The Great Game Changer: Belt and Road Intiative (BRI; OBOR)

[Kyle Sun]

No matter what , we are running in the right direction.

 

[3Kingdoms]

That is for Private Venture. not for government venture. The US government was bounded by Outer Space Treaty, but private company did not. Theoretically, if a Chinese Company can go to space, they can colonize anything and everything, same as any US company or any company from anywhere. But Chinese and US Government cannot colonize the space as per the treaty

Smart move that treaty - just read up on it... It also prohibits nukes but conventional weapons are allowed! I guess private venture is where the $ is at.
Read on NASA's own site an argument for colonizing the moon as a first step to Mars, mind you its from 2005.
science.nasa.gov.....
/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/18mar_moonfirst/

 

[oprih]

Good job China, I'm sure more amazing achievements will be delivered by China next year.
Why is that in every thread though about Chinese achievements, there has to be americans and their pets spewing some nonsense in an effort to derail the thread? Government-sponsored trolls?

Rated negatively by a western whore.

 

[rott]

Most of them root for their adopted country since their own country has nothing much to show for.
USA USA USA.... Lol

 

[Martian2]

Taiwan controls 90% of world computer notebook and tablet production

In the following December 22, 2015 citation, we see that Taiwan still controls 90% of worldwide computer notebook and tablet production. All of the actual production is on mainland China. It's too expensive to manufacture in Taiwan.

If you go through each industrial sector, you will realize that Taiwan caused the boom in China's electronics (including enterprise computer servers), semiconductors, and petrochemical industries.
----------

Can Taiwan achieve another miracle with hardware startups?

 

[Red Wolf]

China’s assiduous courting of former Soviet Central Asian nations is stirring apprehension among Russia’s leaders
PUBLISHED: 28 December, 2015

President Xi Jinping meets Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member heads of government earlier this month. Photo: EPA

Slowly but surely, a four-lane highway is beginning to take shape on the sparsely populated Central Asian steppe. Soviet-era cars, trucks and ageing long-distance buses weave past modern yellow bulldozers, cranes and towering construction drills, labouring under Chinese supervision to build a road that could one day stretch from eastern Asia to Western Europe.

This small stretch of blacktop, running past potato fields, bare dun-coloured rolling hills and fields of grazing cattle, is a symbol of China’s march westward, an advance into Central Asia that is steadily wresting the region from Russia’s embrace.

Here the oil and gas pipelines, as well as the main roads and the railway lines, always pointed north to the heart of the old Soviet Union. Today, those links are beginning to point toward China.

“This used to be Russia's back yard,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, “but it is increasingly coming into China's thrall.”

It is a shift that has shaken up the Russian leadership, which is watching China’s advance across the steppe with little apprehension. Moscow and Beijing may speak the language of partnership these days, but Central Asia has emerged a source of wariness and mistrust.

For China, the region offers rich natural resources, but Beijing’s grander commercial plans — to export its industrial overcapacity and find new markets for its goods — will struggle to find wings in these poor and sparsely populated lands.

In September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) chose Kazakhstan’s sparkling, modern new capital, Astana, to announce what has since become a cornerstone of his new, assertive foreign policy, a Silk Road Economic Belt that would revive ancient trading routes to bring new prosperity to a long-neglected but strategically important region at the heart of the Eurasian continent.

Bound together by 2,000 years of exchanges dating to the Western Han Dynasty and sharing a 1,100-mile border, the two nations, Xi said, now have a “golden opportunity” to develop their economies and deepen their friendship.

At the China-Kazakhstan border, at a place known as Horgos to the Chinese and Khorgos to the Kazakhs, a massive concrete immigration and customs building is being completed to mark that friendship, rising from the windswept valley floor like a mammoth Communist-style spaceship.

A short distance away, China is building an almost entirely new city, apartment block by apartment block, alongside a two-square-mile free-trade zone, where traders sit in new multi-storey shopping malls hawking such items as iPhones and fur coats.

This is reputed to have been a seventh-century stop for Silk Road merchants. Today, the People's Daily newspaper calls it “the pearl” on the Silk Road Economic Belt.

But this pearl is distinctly lopsided: On the Kazakh side of the zone, opposite all those gleaming malls, a single small building, in the shape of a nomad’s tent or yurt, sits on an expanse of wasteland where a trickle of people stop to buy biscuits, vodka and camel’s milk.

A Chinese surveyor climbs to take measurements at the site of a bridge project near Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Sept. 16. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

The Silk Road slogan may be new, but many of its goals are not. Beijing has long been working to secure a share of the region’s rich natural resources to fuel China’s industrial economy; it is building a network of security cooperation in Central Asia as a bulwark against Islamic extremism that could leak into China’s restive western province of Xinjiang, and it wants to create alternative trading routes to Europe that bypass Asia’s narrow, congested shipping lanes.

Under the Silk Road plan, China also is promising to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build new infrastructure here, and hopes to reap benefits of its own: to create new markets for Chinese goods, especially for heavy industries such as steel and cement that have suffered as the Chinese economy has slowed.

But the scene at Horgos underlines the fact that the economies of China’s Central Asian neighbours are simply too small to provide much of a stimulus to China’s giant, slowing economy.

Russian opposition

China’s ambitious Central Asian plans did not go down well, at least initially, in Moscow.

“When China announced its Silk Road plan in Kazakhstan, it was met with a lot of scepticism and even fear by the Russian leadership,” said Alexander Gabuyev, head of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Centre. “The feeling was, ‘It’s a project to steal Central Asia from us, they want to exploit our economic difficulties to be really present in the region.’ ”

Russia had long blocked China’s attempts to create an infrastructure development bank under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a regional body, fearing it would become a tool for Chinese economic expansion.

Beijing responded by sidestepping Moscow, establishing an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in June with a $100 billion capital base.

Kazakh staff and customers are seen in a yurt selling imported goods on the Kazakh side of the Horgos free-trade zone in Horgos, China, on Sept. 14. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

China has overtaken Russia to become Central Asia’s biggest trade partner and lender. Pipelines transport increasing amounts of Kazakh oil to China and vast quantities of Turkmen gas east through Horgos. That has served to undermine Russia’s negotiating position when it has tried to sell its own gas to China.

At the same time, however, President Xi has worked overtime to calm Russian fears, reassuring his counterpart Vladimir Putin that Beijing has no plans to counter his country’s political and security dominance in Central Asia.

In 2014, Russia attempted to draw the region more closely into its embrace by establishing a Eurasian Economic Union, with Kazakhstan a founding member.

But even as Moscow moved to protect its turf, the realisation was dawning that Russia lacked the financial resources to provide Central Asia the economic support it needed.

After the breakdown of relations with the West over Ukraine in 2014, and the imposition of sanctions, the dogmatic view that Russia had to be the top economic dog in Central Asia was questioned, and then finally, grudgingly abandoned.

It was impossible, Gabuyev said, so Russia’s leaders decided to divide the labour: Russia would provide security, while China would bring its financial muscle.

In May, Xi and Putin signed a treaty designed to balance the two nations’ interests in Central Asia and integrate the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road.

China’s expanding influence has provoked mixed feelings in many states.

About a quarter of Kazakhstan’s citizens are ethnic Russians, while Russian media dominate the airwaves. The Chinese language, by contrast, is nowhere to be seen or heard. Even India has more cultural resonance through Bollywood films, said political scientist Dossym Satpayev in Almaty.

What Beijing can offer is infrastructure loans and investment. It has been careful to frame its plans as more than just a “road” — where Kazakhstan's resources are extracted and Chinese goods waved on their way to Europe — but as a “belt” of economic prosperity.

A construction worker erects scaffolding at a shopping mall construction project overlooking the entrance building to the Horgos free-trade zone in Horgos, China, on Sept. 14. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

Nevertheless, a survey conducted by independent analyst Elena Sadovskaya found that Kazakh attitudes toward Chinese migrant workers reflected fears that China would one day dominate the country, swamp it with immigrants and cheap goods, grab land or simply suck out its natural resources. “In 2030, we'll all wake up and find ourselves speaking Chinese,” is one common saying here.

In July, scores of people were injured when a mass brawl broke out between Chinese and local workers at a copper mine near the northern Kazakh city of Aktogay.

Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov plays down concerns. China may outnumber the 17 million Kazakh population by 80 to one, but its progress and development is good news, he says.

“Our philosophy is simple: We should get on board that train,” he said in an interview in Astana. “We want to benefit from the growth of China and we don't see any risks to us in that growth.”

China’s state-owned investment giant CITIC runs an oilfield and an asphalt factory in Kazakhstan, and has said it had established a US$110 billion fund to invest in Silk Road projects, with much of the money aimed at Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

Chinese and Kazakh traders line up to pass immigration and enter the Horgos free-trade zone in Horgos, China, on Sept 14. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

But private Chinese companies and ordinary Chinese traders said they have yet to reap the rewards, as the small Kazakh economy is shrinking under the weight of falling commodity prices and Russia’s economic decline.

Meanwhile Russia was playing interference, they said, imposing new import restrictions under the Eurasian Economic Union.

In Almaty, the Yema Group has been importing Chinese bulldozers, diggers and other heavy equipment for more than a decade. Business, once booming, has collapsed in the past two years, as many Chinese vehicles fail to meet tough Russian certification standards that now apply throughout the economic union.

Shi Hairu, a 52-year-old trader from Shanghai who sells Chinese gloves in a small shop in a market in Almaty, arrived two years ago when the economy at home started to slow. But sales have been halved this year — a sharp depreciation in the Kazakh currency, the tenge, has drastically reduced locals’ purchasing power, while customs clearance has become slower and costlier.

In the Horgos free-trade zone, Chinese traders also say business is poor. Many were lured here by tax breaks and cut price deals to rent shops, and by enthusiastic cheerleading by state media about the opportunities on offer.

Kazakh traders wait for their goods purchased from China to be cleared on the Kazakh side of the Horgos free-trade zone near Horgos, Kazakhstan, on Sept. 14. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

“After we came here, we realised it was all lies,” said one owner of a shop that sells women's underwear who declined to be named for fear of trouble with the authorities.“We basically got deceived into coming here.”

The Kazakh government is building a “dry port” at Khorgos — with warehouses, an industrial park and rows of cranes to transfer containers across different railroad gauges — in what it hopes will become a major distribution and transshipment hub for goods bound between China and Western Europe, a “mini-Dubai” in the making.

But the nearby free-trade zone still has just one small supermarket, guarded by four lonely concrete camels, plastic flowers in their saddlebags. The nearest Kazakh city, Almaty, is a five-hour drive away along a bone-jarring road.

Yang Shu, director of the Institute of Central Asian Studies at Lanzhou University, calls Horgos “a mistake” because so few people are in its vicinity. Trade between the two nations declined 40 percent in the first six months of this year, to $5.4 billion, just a quarter of 1 percent of China’s global trade.

A Chinese worker from Sinohydro works in an office on the company’s base near Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Sept. 16. (Adam Dean/For The Washington Post)

Nevertheless, experts agree that China’s Silk Road plan has immeasurably more clout than the American New Silk Road plan advanced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 that was meant to bind Afghanistan to Central Asia but that barely got off the ground, or Russia’s own pivot to Asia, mired in economic woes and bureaucratic inertia.

For now, Pantucci, at the Royal United Services Institute, said China and Russia have established a “modus vivendi”.

“I used to believe Central Asia would become a bone of contention between the two countries, but the priority in Moscow and Beijing remains the broader strategic relationship,” he said.

But Tom Miller, at a consulting firm called Gavekal Dragonomics, argues that as Beijing’s investment and financial ties with Central Asia deepen, “its political influence will inevitably strengthen,” too. Harking back to the “Great Game,” the 19th-century contest between the British and Russian empires’ influence in Central Asia, he says there is only one winner this time around.

“Beijing’s strategists studiously avoid any talk of playing a ‘New Great Game’ in the heart of Asia — but they look set to win it nonetheless,” Miller said.

Source: South China Morning Post / The Washington Post

 

[LowPost]

An interesting look at the relations between Russia and China and their impact on the global balance of power.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, left, and China’s President Xi Jinping shake hands after signing an agreement during a bilateral meeting at the Xijiao State Guesthouse ahead of the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit, in Shanghai, China Tuesday, May 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Carlos Barria, Pool)

Written by HB exclusively for SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence

Is there a new economic regime on the horizon?

In the last couple of years we´ve seen a lot of news about the emerging economic powers, the so called BRICS nations. Events such as the launching of the new development bank the AIIB, the denomination of the Chinese renminbi and most recently its admission in to the IMF´s SDR-basket have hit the headlines in recent times. But to what extent is this just rhetoric, and how much of this is of real significance? Are we really closing in on a historical shift in terms of the global economic structure, such as occurred in the 1870´s,1914,1944 or 1971?

The time frame certainly seems to fit but what are the implications? Do Sino-Russian relations have any significance at all in this aspect, and in particular the latest gas deals with China? The answer lies in analysing the tri-polar relations of the leading world powers China-Russia and the U.S.A.

The opening of China and Nixon´s abolishment of the dollar-goldstandard in 1971.

In the 1860´s and 1870´s different economic unions where established such as the Latin Monetary Union and the Nordic Monetary Union. The currencies of these unions as well as other currencies such as the British Pound Sterling at that time where all based on a gold standard. Hence this period of monetary history has been called “the age of the classic gold standard”. In 1914 at the outbreak of world war I, most countries had to abandon the gold-convertibility of their currencies.

Two prominent nations however continued to have gold-redeemable currencies. One was Great Britain (the old empire) under the Bank of England and the other was (the emerging power), the United States of America with its newly launched Federal Reserve Bank. In 1944 at the end of world war II, the U.S. officially overtook Great Britain´s role as the sole economic hegemon of the world, not as an adversary, but as an important ally to the old empire. At the Bretton Woods Conference that year it was decided that only the dollar was to be convertible to gold, but the value of other currencies where to be measured in dollars. This system has been called the “Bretton Woods system” or “the dollar-goldstandard”. In 1971 becouse of pressure mainly from Germany and France to redeem large amounts of dollar-holdings to gold, president Nixon abandoned the convertibility of the American dollar. This occurred as the European manufacturing-base was beginning to surpass the American output for the first time since the end of the war. This event marks a new era in terms of the world monetary system. It also marks the beginning of the U.S.A´s conversion from a production driven economy to a mainly consumer based one.

The opening of China, and its emergence on the global market can also be traced back to 1971. That year Nixon sent Henry Kissinger on his two historic and secret missions to Beijing to pave the way for the opening of China´s economy. Since its opening in 1972, China has gradually grown in to the biggest manufacturing base in the world. In a recent CCTV interview Kissinger spoke about his historic trips to Bejing and their implications. He explains that when he came to Beijing for the first time in 1971, there were no automobiles on the streets, no consumer goods, no skyscrapers and the people were all dressed the same. He further caims that if someone had told him then, what Beijing were to look like in the year 2015, he would have considered that person out of his mind. It is an astonishing achievement of the Chinese people he asserts. Kissinger also explains how the trade relationship with the U.S. has been a big part of this development in China. In 1971 the U.S.´s trade with China was less than with Honduras . Today it´s of global proportions and neither U.S. or China can benefit at the expense of the other he argues.

The joined economies of the two countries now represent half of the global economy. For this reason Kissinger assumes the two countries need to deepen their diplomatic dialogues. The accomplishments of such a dialogue he maintains need to be viewed by the long term trends, but not in terms of the day to day statements. As China is re-emerging in to its historical place as a global power, Kissinger hopes the relationship will not be one of Military confrontations, but one of common problem solving. He proclaims that if one of the economies gets damaged, not only will the other follow suit but the whole world-economy will suffer.

When Kissinger is asked about the implications of the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy, he affirms that it is an unavoidable side-effect of China´s transformation, from a production driven economy to a consumer based one. He also points out that in a historical perspective “western economies” (like th U.S.A. after 1971) have gone through similar transformations before and suffered periodical crisis during that process. Both China and the U.S. should acknowledge this fact according to Kissinger, and synchronize their economic policies to minimize the impact.

The economic relationship with China he points out is now and has been for a while, an indispensable part of the current world system and for that reason it has also been the most continual and consistent foreign policy of the U.S.A. since 1971. Every U.S. president since 1971 has been brought to this reality, whatever the rhetoric in the election campaign was, Kissinger explains.

The Shanghai summits, Sino-Russian relations

As I have explained an economic regime-change can happen gradually over a long period of time like in the case of the U.S.A. and Great Britain around 30 years from the launching of the federal reserve in 1914 to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. Also, as in the case of Great Britain and the U.S. the old and the new hegemon can in fact be allies just as well as adversaries through this evolution. Although Russia is not a candidate to compete for the role of world economic hegemon, the Sino-Russian relationship is an important factor that can influence how the shift from west to east develops and at what speed.

American strategic experts know that Sino-Russian relations have an effect on U.S.-Chinese relations, therefore they pay attention to important developments. A series of such developments have taken place this year. The two eastern countries have laid the foundation for massive economic co-operation. In the latest Shanghai summit, Russia committed to supply China with 25% of its current consumption level of natural gas before the year 2018. CSIS held a conference recently to discuss what effect the deepening Sino-Russian economic ties can have for the U.S.-Chinese relations. Former U.S. National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski maintained that Russia is not a global economic power. Furthermore, he does not view Russia as a global military power except with regards to its nuclear capabilities, which are close to those of the U.S. A´s.

China however is a global economic power but it is very limited in its nuclear capabilities. Brzezinski thinks this fact makes Russia an important ally for China. He regards China and the U.S. as the pre-eminent gobal powers, but he acknowledges the fact that China has the option of utilizing Russia against the U.S. when ever convenient. Although Brzezinski believes the U.S.-China relationship is the pre-eminent relationship of the triangle and not the Russian-Chinese one, he acknowledges that the Chinese media is very hostile to the U.S.A. and vice versa. This is not the case in the Russia-China relations and in fact Putin is very popular among the Chinese public. The Chinese leadership also appreciates the fact that the Russians accept their political accommodations (one party system). Brzezinski also worries about how the Chinese view the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in the west, and thinks this could be a damaging factor in the U.S. relationship with China.

Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, Founding director of the Kissinger institute on China and the United States, and a leading expert at the Wilson-center thinks that both China and Russia have very strong impulses to develop their relationship. Neither country likes to see a “one-polar” world system emerging. Stapleton Roy explains that China and Russia settled their historic border disputes peacefully ten years ago. So geo-strategically they now stand back to back so to speak. He views the Sino-Russian relationship as being currently at its best in post worldwar II history, including the years of communist co-operation.

Ambassador Stapleton focuses his analyses on energy supplies. He points out that before 1990 China´s energy policy was one aimed at self sufficiency, after 1993 however it became increasingly dependent on energy imports. So far it has had an energy policy aimed at diversified supplies. He explains that Europe wants to diversify away from Russia since they don´t like to be dependent on Russia for gas. This he assumes will inevitably increase Chinese demand for Russian gas, and push the two giants even closer to one another. So in a way here Europe and China are competing for the same energy base.

Those that read my previous article about the political economy surrounding the Turkish-Russian crisis know that there may be American impulses to scale down Russian influence in Turkey by altering the energy flows from Russia through Turkey in to Europe. Perceptive readers however might also have noticed that the increased Iranian supply was to be re-directed out of China and in to Europe through Turkey. So this would serve as a good example of what Stapleton Roy is talking about.

The latest Russian-Chinese gas-agreement seems a very important one, a commitment of 38 billion cubic meters annually, that´s a very big deal by any measure. Also China agreed to Russia´s oil based price-formula. The Chinese have been resisting the formula (an oil- indexed gas-price) in negotiations with Russia for ten years but now all of a sudden they agreed to it. The total Chinese consumption is 70-100 billion cubic meters annually, so the deal is 25%-50% of Chinas current consumption levels. It will however have to be increased drastically before 2018, maybe even doubled, since China is moving away from coal and in to cleaner energy. Since China is doing other gas-deals such as with Turkmenistan and others, the Russian deal should not make China dependent on Russia, Stapleton claims, at least not in the sense of political influence.

The former prime-minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd is an expert on International relations and a long time student of China. Rudd also speaks Mandarin. He views the latest Shanghai agreements as a dramatic world event that fundamentally turns the dial on the arrangements made by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in the early 1970´s. He thinks they represent a combination of forces which have been at work in the Sino-Russian relationship and U.S.-China relationship for a long time and which will fundamentally begin to alter the premises of the 1972 strategic concorde.

Regarding how the Chinese view the Russian relationship, Rudd mentions 4 factors.

1. The Chinese leadership´s first priority is to remain in power. There is no critique of their political arrangements coming from Moscow as opposed to Washington.
2. The Sino-Russian historic border settlements are a major comforting factor. China no longer views Russia as a threat.
3. China is in the stage of converting the economy from a production driven (energy intensive) economy to a consumer based (less energy intense) economy. China is looking for securing longtime energy security, food security, raw materials e.t.c. In this sense China views Russia as a huge long time strategic partner of fundamental significance.
4. China has recently launched a new kind of pro-active diplomacy towards its neighbors, aimed at increasing its influence. The strategic relationship with Russia is an indispensable part of that new diplomacy, according to Rudd.

Regarding the Russian perspective on the relationship Rudd names 3 factors.

1. China does not challenge their political arrangements.
2. Their economic relationship with China is an insurance policy against pressure coming from elsewhere (such as western sanctions).
3. Russia wants to see a multi-polar world. Relations with China are important to retain that world order.

Rudd also points out that there are some anxieties in Russia regarding China too. Being the weaker of the two countries, they fear Chinese influence growing too much. The Russians don´t want to be told what to do by the Chinese.

Brzezinski thinks this anxiety will eventually bring Russia closer to the west. That however, he explains, depends on how the U.S.-Chinese relations will develop. The U.S. therefore needs a better relationship with China, Brzezinski adds.

So it´s in this context that closer relations between Russia and China have great significance. How they develop in the future, will have a major impact on how a new world order unfolds.

The power triangle of the three nations can be visualized as a color-triangle. The dimensions of power in the relations between the old and the new empire (U.S.A-China) are probably somewhere in the light green area for the moment. China needs to draw power from Russia to move the U.S. relations closer to the blue area. That would also mean their Russian relations turned a little red-purple in the process.

The Chinese gas-deal with Russia moves the Sino-Russian relations more towards the red-purple, without however visibly moving the U.S.-China relations at all. But China also gave in to an oilprice-indexed deal, they´ve been resisting for years. That gives OPEC some leverage too, I assume. Which I would also imagine moves both the Green and Orange squares closer to the yellow at the same time on the triangle. That would mean an overall power movement of North-West on the triangle, (Directly away from China). The simple explanation to that is simply, China really needs that energy. However, as J. Stapleton Roy pointed out we have to be careful here “we don´t know the details of this deal, and it´s very likely that Russia was dealing from a weak position”. So maybe the key factor in the deal is not the gas, but the unknown factor . This leads to the question, did China get something else in return?

Relations between Russia and China. Their Impact on Global Balance of Power

 

[TaiShang]

I do not see why the author simply mouthpieces the Western opinion while almost the entirety of these opinions are pedestrian, at best.

Let's look at what this "expert" Mr. Kevin Rudd had to say:

The Chinese leadership´s first priority is to remain in power. There is no critique of their political arrangements coming from Moscow as opposed to Washington.

Wrong. Leadership changes in China, unlike how it is in the developed West in which oftentimes the leadership is simply a mask worn by the power elites that actually run the whole business of governance.

The Sino-Russian historic border settlements are a major comforting factor. China no longer views Russia as a threat.

Ah, how innovative! That's been a past history already. News to the expert, China sorted out all of its land borders except the one with India.

China is in the stage of converting the economy from a production driven (energy intensive) economy to a consumer based (less energy intense) economy. China is looking for securing longtime energy security, food security, raw materials e.t.c. In this sense China views Russia as a huge long time strategic partner of fundamental significance.

Yes, energy matters. But, what China and Russia have at hand goes well beyond energy. Energy is a nexus, a strong starting point at the moment, but not the entirety of the relationship.

China has recently launched a new kind of pro-active diplomacy towards its neighbors, aimed at increasing its influence. The strategic relationship with Russia is an indispensable part of that new diplomacy, according to Rudd.

China has been involved in proactive diplomacy for a long time. It is only over the past few years that foreign diplomacy is being institutionalized more comprehensively. Was not launching the SCO a proactive diplomacy? I bet gaining permanent membership in the UNSC was a pretty successful diplomacy. So, nothing new.

And, on Russia's part, Mr. Rudd says:

China does not challenge their political arrangements.

China does not challenge anyone's political arrangements, Mr. Sensitive. That's the very core of China's foreign policy. While itself being ruthlessly sovereign, China cannot impose others political systems.

Their economic relationship with China is an insurance policy against pressure coming from elsewhere (such as western sanctions).

Yet, China-Russia strategic partnership goes further back than the sanctions, although, sanctions gave further meaning and impetus to the development of the relationship.

Russia wants to see a multi-polar world. Relations with China are important to retain that world order.

Almost everybody wants that. The question is, who is capable of doing that?

Rudd also points out that there are some anxieties in Russia regarding China too. Being the weaker of the two countries, they fear Chinese influence growing too much. The Russians don´t want to be told what to do by the Chinese.

Russia is not the "weaker" side. It is the "equal." A weak Russia would not singlehandedly send US government to take "Strategy 101" at a community college.

And why would the "Chinese" be telling Russians what to do? Is this a mental reflection of classic Western vassal-landlord relationship?

Brzezinski thinks this anxiety will eventually bring Russia closer to the west.

Wrong. Because states do have lots of anxieties all the time. But, what matters is the reality on the ground. And, last time I checked, the US-led West was very eager to tell Russia what to do.

That however, he explains, depends on how the U.S.-Chinese relations will develop. The U.S. therefore needs a better relationship with China, Brzezinski adds.

No way. After China rejected the G2 offer, US foreign diplomacy lost direction and concentration. That's good. No level of China-US relations will do away with the strategic expanse of China-Russia relations. That's unimaginable. That's becoming more and more a distant likelihood each time the US regime sends some stunt ships/jets into China's territorial waters.

The die is cast on this.

@Chinese-Dragon , @vostok , @Shotgunner51 , @Martian2 , @Economic superpower et al.

 

[Pakistanisage]

A strong Sino-Russian relations is very good for Pakistan.

 

[LowPost]

I do not see why the author simply mouthpieces the Western opinion while almost the entirety of these opinions are pedestrian, at best.

Let's look at what this "expert" Mr. Kevin Rudd had to say:



Wrong. Leadership changes in China, unlike how it is in the developed West in which oftentimes the leadership is simply a mask worn by the power elites that actually run the whole business of governance.



Ah, how innovative! That's been a past history already. News to the expert, China sorted out all of its land borders except the one with India.



Yes, energy matters. But, what China and Russia have at hand goes well beyond energy. Energy is a nexus, a strong starting point at the moment, but not the entirety of the relationship.



China has been involved in proactive diplomacy for a long time. It is only over the past few years that foreign diplomacy is being institutionalized more comprehensively. Was not launching the SCO a proactive diplomacy? I bet gaining permanent membership in the UNSC was a pretty successful diplomacy. So, nothing new.

And, on Russia's part, Mr. Rudd says:



China does not challenge anyone's political arrangements, Mr. Sensitive. That's the very core of China's foreign policy. While itself being ruthlessly sovereign, China cannot impose others political systems.



Yet, China-Russia strategic partnership goes further back than the sanctions, although, sanctions gave further meaning and impetus to the development of the relationship.



Almost everybody wants that. The question is, who is capable of doing that?



Russia is not the "weaker" side. It is the "equal." A weak Russia would not singlehandedly send US government to take "Strategy 101" at a community college.

And why would the "Chinese" be telling Russians what to do? Is this a mental reflection of classic Western vassal-landlord relationship?



Wrong. Because states do have lots of anxieties all the time. But, what matters is the reality on the ground. And, last time I checked, the US-led West was very eager to tell Russia what to do.



No way. After China rejected the G2 offer, US foreign diplomacy lost direction and concentration. That's good. No level of China-US relations will do away with the strategic expanse of China-Russia relations. That's unimaginable. That's becoming more and more a distant likelihood each time the US regime sends some stunt ships/jets into China's territorial waters.

The die is cast on this.

@Chinese-Dragon , @vostok , @Shotgunner51 , @Martian2 , @Economic superpower et al.

Thanks a lot for your sentiment. Southfront is a reliable website for defence topics and geopolitical matters but their authors may be partial to some extent.

A strong Sino-Russian relations is very good for Pakistan.

Precisely. We are seeing an upturn in Pakistan-Russia relations for quite a while now and the announcement of Pakistan's promotion to a full member in the SCO. I'm also hoping that Iran will benefit from the close China-Russia ties.

 

[ebrahym]

i donot think that Strong sino-russia relations will benefit Pak or india ...... but they surely will change the dynamics of south asia

 

[Aepsilons]

China has overtaken Russia to become Central Asia’s biggest trade partner and lender. Pipelines transport increasing amounts of Kazakh oil to China and vast quantities of Turkmen gas east through Horgos. That has served to undermine Russia’s negotiating position when it has tried to sell its own gas to China.

An impressive strategic calculation move by the Chinese Leadership.

 

[Force Awakens]

Russia will strike back.

 

[Red Wolf]

Russia will strike back.

With what? Cheap vodka?

 

[Force Awakens]

With what? Cheap vodka?

By assassinating china Generals