The Future of China-Russia Relations

Why a “Strategic Partnership”?: The View from China

Chinese leaders claim that their country pursues a global foreign policy that does not favor any particular country. Indeed, China has established various types of partnerships with many countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, South Korea, Indonesia, Algeria, and Argentina .1 Nevertheless, what is unique about the strategic cooperative partnership [zhanlue xiezuo huoban guanxi] that has characterized Sino-Russian relations since 1996 is its cross-cutting influence. This chapter evaluates how the partnership fits into key tenets of Chinese foreign policy: peaceful development , win-win diplomacy aiming toward multipolarization, and the creation of a harmonious world based on the democratization of international relations. While Chinese leaders note that the Sino-Russian relationship has never been better, the study takes a critical look at the partnership, relying on the increasingly open discussion of its weaknesses among Chinese journalists and scholars, and on a comparison of Russian and Chinese positions on key political and economic issues. Finally, the chapter concludes that while the Sino-Russian partnership has certain distinctive features, it is losing its privileged position for China in particular. Sino-Russian Partnership and Chinese Foreign Policy To understand how the Chinese leadership views the Sino-Russian partnership , it is important to see how relations with Russia fit into China’s overall foreign policy framework. In recent years, China’s State Council has laid out the main principles of Chinese foreign policy in a series of white papers . “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” published in December 2005, explains how Chinese domestic and foreign policy goals are interrelated. 3 Why a “Strategic Partnership”? The View from China Elizabeth Wishnick Why a “Strategic Partnership”? 57 Although the 2005 white paper notes historical and cultural factors that reinforce the need for peaceful development, the report particularly stresses the need to create a peaceful environment for economic reform, with the aim of achieving a moderately well-off society at home and common development overseas.2 The white paper goes on to explain that China contributes to world peace and international cooperation by basing its relations with other countries on the five principles of peaceful coexistence, being a friendly neighbor, using win-win diplomacy and multilateral cooperation to develop relations with major powers and developing states, and creating a harmonious world by democratizing international relations.3 The white paper on China’s defense, issued in December 2006, highlights these same goals, but calls greater attention to the uncertainties and tensions that will pose challenges to their fulfillment. According to the 2006 white paper, “Guided by a security strategy of promoting both development and security, China strives to build a socialist harmonious society at home and a harmonious world to ensure both its overall national security and enduring peace in the world. It endeavors to enhance both development and security, both internal security and external security and both traditional security and non-traditional security; works to uphold its sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and promote national development; and strives to sustain the important period of strategic opportunity for national development.”4 The white paper notes that while China pursues a policy of peaceful development, “the world is not yet peaceful” due to the persistence of “hegemonism ” and power politics as well as the growing complexity of nontraditional security threats and local wars.5 These white papers represent an effort to incorporate the cumulative foreign policy contributions of China’s leadership. Each successive generation of Chinese leaders has put their stamp on foreign policy, with Deng Xiaoping developing the concept of “peace and development,” Jiang Zemin devising a new security concept based on win-win diplomacy, mutual trust, equality, and cooperation, and Hu Jintao aiming to build a “harmonious world.”6 The following sections examine these concepts more closely in terms of their relationship to the evolution of the Sino-Russian partnership. Peace and Development Deng Xiaoping’s commitment to peace and development was one of the factors that contributed to Sino-Soviet normalization in the 1980s and laid the foundation for the development of strategic partnership since the 1990s. In 58 Elizabeth Wishnick the Deng Xiaoping era, the nature of development—specifically the mutual desire to achieve socialist economic reform in both China and the Soviet Union—was just as important as the need for a peaceful environment in which to accomplish such reforms in prodding the two neighbors to end their costly antagonism and to cooperate instead in mutually beneficial ways. Thus...