Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to make a state visit to Russia from Monday to Wednesday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The trip, just before the G20 summit in Germany, will underline the growing bilateral dialogue between Beijing and Moscow, including on key regional and global issues such as the North Korean nuclear stand-off.
Coming after May’s Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, attended by both Xi and Putin, the primary emphasis of the visit is to try to deepen the bilateral political and economic partnership.
China and Russia already have a relatively extensive economic dialogue in particular, which has warmed in several areas since the crisis in Ukraine, which has seen Moscow’s suspension from the G8.
In the period following the escalation of those tensions, Russia has, for instance, announced plans for numerous cooperation projects with China, including a new method of interbank transfers, and a joint credit agency that seeks to create a shared financial and economic infrastructure allowing them to function independently of Western-dominated financial institutions.
China and Russia are also among the states involved in creating alternatives to the World Bank and the IMF, one of them being the New Development Bank. It is to finance infrastructure and other projects in the BRICS, as well as a US$100 billion special currency reserve fund.
In the energy sector, the two states have signed a US$400 billion natural gas supply deal which will see an approximately 3,200km pipeline built from eastern Siberia to northeast China. They have also agreed to construct a second major gas pipeline from western Siberia to China’s Xinjiang Province.
Moscow has opened parts of its upstream oil and gas sector to direct investment from Beijing.
Moreover, Chinese firms have stepped in to provide their Russian counterparts with technology and Chinese banks have become an important source of loans for Russian businesses in the wake of Western sanctions.
While the warming in ties since the Ukraine crisis can be overstated, with little substantial progress made so far on an array of economic and financial projects that have been announced, the boost to the bilateral cooperation agenda has helped enable work toward stronger, common positions on key regional and global issues.
Both sides are looking at the meetings to enhance the strategic coordination from the Middle East to Asia-Pacific and the Americas.
The top item on the agenda is likely to be North Korean nuclear tensions. Both China and Russia know that security problems on the Korean Peninsula have no easy solution: Both are grappling with how best to respond to not just the regular missile launches by Pyongyang, but also its nuclear tests.
Recent US rhetoric has given Beijing, in particular, heightened concerns that Washington might now be thinking much more seriously about a pre-emptive strike on the North’s nuclear capabilities.
On Monday last week, US President Donald Trump asserted that North Korea “is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.”
This builds on his comments several weeks ago — prior to Trump’s meeting with Xi in Florida — that if Beijing “is not going to solve North Korea, we [the US] will.”
This upped the ante from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s striking announcement earlier this year that the two-decade-long US policy of “strategic patience” toward Pyongyang is now over and “all options” are on the table.
This US rhetoric is one reason Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) has said that “China’s priority now is to flash the red light and apply the brake to both [the US and North Korean] trains” to avoid a collision.
Both Beijing and Moscow are concerned that the tensions on the peninsula could spiral out of control, and have previously indicated support for a UN Security Council initiative that would build on the UN vote last year to tighten some sanctions in response to Pyongyang’s fifth nuclear test.
The UN measure favored by Russia and China would require the US and South Korea to halt military drills and deployment of the US’ controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system.
China vehemently opposes THAAD, which it fears could be used by the US to spy on its activities, as much as for targeting North Korean missiles.
Russia shares the concern and Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov has said that THAAD is a “destabilizing factor,” adding that it is “in line with the vicious logic of creating a global missile shield.”
He also said it also undermines “the existing military balance in the region.”
The UN initiative would put further pressure on North Korea to stop its missile and nuclear tests. It is feared that Pyongyang might be preparing for a new nuclear test and the regime has unveiled in a major military parade what appeared to be new intercontinental ballistic missiles.
However, unlike the US, China has been reluctant to take more comprehensive, sweeping measures against its erstwhile ally. The key reason Beijing has differed with Washington over the scope and severity of actions against Pyongyang largely reflects that it does not want to push the regime so hard that it becomes significantly destabilized.
From the vantage point of Chinese officials, this risks North Korea behaving even more unpredictably, and/or the outside possibility of the regime’s implosion, which would not be in Beijing’s interests.
This is not least as it could lead to instability on the North Korea-China border and ultimately the potential emergence of a pro-US successor state.
Overall, Xi’s visit will highlight growing willingness on both sides to develop a significant cooperation agenda.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
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