The 2018 Winter Olympics will be the first international sporting event since Donald Trump took office. The U.S.’s president and other world leaders are expected to attend in a show of global unity against Mr.Trump, or at least that’s what they’re hoping for at this point.
The two-week spectacle is also an opportunity to put on display China’s relationship with Russia by creating a “united front” under President Vladimir Putin, who has been described as friends with both presidents Xi Jinping and Trump.,
But despite the many differences between Russia and America, these countries have found common ground when it comes to one thing: their shared interest in curtailing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy not military force
The “Putin, Xi Will Put Partnership Against U.S. on Display at Olympics” is a news article that discusses the partnership between Russia and China in the upcoming Olympics. Read more in detail here: russia ukraine.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet for a meeting to coincide with the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a burgeoning relationship will be on display, challenging US foreign policy and influence across the globe.
Mr. Putin is visiting Beijing at a time when Russia and the West are at odds over Russia’s military buildup in Ukraine and his demands that the US and its allies leave Eastern Europe. While pushing for dialogue, China has expressed support for Moscow, encouraging the United States and Europe to address Russia’s security concerns and to cease using military alliances to threaten others.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi will meet in person for the first time in two years on Friday, after the Chinese leader ceased receiving foreign dignitaries due to the coronavirus outbreak. After the United States and many allies refused to send high-ranking officials to protest China’s human-rights violations, Mr. Putin will be the most visible foreign leader at the Olympics.
Following their meeting, the presidents want to make a joint statement outlining their shared views on foreign and security matters, according to a Kremlin aide. The meeting has been hailed by both governments as a watershed moment in a relationship that has seen Russia and China collaborate on a growing number of issues, including commerce, energy, counterintelligence, and, increasingly, diplomacy, military, security, and regional hotspots.
This week, Chinese paramilitary police walked in formation on the Olympic Green in Beijing ahead of the Winter Games’ commencement.
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press photo
After decades of hostility, closer cooperation between China and Russia challenges the Biden administration’s plans to isolate Mr. Putin and punish him and Russia with economic penalties if Russian soldiers strike Ukraine. In the long run, the Beijing-Moscow pact may stifle US military resources in Europe and East Asia, thwarting a Biden administration strategy to concentrate on China as the world’s most serious security challenge and leaving Washington unbalanced as it seeks new allies.
“What binds them together is their desire to undermine the United States,” said Daniel Russel, a former Obama administration senior adviser on Asian matters. He claims that if the Ukraine issue causes a gap between the US and its European allies, it benefits both Moscow and Beijing because “creating questions about the US’s ability to protect democracies helps them both.”
Russia and China’s cooperation looks to be reaching its limitations. While both sides engage on defense, they do not have a formal alliance, and US officials and military experts say that determining the amount of military cooperation, apart from joint exercises by their armed forces, is impossible.
China’s expanding economic clout has some Russians worried. Given China’s financial interests in Russia and Europe, as well as an economy linked with global commerce and investment, Chinese security experts are fearful of a full-fledged military battle in Ukraine.
Messrs. Putin and Xi, who have fostered domestic reputations as strong rulers, have developed a relationship over the last decade fueled by fears that the United States would use its preeminent global influence to oppress Russia and China.
In its official answer to Moscow provided last week, NATO and the US failed to satisfy Russia’s requests for legally enforceable security assurances, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yuri Kochetkov/AFP/Getty Images/Yuri Kochetkov/AFP/Getty Images/Yuri Kochetkov/AFP/G
According to a transcript posted on the Kremlin’s website late Wednesday, Mr. Putin said in an interview with state-run China Media Group, “President Xi Jinping and I have known each other for a long time, as good friends and politicians who hold largely the same views on addressing the world’s problems.”
“Both Moscow and Beijing see the need of establishing a more equitable international order,” Kremlin advisor Yury Ushakov told reporters on Wednesday. “China supports the view that one state’s security cannot be guaranteed by jeopardizing the security of another.”
The China-Russia relationship, according to China’s official news agency Xinhua, is “a huge ship with the greatest degree of mutual confidence, the highest level of coordination, and the highest strategic importance.”
China and Russia are both dealing with US attempts to strengthen alliances and other partners in order to oppose their increasingly aggressive foreign and military policies in areas that Beijing and Moscow consider as their domains of influence. While attempting to buttress the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other European allies against Russia’s revived aspirations for influence, the US is mobilizing Japan, Australia, India, and others throughout the Indo-Pacific to check Beijing.
“A lot of what the two nations are doing is in reaction to US political, ideological, and security demands,” said Mingjiang Li, a China security policy researcher at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “China and Russia both believe the United States as a significant and actual danger to their respective national security.”
Both Moscow and Beijing applauded the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan this summer, a region that both China and Russia see as vital to their security and, in China’s case, for oil and mineral riches. While the two countries fight for influence in Central Asia, Beijing is content to let Moscow take the lead on security for the time being, having backed Russia’s involvement last month to prop up Kazakhstan’s president during anti-government demonstrations.
President Biden confronts the task of reigniting global democracy at his Summit for Democracy, as authoritarian governments in China and Russia continue to gain ground. Gerald F. Seib of the Wall Street Journal describes how Biden will address these issues during the virtual summit. Elise Dean contributed to this image.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the issue of Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shot him down. Mr. Wang chastised the Biden administration for failing to take China’s interests into account, and chastised the US and its NATO partners for pushing into Eastern Europe, a key strategic issue for Russia.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Wang told Mr. Blinken, “All parties should completely abandon the Cold War mentality and form a balanced, effective, and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiations, with Russia’s legitimate security concerns being taken seriously and addressed.”
China, as the world’s second-largest economy and a big importer of oil and gas, is already a significant consumer of Russian energy and a significant investment in the Russian economy. According to Russian and Chinese international-affairs experts, Beijing might chose to further up its support for Russia in the face of probable US sanctions by purchasing more energy resources, supplying semiconductors and other items if the US imposes export limits, and offering bigger loans.
“Russia has few allies,” said Alexander Lukin, a political scientist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics’ International Relations Department. “Having such a powerful ally as China, the world’s second-largest economy, on its side is crucial both politically and economically.”
Following Russia’s last invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when it invaded Crimea and fomented an uprising by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, China’s readiness to be Russia’s bulwark has strengthened. This prompted the United States to impose sanctions on Russia, costing the country tens of billions of dollars, and prompted Moscow and Beijing to finalize a long-stalled contract to supply China with Russian natural gas.
China is Russia’s greatest economic partner after more than seven years, with trade between the two nations reaching a new high of $147 billion last year. Mr. Putin has predicted that the sum would reach $200 billion this year. A rail bridge that spans the Amur River in Siberia, which was constructed last year, would aid physical transit between China and Russia.
The construction of a new rail bridge over the Amur River in Siberia is planned to enhance commerce between Russia and China.
Yuri Smityuk/Zuma Press photo
Meanwhile, China’s yuan has grown in importance in Russia’s foreign-currency reserves, rising from 5% in March 2017 to 14.2 percent in March 2018.
According to analysts, Russia’s state-owned gas producer Gazprom may transport roughly 100 billion cubic meters of gas to China in the future years via the current Power of Siberia pipeline in Russia’s Far East and a new project under discussion that would pass Mongolia. Last year, Gazprom provided 175 billion cubic meters to Europe.
According to Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, the possible new pipeline via Mongolia would send around 50 billion cubic meters to China, almost the same amount that Germany would get from Russia through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if the latter is licensed.
“It’s a great symbolic gesture,” he remarked. “Are you sanctioning us?” Then you get the middle finger. “We’re going to China.”
Messrs. Putin and Xi have been cautious in their public statements about explicitly attacking the United States in their more than three dozen prior encounters.
Mr. Xi also does not want to be perceived as endorsing a Russian war on Ukraine, according to security experts; he is attempting to stabilize the Chinese economy and prepare for a political conference later this year in which he will seek re-election to a third five-year term as Communist Party leader.
Mr. Putin was also present at the opening ceremony when Beijing held the Olympics in 2008. Meanwhile, Russian forces poured over the border into Georgia, detracting from Beijing’s moment in the limelight and enraging Mr. Xi’s predecessor.
Officials in Mr. Xi’s government, however, have claimed that the Biden administration is also neglecting to regard China’s interests, particularly by expanding support for Taiwan and, in Beijing’s opinion, strengthening the island’s opposition to political unification with China.
Beijing has also reacted angrily to criticism from the United States and its allies over China’s crackdown on Hong Kong opposition activists and the suppression of the Muslim Uyghur minority group in the country’s Xinjiang region, both of which are reasons for Washington’s diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.
“Right now, China needs Russia as the sole backer of Chinese politics,” said Alexey Maslov, head of Moscow State University’s Institute of Asia and Africa. “Russia and China have discovered each other as allies for the future of the world.”
—This piece was co-written by William Mauldin in Washington.
Ann M. Simmons and Chao Deng can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.
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