A partnership without borders
Chinese President Xi Jinping ended a three-day visit to Russia on Wednesday, March 22. Both countries signed several cooperation agreements in the economic, technological and cultural fields. They want to deepen their “partnership without borders”.
Russia and China have also said they want to strengthen their strategic relationship. They call for more mutual cooperation on international platforms with the aim of challenging hegemonic practices and creating a multipolar world.
Xi has also invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit China in the coming months.
A year ago, just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin and Xi had met and issued a similar joint statement on international relations and cooperation between the two countries.
This visit comes at a time when the West, led by the United States, is waging a proxy war (1) against Russia and Washington has launched a Cold War against China. In this context, it is no coincidence that both countries advocate a new world order in which the United States and its allies lose their dominance and strive for a multipolar world.
United States supremacy
A review of recent history is helpful in understanding the scope and challenges of this “friendship” between Putin and Xi.
The United States was declared the big winner after World War II. In Washington they dreamed of a new world order in which only they ruled. Unfortunately, these plans were thwarted by the rapid reconstruction of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the nuclear monopoly.
Half a century later, that dream came true with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. The United States eventually became, and intended to remain, the undisputed leader of world politics.
Washington held back no longer. The invasion of Panama in late 1989 was a drill for what would follow. Soon after it was Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia’s turn. Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria would follow later.
In addition to overt military intervention, the United States has increasingly engaged in “hybrid wars”(2) or “color revolutions”(3) to bring about regime change, which it has not succeeded in universally. They tried it in Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Belarus, among others. In addition, more than 20 countries have been subject to economic sanctions.
NATO was created to contain communism in Europe, but in practice it consolidates US military supremacy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the organization continued to grow. Since the 1990s, 14 countries on the European continent have become members of the treaty organization. Other countries like Colombia became “partners” with NATO.
Legend: In purple countries that joined NATO before 1997 and in yellow since 1997.
change in world relations
After the Cold War, the United States seemed to have the world to itself. But he wasn’t counting on China. For the first time in recent history, a poor and underdeveloped country has managed to become an economic superpower in a short space of time.
Since joining the WTO in 2001, the Chinese economy has more than quadrupled. A few years ago, the Chinese economy surpassed that of the US (in purchasing power parity terms). Incidentally, the leap forward is not only an economic one, but also a technological one.
Not only has China become the largest economy, but it has also developed a new alliance dynamic with emerging economies and the South.
First there are the BRICS. It is an alliance between five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. There is now talk of expanding this group even further with traditional Western allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
China also promotes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance. In addition to Russia and China, its members also include India and Pakistan.
China also recently joined the world’s largest economic association, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Association (RCEP), an association in Southeast Asia that represents 30% of the world’s population.
And of course there’s the Belt and Road Initiative, which includes hundreds of investments, credit loans, trade deals and dozens of special economic zones worth $900 billion. It spans 72 countries and has a population of approximately 5,000 million people, 65% of the world’s population.
Russia is also forging alliances. The country is a member of several regional and multinational alliances. One of them, a military alliance, is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSO), which is currently involved in “peacekeeping” operations in Kazakhstan. Another is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization mentioned earlier.
Moscow also maintains friendly relations on the African continent and with some Latin American countries.
The war in Ukraine has shown that the countries of the South, home to the vast majority of the world’s population, do not follow the warmongering of the West. According to former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, “the war between Ukraine and Russia was caused by European belligerence, hegemony and dominance”.
dedollarization
A very important but poorly understood aspect of the power shift in world relations is de-dollarization. In fact, the dominant position of the United States rests largely on the dollar as the world currency. On the one hand, this gives the United States unlimited ability to print money to pay off its government deficits, and on the other hand it can freeze or confiscate other countries’ assets in political disputes, as has happened with Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia. This undue advantage and financial dominance is based on paying for trades in dollars. And that is exactly what is now being questioned more and more.
Russia and China no longer pay part of their trade in dollars but in their own currencies. Russia is already demanding that gas be paid for in rubles, not dollars. China has so-called “currency swaps” with various other countries, which ensure that trade no longer has to be settled in dollars.
Countries like Venezuela and Iran have long wanted to trade their oil in currencies other than the dollar. Other major oil-exporting countries such as Iraq and Libya have considered this possibility in the past. If they are joined by countries like Saudi Arabia, the rule of the dollar will be over, which will result in the United States losing much power and influence.
The war in Ukraine and the heavy economic and financial sanctions against Russia will only accelerate this de-dollarization process. If this process continues, the dollar will lose its status as a reserve currency. Or, as a director of the Institute for Global Security Analysis told The Wall Street Journal, “If you take that little block off the wall, it starts to collapse.”
By trading the dollar, Russia and China are setting a trend that could have far-reaching implications for the US-dominated financial architecture since World War II.
Dangerous for whom or what?
Is this “friendship” or “association” between Putin and Xi dangerous? It depends for who or what.
In any case, the alliance between the two countries forms an important counterweight to US supremacy. According to The Guardian, “The birth of this Sino-Russian axis, created in response to US-led Western democracies, is the most important global strategic event since the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago. It will define the next era.” In other words, for the hegemony of the United States and the West, this “friendship” is dangerous.
For countries in the South that want to chart their own course, free from the suffocating straitjacket of the West, this “friendship” is a step forward.
A recent study has at least made it clear that a large majority of the population in the South speaks positively of both China (70%) and Russia (66%).
China recently managed to reconcile its two arch-enemies, Iran and Saudi Arabia. They reached an agreement that, despite the warmongering of the US and the West in the region, offers a prospect of peace for the entire Middle East. Over the past 15 years, the United States or its allies have besieged or bombed eight countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Iraq and Syria.
Now, while the US and Britain are obstructing peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, China has also made a peace proposal to end this war. This proposal was taken off the table by the West, but welcomed by Russia and not rejected, at least by Ukraine.
In any case, the Russian-Chinese alliance offers better chances for the Ukraine conflict and for world peace overall than the West’s previous position.
If the recently forged alliance between Russia and China strengthens and more countries join, we could be at the dawn of a new era. An era where power in the world is more decentralized, where there is more balance. It remains to be seen whether the West will tolerate this.
As I’ve written before, it promises to be an exciting time, but also a dangerous one. We need a strong peace movement more than ever.
Sources: People Dispatch, Financial Times, Junge Welt,
Grades:
(1) Proxy war or war by delegation (in English proxy war) is a conflict in which one party (usually a major power) delegates to another to wage war and acts as a rear guard. In other words, someone else does the dirty work. The superpower provides economic, ideological, logistical, and/or military support. The trustee is usually a smaller country and usually bears the negative consequences of such a war.
(2) Hybrid warfare is a form of covert warfare that uses a variety of media: fake news, social media manipulation, diplomatic pressure, legal subterfuge against political leaders (lawfare), manipulation and directing of popular discontent, domestic and foreign pressure in elections etc.
(3) According to the Color Revolutions Handbook, NGOs, student organizations and local organizations receive funding, education and training to organize street riots as effectively as possible. Street violence must destabilize the country to the point of forcing the government to resign or the army stepping in and removing it.
Source: https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2023/03/23/hoe-gevaarlijk-is-de-vriendschap-tussen-poetin-en-xi/
(Taken from Rebellion)