China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday touted the growing alliance between China and Russia as an opportunity to correct the “dangerous trend of disorder” spread around the world by U.S. policy under the Trump administration.
The Global Times wrote:
Chinese analysts said that the recent change has been generally caused by the decline of US hegemony, and not only will U.S. pressure and hostility push China and Russia to stand closer, the decline in Washington’s strength and influence in some regions will also make Beijing and Moscow consider how to figure out new regional order to stabilize the situation and protect their interests after the U.S. pullout.
The occasion for these musings was a round of “strategic security consultations” in Moscow held between Chinese diplomat and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee member Yang Jiechi and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council.
Yang is the Chinese diplomat who delivered a lengthy tirade about American hypocrisy to a stunned U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a March meeting in Alaska.
The Communist Party views Yang as a hero who humiliated Blinken and reset the moral relationship between China and the Western world. The Global Times made a point of recounting that history and suggesting Russia should feel good about Blinken’s humiliation, too:
After Yang told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that the US is not qualified to “speak to China from a position of strength” at the Alaska “2+2” dialogue in March, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said in an interview with media in the same month that Russia won’t let the US or any other country speak with it “from the position of force.”
The similar remarks made by China and Russia toward the US is a clear signal to the world that the US hegemony will no longer be tolerated, and the world order dominated by the US and its allies is unable to keep stability in many regions, and this kind of order is causing more tensions and conflicts, said Chinese experts.
The Global Times trotted out Chinese analysts who suggested the Trump administration essentially vandalized the Middle-East and Central Asia because it knew those regions were important to Beijing and Moscow, so it wanted to leave them in the worst shape possible.
Now that Trump is gone and China has routed the Biden administration from the world stage, the article suggested, Beijing and Moscow can team up to repair the damage, beginning with Afghanistan. A great deal of anticipation was built around a possible visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing in June or July, possibly coinciding with the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th birthday celebration on July 1.
Another Global Times editorial Wednesday suggested the U.S. is frightened of the growing China-Russia alliance and would try to sabotage their friendship, to no avail:
China and Russia have become strategically closer because the US and its main allies’ suppression of the two countries. However, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era is way much stronger than such temporary geopolitical dynamics. It has transformed into the cornerstone of both countries’ national strategies after 20 years of continuous accumulation and consolidation. The back-to-back strategic reliance of China and Russia, as well as their intertwined interests, are becoming so increasingly valuable that no equivalent in the world can be exchanged for it.
As a country that pursues hegemony, the US sees China and Russia as its biggest obstacles. For strategic considerations, its process of easing relations with the two countries is slow, ineffective and unsustainable. It is what Beijing and Moscow have learned about so many times. The US will not allow China to grow stronger, while it will continue to suppress Russia in regions where the latter traditionally has influence. It still will see Russia’s military power as a major concern. But no kind of improvement of relations will make Beijing and Moscow drop their guard against Washington’s attempts to drive a wedge between China and Russia.
The editorial rambled on for a good 800 more words, restating the same idea several times: China and Russia’s growing friendship is invincible, Western leaders are fools to think they can drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow, and their partnership as global leaders will bring a conclusive end to a century of American hegemony.
“The comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia for a new era not only belongs to the two countries, but also all human beings. The U.S.’ aggressive alliances with its main allies are out of step with the 21st-century zeitgeist. And they need to reflect on themselves,” the Global Times concluded.
China’s propagandists may have become obsessed with this notion of Washington seeking to drive China and Russia apart because some international media portray President Joe Biden’s planned June 16 summit with Putin as just such a maneuver.
“The June 16 meeting is widely seen as an olive branch from the U.S. President to his Russian counterpart and some observers said it may be another attempt by Washington to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) wrote on Wednesday.
The SCMP quoted Chinese and Russian analysts who thought Biden’s head-spinning pivot to chummy relations with Putin, after four years of his Democrat Party howling that Russia was the greatest menace to democracy on Earth, was part of a clever ploy to “slow down the Russian-Chinese rapprochement” before America is displaced as the dominant world power.
Associate professor Artyom Lukin of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University went even further and suggested U.S. strategists are worried about Russia teaming up with China to defeat the U.S. in a major military engagement.
“The position of Russia may be crucial in the event of an increasingly likely military conflict between China and the U.S. Strong relations with Moscow would, at a minimum, secure China’s northern and Central Asian borders – and it cannot even be ruled out that Russia would provide direct assistance to Beijing in a Sino-U.S. war,” Lukin said.
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