Strategic Partners

Russian-Chinese Relations in the Post-Soviet Era

Jeanne Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317459347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Russia's foreign policy experience in the first post-Soviet decade was marked by disappointments as well as surprising turns. Expectations that Russia would join the Western powers as an equal partner were frustrated, while relations with the People's Republic of China warmed considerably. Today, Russia's relationship with China is an important component of its overall foreign policy orientation, as the two states - one greatly diminished, the other clearly on the rise - have found themselves sharing an interest in curbing the power of the United States. In analyzing Russia's evolving foreign policy vis-a-vis China, the author takes into account the legacy of Soviet-era precedents; the simultaneous processes of economic policy change and integration into global economic structures; and military relations. By shedding light on the role of political realism, decision makers, and exogenous factors in Russian foreign policy, this analysis of an important bilateral relationship contributes to the larger project of understanding international relations and the dynamics of domestic and foreign policy change.

1

Introduction

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leadership of the emergent Russian Federation set out on a deliberate task of reconstruction, seeking to forge a new identity in both the domestic and foreign policy spheres. This endeavor was reminiscent of efforts by the Soviet regime itself three-quarters of a century earlier and was similarly doomed to partial defeat, suggesting the existence of certain immutable constraints encountered by any Russian government, irrespective of its ideological and political orientation. The Yeltsin leadership, anxious to demonstrate its membership in the Western cohort of nations, sought to downscale its interactions with those states—a greatly reduced number in any case—that continued to uphold Marxist-Leninist precepts and communist party leadership. Thus, at the onset of the Russian Federation, the Russian foreign policy orientation toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was marked by suspicion and an often not-well-concealed hostility. It did not appear to be an auspicious beginning for the bilateral relationship between the two states.

Throughout the 1990s, the ties between Russia and China intensified. The Yeltsin leadership carried on the Gorbachev legacy in a number of areas. The Russian-Chinese border was demarcated according to the terms of the 1991 border agreement. Talks on the demilitarization of the border continued, leading to agreements in 1996 and 1997 on increased transparency and reduction of military strength in the border regions. In July 2001, Chinese president Jiang Zemin arrived in Moscow to sign the Russian-Chinese Treaty of Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation. In the span of less than a decade, Russia and China had forged a “strategic partnership,” with the two sides resolving that their friendship “would pass down for all generations.”

Russia and China found a common cause in the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an outgrowth of these negotiations. The Yeltsin presidency also elected to continue discussions initiated in the late Soviet period on the sale of weaponry, which resulted in the large-scale transfer of arms and their related technologies to China in the 1990s and early 2000s. As Russia’s initial expectation for acceptance by the West as a full and equal partner was dashed, Russia and China found themselves increasingly united by a largely convergent view of issues in the international realm.

In 1992, few observers anticipated the emergence of close ties between Russia and China in the 1990s. Yet its very development testified to the existence of explanatory factors, more evident in retrospect than at the time. The evolution of Russian-Chinese foreign policy relations in their first decade (specifically from January 1992 to mid-2003) is the subject of this investigation. The primary focus is on Russia and Russian foreign policy behavior, but some attention is directed to China and Chinese foreign policy behavior as a matter of necessity. It is not possible to analyze the dynamic of Russian interactions with China without considering the interactive effect of China itself on the bilateral relationship. In format, this book is a case study that examines the basic issues and events that shaped Russia’s behavior with China. In so doing, I address two interrelated questions: (1) what was the process by which Russia and China established their relationship? and (2) why was Russia motivated to develop cordial ties with China? The first question frames the subsequent chapters. The second question provides a subtext for the investigation in its assessment of factors that were determinant in structuring the evolution of relations. This analysis considers Russia’s motivation in its foreign policy behavior with China as threefold: bilateral, regional, and international issues have all contributed to its development. It is not possible to gauge precisely the relative importance of each factor as an input, for they have also shifted over time. However, if the modes of interaction are considered as a concentric circle, then bilateral considerations constitute the core of the relationship, reflecting the contiguous geographic location of Russia and China. In this sense, geography exercises a decisive impact on the Russian-Chinese relationship.

In the 1990s, the Yeltsin administration considered its foreign policy with the United States as a primary concern, a preoccupation that was largely shared by analysts of Russian foreign policy behavior. In comparison, less attention was given to Russia’s relationship with China. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Western scholars had published several books (as well as a number of articles) that focused in whole or in part on Russia’s relationship with China in the post-Soviet era.¹ Yet overall, Russia’s interactions with China remained a relatively unemphasized aspect of Russian foreign policy behavior in the post-Soviet era. This disregard has been unfortunate, for both practical and theoretical reasons. Russia’s relationship with China is of enormous importance to Russian security interests. Moreover, propositions set forth about Russian foreign policy behavior during its first decade were largely constructed with reference to Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe. Whether these propositions were generalizable remained largely unexamined. This study thus seeks to analyze the extent to which Russia’s interactions with China conformed to or deviated from other documented patterns of Russian foreign policy behavior, an endeavor that also mandates an identification of forces impelling the Russian-Chinese relationship.

Russian-Chinese Relations: A Russian Foreign Policy Success Story

In the 1990s, the Russian Federation met with a series of disappointments, as hopes for a rapid economic and political transition from socialism proved unfounded. In the domestic sphere, the value of the gross domestic product fell precipitously, accompanied by a corresponding decline in living standards for the majority of the Russian population. Russian foreign policy objectives were also often unrealized. The expectation that Russia would join the Western alliance as a cordial and full-fledged partner was not fulfilled, and its relationship with the states of the former Soviet Union was fraught with tensions. Debate will long continue on the Yeltsin presidency and its place in a historical accounting. In fact, anyone assuming the position of Russian president in 1992 would have been faced with a series of virtually insurmountable obstacles. Nonetheless, the Boris Yeltsin who mounted a tank in August 1991 in courageous defiance of the plotters of the coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev was more attractive than the seriously ill and often inebriated figure who served as the first president of the Russian Federation. It is easy to caricaturize the Russian political scene in the 1990s, but it is also the case that a caricaturist would be hard pressed to exaggerate certain grim realities of the Russian situation. The Russian Federation faced an environment of severe economic constraints, which sharply limited its range of options, but the Russian leadership in the Yeltsin era was loath to abandon the pretense that Russia was still a global power. In addition, the Yeltsin administration failed to institute a defined process of foreign policy decision making. These resultant deficiencies have been well chronicled: they included an absence of institutionalized structures for the formation and implementation of foreign policy, a constant turnover of administrative personnel, and the presence of ongoing power struggles within the Yeltsin leadership.² These problems were compounded, moreover, by the erratic behavior of Yeltsin himself.³

Russian interactions with China in the 1990s and early 2000s were subject to the same set of strains and constraints that beset the general course of Russian foreign policy. Russia’s economic circumstances impeded the development of economic linkages between the two states, which remained largely stagnant in the 1990s. In addition, Russian-Chinese relations were affected by specific tensions that were a consequence of geographic proximity. Russian residents of the Russian Far East and Transbaikal area, accustomed to an autarchic existence, feared the opening of the Russian-Chinese border. Protests escalated concerning the transfer of territory to China following the 1991 border agreement and the emergent migration of Chinese across the border, a process that had been effectively proscribed since the Stalin era. However, despite these obstacles, the Russian Federation established a cordial foreign policy relationship with China, distinguished by a continual upgrading of its format. The two states established a “constructive partnership” in September 1994 and a “strategic partnership” in April 1996, moving on to formalize their relationship through the Friendship Treaty in July 2001. Some commentators would likely question the wisdom of Russia’s foreign policy interactions with China, noting that Russian arms sales to China posed a potential security risk to Russia in the future.⁴ Others have downplayed the significance of the relationship, pointing to the superficial nature of relations between the two states, which barely disguised the inherited legacy of mistrust.⁵ There is no doubt that Russia and China lacked an underlying foundation of shared norms and values. The warming of ties between the two states was based not on trust but on convergent assessments of their mutual interests. Nonetheless, in comparison to Russia’s foreign policy performance in a number of other venues, Russia proved proficient in developing ties with China. While Russia experienced frustration and setbacks in its interactions with NATO member states and was unable to resolve its long-standing issues with Japan, the Russian-Chinese relationship improved. In this regard, the Russian-Chinese relationship must be considered, at least in a relative context, as a Russian foreign policy success story, arguably Russia’s most substantive foreign policy success story in its first decade. This situation, moreover, raises the obvious question as to why and how Russia attained a success with China that it did not achieve with other states. What circumstances facilitated the development of the relationship?

The Decisive Role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In the Soviet era, a well-developed infrastructure existed for the formation of foreign policy under the centralized direction of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. During Yeltsin’s tenure in office, despite repeated efforts, no comparable set of institutional mechanisms was constructed to fill this void. The Russian constitution delegated primary authority for the setting of a foreign policy agenda to the president, whose task was to be assisted by a series of structures including the Security Council, the Presidential Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, legislative committees dealing with international affairs, and foreign policy specialists located in both government and private (or quasi-private) institutes. In fact, even during the increasingly rare periods when Yeltsin was relatively healthy, he displayed little interest in devoting the time and effort necessary to create an effectively coordinated foreign policy apparatus. Although the establishment of the Security Council in 1992 was greeted with apprehension and viewed as an ominous replacement for the Politburo, such fears proved unfounded. The Security Council in practice turned out to be ineffective and largely powerless, meeting only infrequently and largely devoting its attention to issues of internal security rather than foreign relations. In practice, in the absence of a viable alternative, the day-to-day responsibility for the coordination and implementation of foreign policy devolved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.⁶ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs clearly played a central role in the orchestration of Russian foreign policy toward China. Although Boris Yeltsin apparently made key decisions regarding the overall policy line to be adopted, specific issues of Russian-Chinese relations did not garner much individual attention from the president. Yeltsin’s appointees to positions in the executive branch also tended to be uninterested in Russia’s relationship with China, instead focusing their attentions on the United States or the near abroad as a foreign policy priority.⁷ Lacking clear-cut directives from Yeltsin or his presidential staff, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by default became active in the de facto formulation as well as the implementation of Russian foreign policy toward China.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs lost a number of dedicated, knowledgeable specialists on China in the purge of the ministry that accompanied the Yeltsin transition to power and was further impeded by problems of low morale and high turnover among its staff. Nonetheless, the ministry retained in the China area a number of competent and experienced staff members from the Soviet era. Primary among them was Igor Rogachev, who served as a vice premier under Gorbachev, and was the Russian ambassador to China from 1992 onward. Similarly, Genrikh Kireev, formerly the chief of the Directorate of Socialist Asian Countries of the USSR Foreign Ministry and the initial head of the Sino-Soviet talks on border troop reductions, continued to act in that capacity in the Russian Foreign Ministry. Kireev headed the Russian delegation in negotiations during the 1990s on both boundary demarcation and border troop reductions.⁸ During the first decade of the Russian Federation, the First Asian Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry (encompassing the states of China, North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia) was also headed by career diplomats with extensive experience in Asia dating back to the Soviet era.

To a greater extent than was often acknowledged, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducted foreign policy toward China building upon the foundation provided by the Gorbachev administration. The ability of the staff of the ministry to carry out traditional tasks of diplomacy gave evidence of inherited reserves of professionalism and expertise that transcended the often chaotic conditions of the decade. At the same time, the organizational structure of the Foreign Ministry made it ill suited for the substantive task of coordinating Russian foreign policy, as it lacked mechanisms to ensure compliance with government policy or to punish deviant actions. The Foreign Ministry was also not well equipped to perform tasks—well beyond its traditional range of operations—associated with the transition to a market economy and the development of economic linkages with China.⁹ But the Foreign Ministry deserved more credit than it generally received for its almost singular ability to provide a semblance of order to Russian foreign policy toward China in the initial years of the Russian Federation.

Elite Perceptions of the Russian-Chinese Relationship

As previously noted, in the 1990s, the question of how to define the Russian relationship with the United States was a subject of intense interest on the Russian political scene. Although the Yeltsin administration eventually moved away from its overtly pro-Western foreign policy orientation, interactions with the United States nonetheless remained the primary preoccupation of the foreign policy establishment. This situation stood in marked contrast with the Russian-Chinese bilateral relationship. To a considerable extent, moreover, discussions on Russian-Chinese relations were conducted within a geostrategic framework that revived the concept of the strategic triangle, focusing on interactions between Russia, China, and the United States. In effect, the United States was still the main referent. A parallel displacement existed on the domestic scene. The leftist politicians who extolled the virtues of the Chinese economy in fact displayed little knowledge of its operation. For example, Arkadii Vol′skii, president of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, advocated the Chinese economic model, but his promotion of China emphasized its features—such as state industries—that were slated for radical restructuring, if not outright elimination, by the Chinese government under the leadership of Premier Zhu Rongji. Vol′skii’s ultimate interest was not China but the defense of the state sector of Russian industry.

Regarding the attitudes of Russian elite toward China, two points are of particular importance. First, there was a nearly consensual agreement across the political spectrum at the national level that Russia needed to maintain an amicable relationship with China. In the words of the Russian academic Evgenii Bazhanov, Russia’s policy toward China was “probably the only issue on which there is a consensus within the turbulence of Russian society.”¹⁰ At the same time, however, many Russian politicians lacked an interest in China, or for that matter, in the nuances of the Russian-Chinese relationship, which tended to be a topic of investigation for Russian academic specialists.¹¹ Various politicians did criticize Chinese actions, typically regarding allegations that China was deliberately moving migrants into Russia in an effort to regain lost territories. State Duma committee investigations, however, ended up substantially endorsing the government policy.¹² Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s efforts in the Duma to pass a law on establishing diplomatic relations with Taiwan received little support and went down to defeat.¹³ Compared with the impassioned debate that developed over the Russian relationship with the United States, Russia’s relationship with China was virtually a nonissue, receiving limited attention. The Russian relationship with China was not a topic of sustained inquiry in either the 1996 or the 2000 presidential elections. The only Russian candidate to offer some semblance of an alternative platform on Russian-Chinese relations was Zhirinovskii, and his credibility on this matter was compromised by widely disparate statements.¹⁴ The lack of dissension—and the seeming disinterest—meant that the Russian government’s foreign policy behavior toward China was not subjected to intense scrutiny.

China: A Willing Partner

The ability of Russia to establish friendly ties with China was obviously dependent on Chinese acquiescence to this arrangement. China, moreover, often acted as the initiator of linkages with Russi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Maps
• List of Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Russian-Chinese Relations: A Chronological Overview
• 3 Russia and China as Neighbors: Border Issues and Regional Relations in Asia
• 4 The Weakest Link: Economic Relations Between Russia and China
• 5 Russian-Chinese Military and Military-Technical Relations
• 6 The China Factor in the Border Regions: The Russian Far East and Transbaikal Area
• 7 Political Relations: Defining the Strategic Partnership
• 8 Conclusion: The Emergent Partnership
• Appendix: Treaty of Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index