In 2019 China and Russia took their relationship one step further. The
two countries elevated their cooperation to the level of,
note the quotation marks, "comprehensive strategic partnership for global coordination."
Well, what do you make of that? Whatever the case, what is certain
is that we are talking about the high point in the relationship between these two powers.
Two countries that in Mao's time came to star in a lot of border disputes.
The point is that this good understanding should
give a boost to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, have you ever heard of it?
It is a formal institution led by Beijing and Moscow that focuses on Central Asia.
However the future of this regional organization brings up more questions than answers,
not least because it seems that the interests of China and Russia are not on the same path.
So here at VisualPolitik we have been throwing around a few questions:
What exactly does this Shanghai Cooperation Organization consist of? Do Russia and China
really get along so well? And the question that is even more important, what does the future of the
relationship between these two giants look like? Today on VisualPolitik we are going to answer
these questions. But first, let's take a look at some history.
(UNITED AGAINST THE THREE FORCES OF EVIL)
Moscow is much closer to Madrid than to Beijing. So, although China and Russia share borders,
their rulers have always been separated by more than 3,728 miles or 6,000km. Despite this, their
paths have crossed many times over the years. Let's recap.
The first half of the 20th century was a revolutionary time for both Russia and
China. The Russian Empire was transformed into the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics. And the Chinese Empire ended up collapsing,
giving way to a divided republic constantly threatened by Japan. However, with the Japanese
defeated in World War II, the Communist Party of China emerged victorious from the Civil War.
Russia and China then became united... at least from an ideological point of view.
The Cold War divided the world into two great blocs. The USSR and China
were united as the great allied communist powers against the capitalist West. However,
everything went awry after Stalin's death. Let's just say, the title of the alpha male
of communism was left vacant. And so began a huge rivalry between Moscow and Beijing
to see who was the most communist of all. And Mao bet enormously. So far did the dispute
go that in 1969, there were clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops along the border.
And that is not all. From the early 1970s, China began cooperating with the United States to form
a clamp to restrain the Soviet Union. For that reason, right up until the end of the 1980s,
the USSR maintained 44 divisions deployed along its more than
3,728 miles or 6,000 kilometers of border with China, which was 13 more divisions than those it
had stationed on the Western front against NATO. In any case, after the fall of the USSR,
a rapprochement between Russia and China began in the 1990s that gave rise to the Shanghai Five.
And yes, this could be the name of the most groundbreaking group in Chinese pop. But in
reality these Shanghai Five were China, Russia and three former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The five met for the first time in Shanghai in 1996,
and that's precisely where the name Shanghai Five comes from.
These meetings had a very clear objective: to resolve all the border disputes once and for all,
the classic ones between China and Russia and other more recent ones that had arisen
after the dissolution of the USSR. The fact is that the Shanghai Five
continued to meet until 2001 when they decided to go a step further.
Uzbekistan wanted to join the group and both Moscow and Beijing understood that these meetings
could be transformed into an international organization to address Central Asian issues.
So the Shanghai Five plus Uzbekistan created the SCO in 2001, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, headquartered in?... be warned this is a trick question,
because its headquarters were not based in Shanghai, but were established in Beijing.
Regarding the functioning of the organization, the SCO Charter included the commitment that
official decisions would be taken by consensus and that no member nation would interfere
in the internal affairs of the others. Another fundamental document was also signed
at that time. We are talking about the Shanghai Convention to combat the three forces of evil.
And of course, looking at the track record of the leaders of these countries,
the occasional misguided person might think that these three forces of Evil are democracy,
freedom and the independence of justice.
But no, officially, those three forces of evil are terrorism, separatism and Islamist extremism.
And guess what? These six States took the fight against these three threats
very, very seriously. And of course China was the main beneficiary in doing so.
For example, the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China's westernmost region, is a real powder keg.
Inhabited mostly by ethnic Muslims, especially the Uighurs, the Communist Party has increased
the presence of ethnic Han, the predominant ethnic group throughout the rest of the country.
Xinjiang borders Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. That is why stability in Central Asia is
important for China's internal security. Let's say that Beijing expects these countries to
keep Islamist extremism at bay while within its borders it represses Muslim ethnicities
without any of its neighbors daring to raise their voices against the Chinese giant.
This is the advantage that all SCO countries have due to being authoritarian regimes. That
Human Rights are always an optional extra. In any case, what is certain is that the SCO
achieved significant advances in its particular cooperation against the three forces of Evil.
What's more: its members frequently conduct joint military maneuvers.
But the real test for this alliance came in 2014. When the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Crimea,
the West punished Russia with economic sanctions. However,
Beijing never made a single reproach to Putin. Quite the opposite.
("He is an old friend to the Chinese people and the most familiar
to the Chinese president of the foreign presidents. And also my best friend". Xi Jinping)
But wait a minute, because since then the SCO has broadened its sights. In 2017,
for example, two new members joined the organization – India and Pakistan.
In this way, the organization expanded to the shores of the Indian Ocean and gained
significance as a new international alliance within the new world order. Therefore it fulfilled
the great objective that Moscow and especially Beijing had set for themselves. What objective
are we talking about? Well... Listen up.
(THE NEW WORLD ORDER)
The inclusion of India and Pakistan has doubled the size of the SCO. And
even though you may not have heard of it before this video, the truth is that this
organization covers more than 13 million square miles, that’s 34 million km2, no less than 60%
of the Eurasian region; at the same time it brings together more than three billion people,
which is approximately half of the world's population.
In addition, four members of the organization (Russia, China,
Pakistan and India) are nuclear capable States.
In other words, we are not talking about an insignificant organization. The SCO has the
potential to become one of the most important international organizations in the world.
And that, that's something that even Uncle Sam is aware of.
During the early years of the SCO, the United States itself applied for observer state status.
This status is usually one step prior to joining the organization
and allows participation in the organization’s meetings
without being a member of the organization. However, their application was rejected.
And not only that. The situation in Afghanistan and Iraq heralded an ongoing presence of US
forces in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. So the SCO officially asked the United States to
withdraw its troops from the SCO member States, something that eventually happened in 2014.
Quite the cold shoulder. However, keeping the United
States away from Central Asia has not been its only objective. In fact, you could consider
the SCO as one more tool in China's strategy to build international organizations beyond
the institutions that the United States designed at the end of World War II.
This is certainly one of the big international issues today. Western
powers have been reluctant to modify the power quotas within the World Trade Organization,
the IMF or the World Bank in a way that reflects China's growing economic and political influence.
So, in response, China and Russia have joined forces to create new forums and organizations
in which they both have a leading role. In this vein we find the SCO, along with, for example,
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which encroaches on the World Bank's territory.
Think about it for a second. The Cold War created two blocs, two worldviews, face to face. After
the fall of the Soviet Union, liberal values, democracy, human rights... were the dominant
values on the global scene! But today that is no longer exactly the case. China is currently
challenging that world order. And the Kremlin has joined in to justify its authoritarianism.
(The leaders of the free world keep lowering their standards and authoritarians keep taking
more territory. Eventually people wake up and ask why Putin murders in the UK
or hacks in the US. Why wouldn't he? You didn't stop him before. Garry Kasparov,
Russian chess grandmaster and political activist)
But at the same time that China and Russia have been standing up to the West, both powers
have also been trying to make the most of the positive momentum in their diplomatic relations.
For example, Russia is rich in natural resources. And those of you who have been
following VisualPolitik for some time know that energy is an area in which China is voracious.
In fact, a quarter of Russia's crude oil exports go to China. And going forward,
Beijing has ambitions for Russian gas. And precisely because of this, China's state-owned
CNPC owns twenty percent of a liquefied natural gas megaproject in the Russian Arctic
developed by Novatek. And at the end of 2019, the Power of Siberia gas pipeline started operating,
which will be at full capacity in 2025. There are even negotiations for a second pipeline. If both
are completed, Russia would supply China with more natural gas than it currently exports to Germany.
China is insatiable. And it wants more and more. ("Our bilateral relations have not reached the
maximum and can become even better. We are ready to work together with Russia in order
to continuously increase the effect of our country's high-level cooperation
so that our cooperation could give our two peoples a bigger sense of achievement
and so that we could promote the Russian Chinese agenda in international affairs". Xi Jinping)
To give you an idea, so much money has started to flow into Russia from China that 14% of its
foreign currency reserves are now yuan, something completely inconceivable in any other country.
But wait a minute, if you think that the only thing Putin is interested in is Chinese cash,
you are very much mistaken. The communist regime on the other side of the Amur River
has a lot to offer the Kremlin. Take a look. (China, Russia Put Millions in This Startup
to Recognize Your Face. Bloomberg) (Moscow's 105,000 Facial Recognition
Cameras Here to Stay as Country's Court System Entrenches Video Surveillance. CPOMagazine)
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of how Moscow wants to leverage Chinese technology.
Another example? Huawei will develop Russia's 5G. Of course, in exchange for all this money
and technology, China wants to expand the scope of the SCO with a long-term strategy
to economically integrate the entire Asian continent. The SCO would thus be
a key way to connect China's east coast with markets in Central Asia, Russia and Europe.
However it will not be so easy for Beijing to achieve its goal. Why? Keep watching.
(THE PANDA’S EMBRACE) China has become the great superpower
of Central Asia thanks to its spectacular economic awakening. It controls neighboring economies such
as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. What’s more, it has become the main partner
of Turkmenistan, a country which, if it does not join the SCO, it is because its dictators
believe that Turkmenistan should be neutral above all else. But pay attention to the data,
because what is really important is that Russia is no stranger to Chinese power either.
In 1990, the GDP of the Soviet Union was more than twice as large as that of China. Today
the situation has changed radically: China's GDP is six times larger than that of Russia.
And while Russia ranks only 10th among China's export markets, slightly above the Philippines,
China is the second largest export market for Russia after the European Union.
We have already seen the good side of this economic relationship. Russia needs China
as a giant market to export its raw materials to.
But trading with China also has its risks. Let's talk about armaments, for example.
Russia is China's largest supplier of military equipment. In the past decade it provided 70%
of the Asian giant's arms imports. Beijing has purchased its most advanced
weaponry, such as Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft and S-400 anti-aircraft systems. However
everything indicates that in the future China will not need to import so many
Russian weapons. And why is that? Because of news stories like these.
(Russia up in arms over Chinese theft of military technology. Asia Nikkei)
(Top Russian Submarine Design Bureau Hit By Cyber Attack With Chinese Characteristics. The Drive)
China and Russia have traditionally been rivals. And this kind of news
may stir the Kremlin's distrust. This also has consequences for the SCO.
On the one hand, Russia has flatly refused to let the SCO become a free trade area. It
does not want Chinese products to flood the Russian market and ruin its own producers.
On the other hand, the Kremlin has been the main driving force behind India's entry into the
SCO. And take note because this expansion to the shores of the Indian Ocean may have meant that
this organization has been mortally wounded. Among other things, because although Russia
got its way by incorporating India to counterbalance China's excessive
presence within the organization, Beijing also demanded the inclusion of its staunch
Pakistani ally. And of course, getting Indians and Pakistanis together in the same room
never goes smoothly. Take a look. (India walks out of SCO meet after
Pakistan representative projects 'fictitious map': Economic Times)
Remember that the SCO takes all its decisions unanimously.
So it looks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has shot itself in the foot.
And then, on top of that, we have to take into account that both China and Russia have their own
plan B for the region. Beijing has been working for years on the new Silk Road, a multi-billion
dollar infrastructure investment to extend China's economic and commercial influence in the world.
And Moscow is leading the Eurasian Economic Union, a project that aims to imitate the
European Economic Community, a fledgling copy of today's European Union. In the end, the key to
all this is that Russia still wants to deal with China on an equal footing. And, of course, there
are serious doubts that it can actually do so. But the point, the most important point is that
all these controversies reveal a reality that is not always taken into account:
relations between Russia and China are not as good as they appear to be.
But having reached this point, it's your turn: Do you think the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
has a future, and do you think Russia benefits from its good trade relationship with China,
or is it in danger of becoming another hostage of Beijing? You can leave your answer in the
comments. If you found the video interesting, please like it and don't forget to subscribe
to VisualPolitik if you haven't already done so. Take care and see you next time.