The Future of China-Russian Relations by James Bellacqua (ed.)
Winston Churchill famously remarked that Russia was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It still largely is, at least as far as this part of Asia is concerned: Russia’s intentions regarding the region can often seem inconsistent if not unclear. The terminus of the proposed Siberian pipeline to deliver Russian oil to Asian customers (under discussion for closer to two decades than one) has shifted back and forth between China and the Pacific coast more than once. And although Russia is a (and arguably the only) Eurasian country—the two-headed Russian eagle, I was told on numerous occasions, looks East as well as West—Russia’s own Asian dominions are depopulated and largely neglected.
It is no surprise, perhaps, that the contributors to this well-researched and comprehensive collection of essays deal with more with the recent past of the Sino-Russian relationship than with the future contained in the book’s title.
The mere existence of this volume begs the question as to whether The Future of China-Russian Relations matters. Certainly, the subject seems somewhat passe: in spite of a 4000km border, numerous bilateral summits, back-to-back years of “China in Russia” and vice versa, no one seems to have even thought of coining a trendy Sino-Russian equivalent to either “Chimerica” or “Chindia”. But when called upon to discourse locally on such topics as “business opportunities in Russia”, I often start with the observation that since 1997, Russia is no longer a large, distant and obscure country, but rather Hong Kong’s largest and arguable most-important neighbor, Hong Kong being part of China, after all.
So, while The Future of China-Russian Relations wasn’t necessarily written with an East-Asian audience in mind, it nevertheless provides an excellent background to the subject—covering everything from security to trade and energy, and everywhere from Korea to Central Asia—and also provides an explanation as to why the Sino-Russian relationship seems never to have really gelled nor to have come close to maximizing the potential of what, at first glance, would appear to be a highly symbiotic relationship.
Although it is a fraught undertaking to summarize a 350-page collection of essays from a dozen contributors, one might venture that whatever the benefits of closer cooperation might be, Russia and China are running on two quite different tracks at considerably different speeds and, perhaps, sometimes even in different directions. Russia has the energy that China needs, but neither wants to end up, for different reasons, dependent on the other. While both claim to desire a “multi-polar” world, the relations of each with the United States are more important than their relations with the other. China’s regional and global influence is expanding, while Russia’s is, on the whole, declining: although the authors do not discuss this possibility explicitly, a merely bi-polar world (as in the recently-coined “G2”) might suit China just fine.
The nagging issue for the non-specialist Asian reader is not the geopolitical one, but whether one needs to prepare for the commercial opportunities that might explode once the Sino-Russian relationship really takes off. Rusal’s recent listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange notwithstanding (a potentially significant event that apparently occurred after the essays were penned), the contributors indicate that the status quo is likely to endure for some time yet—during which, although the contributors do not expressly say so, China’s relative position is likely to strengthen even more.
The Future of China-Russian Relations is not a book for the casual reader; the contributions, while clear, are academic in tone and heavily footnoted. The contributors are for the most part in agreement with each other, and since each essay could in many respects stand alone, there is considerable repetition, the same point, event or fact coming up several times: had the same book had a single author, it might have been half the length. This is perhaps a small price to pay for having an access to a dozen experts in a single volume.