China’s top diplomat heads to Russia on security talks mission
- Yang Jiechi will meet Nikolai Patrushev for the latest round of strategic consultations between the two countries
- Moscow and Beijing play up cooperation as poor relations persist with Washington
China’s top diplomat will visit Russia next week for strategic talks as the two countries try to strengthen ties in the face of tensions with the United States.
Yang Jiechi, a member of China’s Communist Party Politburo, will co-chair the 16th China-Russia strategic security consultation with Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
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The talks come as China and Russia’s relations with the United States languish.
The two countries have vowed to work together to resist any attempt to create a “geopolitical turbulence belt”.
China and Russia have sought to play up their relationship since the start of this year.
Xi also said that energy had always been the most important and wide-ranging area for cooperation between the two countries, with nuclear power a “strategic priority”.
Moscow and Beijing have taken similar stands on recent conflicts around the world, including hailing the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip on Friday.
In March, the two countries set up a “regional security dialogue platform”, although there were few details of the plan.
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Zhang Xin, associate professor of international relations at East China Normal University, said one of the items at next week’s talks was likely to be US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
China would also be keen to discuss development of the Arctic and space cooperation, including a joint effort to set up a lunar station, Zhang said.
“China and Russia have developed very regular and institutionalised talks in these areas, and it is not necessary to understand these topics as focusing on the US,” Zhang said.
“However, there will be messages that are indirectly responding to the US, or even the G7 powers, which would totally be a reasonable move [considering the geopolitical situation].”
Earlier this month, foreign ministers from the Group of 7 described Moscow as malicious and Beijing as a bully. The ministers also expressed support for Taiwan and Ukraine.
Zhang said China and Russia might use the talks as a chance to announce new strategic and safety cooperation, but the relationship would not become an official alliance.
“There is no evidence now that suggests that this approach has changed despite security ties continuing to strengthen. This is a new form of bilateral relationship that China is trying to establish- an extremely strong security relationship without declaring each other as allies,” he said.
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Temur Umarov, an expert on China and Central Asia at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said he did not expect any groundbreaking cooperation from the meeting but the two countries would aim to develop stronger trust between the political elites.
“China and Russia have been focusing on changing the international environment as they deem the current global order we live in as wrong as it was settled by Western governments,” Umarov said.
“Their stronger ties have made them feel they need to change the global order and it is very likely we will hear their ideas on this topic as an outcome of the talks.”
But no matter how strong the relations may appear, the two powers would always have limitations in certain key security issues, he said.
“For example, Russia would not like to be dragged into the South China Sea conflicts China has with Southeast Asian countries ... and China does not want to comment on Russia’s conflicts with Ukraine,” he said.
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Danil Bochkov, a China-Russia relations specialist at the Russian International Affairs Council, said the two countries did not want to be seen by the West as forming a united front.
“It may be explained by the unwillingness of Moscow and Beijing to further damage already tense relations with the West by demonstration of support for each other,” Bochkov said.
He said Moscow and Beijing had expanded cooperation to nearly all domains of strategic and political collaboration without a military alliance framework.
“So, if intensive cooperation can be developed outside of any legally set obligations and boundaries – why [would] China and Russia need to complicate the relations with any legally binding formats?”
