China to Russia: You’re On Your Own
Russia and China, along with a few buddies, set up an international organization called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It doesn’t really do anything, but it exists as a sort of gesture of non-NATO solidarity and an implicit threat to do something for real someday. And it seems Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev were expecting the SCO to back them over the Georgia issue in that spirit, but China basically told them to take a hike staying decided neutral on the issue.
There’s a crucial lesson here about not over-hyping the alleged new era of autocracies — there’s basically no there there. And it’s likely to stay that way. It’s actually quite difficult for autocracies to have any but the most limited forms of sustained cooperation unless the relationship becomes one of one-sided domination. States that are internally governed by stable rule-bound liberal institutions can forge enduring institutional ties, but states that aren’t like that find it difficult to move beyond one-off bargains. But still, on something like this, China certainly could give more support to the Russia position if Beijing were so inclined. But it seems Beijing isn’t. And we should work to make sure it stays that way and eschew policies that tend to drive every somewhat problematic state together into a potentially hostile coalition.
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19 Responses to “China to Russia: You’re On Your Own”
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August 28th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Matthew, your feed is fucked up. I’m apparently getting the think progress feed through what’s supposed to be your feed.
Yeah, they stayed neutral, as in they did not side with the US/NATO position. Status quo ante seems to be their position.
max
[’Which is close to what it is now, minus the idea that Georgia gets those two territories back.’]
August 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Russia and China are historial enemies, and will continue to be. China needs some lebensraum for its massive population. Russia is in the midst of demographic collapse, and its regions bordering China in particular are becoming depopulated. Doesn’t take a genius to see where this is heading.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
It’s pretty obvious why China isn’t on Russia’s side on this one. Tibet.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Beijing has a pretty consistent policy of favoring the sovereign rights of existing nations. Nothing in Russia’s actions can really be interpretted to be in line with China’s interpretation of sovereign rights.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
And don’t forget Xianjin. Way, way bigger than Tibet, majority Muslim, and ethnically Turkic. I believe there was a bombing shortly before the Olympics.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
nytimes:
“In 2005, the Shanghai group took an unexpectedly sharp position against the United States. Its members called for a time-table for American forces to vacate Central Asian bases that the Pentagon has used for operations in nearby Afghanistan.”
If NATO left Afghanistan, Russia and these other countries would cooperate more on important issues? I doubt it. NATO is being unilateral and uncooperative like Bush and Iraq.
Matt:
“And it seems Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev were expecting the SCO to back them over the Georgia issue in that spirit, but China basically told them to take a hike staying decided neutral on the issue.”
I’d word it that Russia wanted China to recognize the breakaway republics and China wouldn’t. So Russia’s coalition of the willing inculdes Belarus, South Ossetia and Abkhazia? Very impressive.
At least China is consistent about not interfering in other countries’ “internal affairs” and sovereignty.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Yeah, not too surprising. China is pretty consistently in favor of maintaining existing national borders as Joel mentioned. Beijing has also dealt in the past with attempted land-grabs by expansionist Russias of old.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The Bush administration likely doesn’t give a shit about “respect for territorial integrity” as a general principle of international relations, but China has excellent reasons to support it.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Re: Re: China needs some lebensraum for its massive population.
That’s why China has Tibet. And really, the Russian Far East may have Raum but it isn’t a very lebensbar place. Besides which China’s birth rate is below replacement.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I’m wondering why you think that it’s harder for autocracies to forge lasting relationships based on more than immediate self interest than it is for democracies.
The rulers of Democracies are susceptible to the fickle whims of populations, while an autocracy can be ruled by the same inner circle, or even the same person, for decades.it seems to me that it would be a lot easier for countries with such stable governments to think about long term strategies, rather than immediate self interest. I’m not too knowledgeable on US-Spanish relations, but I imagine that, for interest, the Bush Administration was sent right back to the drawing board when the Socialists were voted into power a few years back. Similarly, it seems that the Bush Administration itself was quite a shock to many of our allies after 8 years of the Clinton White House.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
China’s Weltanschauung
In today’s complex world of international politics, many wrongfully assume that the Russian’s and Chinese, one reverting towards and the other branding its own style of Communism, are in the same boat. The feeling coming out of today’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an intergovernmental mutual security group, led by the Chinese, consisting of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, bore little, if any, support for Russia’s military action in Georgia.
The consensus against supporting Russia’s ruthless endeavors in the Caucasus region is not only telling of its abstinence for support of the recent resurgence of Russian imperialism, but, moreover, it is telling of China’s world-view and what it will do if and when it reaches a superpower-esque position in global affairs.
For the most part, China is not interested in meddling with other country’s issues. Unlike the United States, who, at least for the past eight years, has believed in a foreign policy doctrine of proselytizing democracy, China is ready to let nations deal with their own internal problems and remain an innocent bystander when push comes to shove within the country’s boarders. The chapter titled ‘The Challenger’ in Fareed Zakaria’s recent book, The Post-American World, provides an excellent explanation of how Chinese Confucianism has seeped into their political world-view.
In a nutshell, China follows the golden rule and treats others as it would like to be treated: She does not support meddling in a sovereign country’s internal affairs and would like the rest of the world not to meddle in hers. It’s all about territorial integrity.
Try as he might, Russian President Demetri Medvedev’s spin on the proceedings in Shanghai do not clout the actual Chinese position with respect to the South Ossetian conflict. After the conference, he said that the group supported Russia in its actions (which it, obviously, did not) and sent a “strong signal” (which it obviously has: one against the Russian position). Until Russia begins to move its forces to Mongolia or its Siberian border, China will most likely remain indifferent to Russia’s martial whereabouts.
Therefore, Russian efforts would be better spent on convincing pro-Russian enclaves to join the Russian Federation than convincing a handful of Asian countries to side with its imperialist agenda. For the sake of democracy, however, it would behoove Moscow stops pulling strings and starts tying diplomatic knots.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I’m only mildly surprised China would not sanction an invasion of a small (though annoying!) nation that occurred during their Olympics even after the fact.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Matt -
Always annoying when academics come in and toot their own horn but *ahem* actually this is what I’m researching right now. Matt rather undersells SCO, which does quite a few subtle, but useful things.
Peter K gets it right up there. SCO is a great mulilateral forum to push an agenda such as kicking the US out of Manas airbase, if you want to do it in a ‘multi-lateral’ way and not just appear to be bullying smaller states. SCO has been highly valuable to its members as essentially a means of avoiding diplomatic isolation. When the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan occurred, Tashkent was able to rely on SCO to back it up, fight its corner in the UN and basically keep the West from doing anything about it.
China’s refusal to recognise the breakaway regions has far more to do with its own deep fear of losing territorial integrity and its aggressive support for territorial sovereignty as an international norm. As other commentators have pointed out here - Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang: Beijing has trouble with them all and loses the argument if it follows Russia.
Matt’s position that, essentially, autocracies can’t have long-term meaningful co-operation is tendentious at best. There may be rocky roads ahead for China and Russia, but more due to their respective geo-strategic positions and potentially clashing interests rather than any inherent inability to get along.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I have to disagree with Matt’s description of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. I know most Americans have not heard of it, but that is only because the US media has a hard time paying attention to anything that happens outside of the borders of the US.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been used quite effectively the last 5 years to block a number of US initiatives in central Asia.
I know the Western media is painting a picture that Russia is isolated, but Asian papers are telling a different story of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow could count on Astana’s support in the present crisis.
Hong Kong papers claim that China’s official position is of understanding of the Russian position. The Asia Times also reports that “China had expressed its understanding of Russia’s decision to recognize Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia”.
The SCO’s statement says “The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states welcome the signing in Moscow of the six principles for regulating the South Ossetia conflict, and support Russia’s active role in assisting peace and cooperation in the region.”
This is not a rebuke in any sense of the word.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Commenter 12 is probably closest, since the Chinese leadership could only be annoyed that the Russians chose the exact moment of the opening ceremonies to attack, giving the world something else to focus on.
If they really did not support Russia’s incursion, that’s probably part of the reason.
The Olympics were that important to them.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Matt wrote: but states that aren’t like that find it difficult to move beyond one-off bargains.
I think history does not necessarily support this thesis. The Axis powers stuck with each other to the bitter end. Of course, one could argue that Germany dominated Italy (but this was not so at the beginning of WWII). But Japan pursued an amazingly cooperative military and diplomatic course with Germany — and it was clearly more than a one-off bargain.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Hmm - I’d never heard of the SCO before this. When I checked their Wikipedia profile the first thing that leapt out at me was how similar their logo is to that of the Obama 2008 Campaign. Methinks I’ve been following the convention too closely.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I have to agree with Richard Rolsen’s post. I read the Dushanbe Declaration and there is no explicit criticism of Russia in it. In Article 3 there is this statement:”The member states of the SCO welcome the approval on 12 August 2008 in Moscow of the six principles of settling the conflict in South Ossetia, and support the active role of Russia in promoting peace in the region”. To me this reads like anything but a condemnation of Russian actions in Georgia.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:53 am
People tend to forget, not long ago, Georgia belonged to the Soviet Union. In the mind of Chinese government, and Chinese people to some degree, it was U.S. and the West broke apart the great Soviet Union. It could happen to China too. It is a big misunderstanding and wishful thinking to assume China would be sided with U.S. and the West on this matter. The only reason China didn’t show support out right is due to the Olympics and current economical involvement with U.S.
As a Chinese, I used to be moved to tears by the tales of what Jews had to endure to overcome the persecution and mistreatment from others. As I learn more and more about the hidden agenda of Zionism, I have to offer a friendly reminder to our Jewish friends - please don’t under estimate and attempt to interfere with great nations like Russia and China, or you will be in for a rude awakening.