neighboring countries to dominant America influence. Meanwhile, longstanding objections by China to continuing U.S. support of Taiwan (the Chinese island province to which the US-supported losing side in the Chinese civil war had retreated) intensified. China sought to remove Taiwan from the U.S. sphere of influence in Asia and to deny it status as an independent polity. Despite having no claims of its own, the United States challenged China's territorial claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

Washington's labeling of both Russia and China as ideological and geopolitical adversaries and its treatment of them as such gave their partnership a common focus and helped to consolidate it. Escalating U.S. pressure pushed these two formerly estranged great powers into an increasingly open and comprehensive anti-American entente, committed to coordination of policies and actions directed at reducing the menacing military presence and hostile political influence of the United States on their respective peripheries.

No limits partnership

The two nuclear armed superpowers, Russia and China, forged a "no limits partnership" on the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 4, 2022 to confront the Western powers flooding weapons into Ukraine and Taiwan, shortly after which on February 24, 2024 President Putin launched the Special De-Nazification Operation (SMO) to liberate Ukraine from neo-liberal globalist and fascist control.^[8]

The NATO war in Ukraine brought Moscow and Beijing closer together for the first time since the days of Mao and Stalin.^[9] Biden and those who come after him are unlikely to be able to make a division, as Nixon did in 1972.^[10][11] Former Presidential briefer Ray McGovern chronicled how

"as Biden took office in 2021, his advisers assured him that he could play on Russia's fear (sic) of China – and drive a wedge between them. This represents the ‘mother of all errors’ of judgement, because it brings about the circumstances in which the western ‘Order’ may dissolve”. “This [presumption of Russian weakness] became embarrassingly clear when Biden said to Putin during their Geneva summit in June 2021 … let me ask a rhetorical question: ‘You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world’.” McGovern observes that this meeting gave Putin clear confirmation that Biden and his advisers were stuck in a woefully outdated appraisal of Russia-China relations. Here is the bizarre way Biden described his approach to Putin on China: At the airport after the summit, Biden’s aides did their best to whisk him onto the plane but failed to stop him from sharing more ‘wisdom’ on China: “Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China”. ‘Yes’: More of the same! Biden was trying, on the advice of his experts, to insert the ubiquitous western ‘wedge’ between Russia and a ‘BIG’ China.^[12]

After these remarks, Putin and Xi spent the rest of 2021 trying to disabuse Biden of the “China squeeze” meme: This mutual effort culminated in the Xi-Putin ‘no limits’ friendship summit in early February 2022. If the advisers had been paying attention however, they would have threaded a long history of Russo-Chinese rapprochement. But no, they were ideologically frozen in the view that the two were destined to be eternal enemies.

On May 16, 2024 President Putin and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping issued a joint statement in Beijing.^[13][14] The two governments agreed to "take the acknowledgement of cultural and civilizational diversity” as the basis for “furthering dialogue, cooperation and experience exchange.” The two countries also vowed to “counter the politicization of culture, attempts at ‘cancelling the culture’ of certain countries and peoples."Alastair Crooke says the joint statement evokes the "very elemental laws of nature itself in sketching the West's usurpation of the fundamental principles of humanity, reality, and order – a critique which maddens the collective West." Crooke says the joint statement is not just a detailed framework of a BRICS future. Russia and China have put forward a dynamic vision of concrete principles as pillars for a new society in the post-Western future.^[15] By playing straight into the primordial sources of meaning that are deeper than individual preference – faith, family, soil and flag – Russia and China have picked up the pieces and born-up the mantle of the Bandung Non-Aligned Movement through promoting the right of national self-determination and an end to centuries old systems of exploitation.

The following day Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin stated, "The United States, with its Cold War-era mentality, bears an irremediable responsibility for the emergence and escalation of the Ukrainian crisis".^[16]

Disagreements

See also: Belligerents in NATO imperial wars#India-Pakistan front

While China and Russia's strategic ties are closer than ever before, they still disagree on Kashmir and the South China Sea issues since Russia fully supports India and Vietnam's respective positions. The two prioritize their corresponding national interests which largely overlap, in which cases they cooperate to pursue their shared goals, but they sometimes diverge. Nevertheless, Russia and China manage these disagreements for the greater good of multipolarity.

References