China, Russia and the ‘Dragon-Bear’ embrace
The partnership seeks to build a new world order along the route of the old Silk Roads. But, asks Peter Frankopan, is this bond as close as it seems?
Peter Frankopan
An outdoor screen in Beijing shows Xi Jinping being greeted at the Kremlin by Vladimir Putin on May 8 this year © AFP/Getty ImagesWe are living in an age of revolutions — digital and technological, as well as demographic, climatological, military, pathogenic, economic and geopolitical.
As China’s President Xi Jinping is fond of saying, the world is going through a series of transformations that are “unseen in a century”.
The past few weeks have brought reminders of how a new world order is straining to be born.
Apart from Israel’s reshaping of the Middle East, and the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear installations, another confrontation between two nuclear powers — India and Pakistan — threatened to ignite into a major war.
Although Xi has told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that “now there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years” and that “when we are together, we drive these changes”, others too are adamant that the future of the world is up for grabs.
At a US Senate hearing shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, Marco Rubio, then secretary of state-designate, made the telling claim that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us”.
China’s President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin at this year’s May 9 Victory Parade in Moscow © Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Kremlin PoolFor many, however, it is the relationship between China and Russia that is central to the shape of the 21st century.
So close have the two countries become that the axis is often referred to as the “Dragon-Bear” — implying a convergence between two fearsome predators.
As Kaja Kallas, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, told the Shangri-La security conference in May, the axis that has been formed between the two countries represents “the greatest challenge of our time”.
With European leaders worried about Ukraine and about future Russian intentions in the Baltic states, hundreds of billions of dollars are being committed to defence.
From the perspective of Europe, change is threatening: preserving the rules-based order and the status quo are infinitely preferable to disruption of any kind.
Seen from Beijing and Moscow, however, things look rather different.
In a series of speeches delivered during the past decade, Xi has railed against the way that the rise of China is being thwarted.
Two years ago, for example, he asserted that “western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China.
This has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.”
A week later, at the opening of the 14th National People’s Congress, he went further, setting China’s travails in a wider historical context.
The Chinese nation, he said, had enjoyed “a myriad of glories” over past millennia; but it had also experienced many hardships.
These were the fault of those from outside. China, he said, “was reduced to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, when bullying by foreign powers and frequent wars tore the country apart and plunged the Chinese people into an abyss of great suffering”.
It is a theme to which Xi has returned many times, and his message has proved popular in parts of the world that reckon with the legacies of colonialism.
For example, when India’s economy overtook that of the UK in 2022 to become the world’s fifth-largest, Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi declared that “we have surpassed those who ruled us for 250 years in economic growth”.
It was important, he went on, that “we have broken the shackles of thousands of years of slavery, and . . . we will not stop now.
We will only move forward.”
Few people, though, have been more enthusiastic in sharing grievances about the west than Putin.
“Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations,” the Russian president said in a speech announcing the annexation of parts of Ukraine in 2022.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Putin went on.
“Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed.
The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through.”
Western countries, he said, “do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony.
They do not want equal co-operation; they want to loot.
They do not want to see us as a free society, but as a mass of soulless slaves.”
The casting of Russia as a victim, rather than as an imperial, expansionist power itself, comes as a surprise — not least since the state based on Moscow grew by an estimated 55 square miles per day after the Romanovs took the throne in 1613 up to the start of the 20th century, bringing vast numbers of people under the authority of a tsar and then of Communist rule.
“Our country,” wrote Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in a newspaper article written for readers in Africa, “has not stained itself with the bloody crimes of colonialism”; nor, he claimed, did or does it ever impose “anything on anyone or tells others how to live”.
Russia, like China, in other words, seeks to offer an alternative to the western way of doing things — something that helps forge an obvious marriage of convenience.
To the outside world, this relationship is presented as unbreakable.
Just days before Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he and Xi announced that the Russia-China relationship had “no limits”.
In a meeting in Beijing last year, Putin and Xi affirmed that “Russian-Chinese relations stand the test of rapid changes in the world, demonstrating strength and stability, and are experiencing the best period in their history.”
In a letter written in May, Xi again talked of the bond between Moscow and Beijing as being “eternal” and “everlasting”.
About 85 per cent of the 60 ‘mega-empires’ in history — states controlling at least 1mn square kilometres of land — emerged either in or close to the Eurasian steppe belt
The common identification of the west as a threat in the past as well as in the present is of course partly designed to set up a narrative that explains the future too.
While the west is described as destroying all in its path, China, Xi said, will “hold high the banner of peace, development, co-operation and mutual benefit, [and] always stand on the right side of history”.
During the past decade or so, the metaphor of the Silk Roads has become increasingly used to show that China’s engagement with other parts of Asia — and indeed beyond — did not involve the plundering of their natural or human resources.
Announcing what became known as the Belt and Road Initiative in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana in 2013, Xi noted that “the people of various countries along the ancient Silk Road have jointly written a chapter of friendship that has been passed on to this very day”.
The Silk Road networks, he said, enabled cultures and peoples to flourish despite “different races, beliefs and cultural backgrounds”.
The Silk Road as depicted in the 1375 Catalan Atlas © AlamyAccording to a White Paper released by China’s State Council Information Office to mark the 10th anniversary of Xi’s signature policy, the Belt and Road Initiative is “A Key Pillar of the Global Community of Shared Future”.
According to the report, “for thousands of years the ancient silk routes served as major arteries of interaction, spanning the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and Ganges, and the Yellow and Yangtze rivers . . .
These routes increased connectivity among countries on the Eurasian continent, facilitated exchanges and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations, boosted regional development and prosperity, and shaped the Silk Road spirit characterized by peace and co-operation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit.”
The revival of the Silk Roads was “launched by China, but it belongs to the world and benefits the whole of humanity”.
It is a model closely followed by Russian strategic thinking.
“The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation”, released in 2023, sets out how Russia sees itself — and the rest of the world around it.
Russia, it declares, has a “special position as a unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power that brings together the Russian people and other peoples belonging to the cultural and civilizational community of the Russian world”.
Thanks to “more than a thousand years of independent statehood, the cultural heritage of the preceding era, [and] deep historical ties with the traditional European culture and other Eurasian cultures”, Russia has an unparalleled “ability to ensure harmonious coexistence of different peoples, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups”.
The story of friendly, collaborative relationships presents interactions between peoples and places in the best possible light.
Far better to focus on histories of enlightenment and collaboration than on violence and oppression, or on inequality and disease.
Doing so allows for a message to be articulated that there are alternatives to the current rules-based order that is seen in many parts of the world as containing change.
That is why the mantra of multi-polarity has gained ground in recent years, as states often grouped as “middle powers” become increasingly assertive in their demands for greater say in global governance.
The most obvious forum comes with the Brics, which will meet on July 6 and 7 in Brazil: this bloc now covers about 40 per cent of global GDP and represents almost 45 per cent of the world’s population.
Leaders of Brics nations at their October 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia © via ReutersFew paid much attention when the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China first met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in 2006, or to the first summit in Yekaterinburg in Russia three years later.
But during the past two and a half decades, the Brics group has become the pre-eminent forum for states to call for more equitable redistribution of global economic power and for a more balanced global order.
Many see the drive for this change coming from the east and from Asia, which is home to almost 60 per cent of the world’s population: as India’s veteran foreign minister S Jaishankar has put it, “it is only a multi-polar Asia that can lead to a multi-polar world”.
It is perhaps not surprising that history forms such an important backdrop to explain global change and the strains that underpin the difficult birth of a new global order.
The focus on the malign interest of the west serves one purpose; the emphasis on past co-operation between peoples in Asia serves another.
That is significant at a time when the world’s centre of gravity is returning to where it lay for millennia.
It was Asia, and the Eurasian steppes in particular, that was the crucible of empires.
One reason for that was the pastureland for livestock that was the source of protein, dairy and many textiles.
Another was that it was the breeding ground for horses, which opened up military capabilities, enabled conquest, allowed for the rapid exchange of information and helped create and reward hierarchies — including in cities and sedentary societies.
The steppes, flat lands that stretch from the northern lip of the Black Sea to the Pacific coast of China and the Korean peninsula, played a crucial role in global history.
It is no coincidence that the first large states arose in regions close to the steppe belt — with nomadic societies either proving to be empire-builders themselves, or acting as the source of pressure that not only led to the development of weapons and armour and to the celebration of military valour, but also galvanised the centralisation that in turn brought the emergence of institutions that collected tax, administered justice and supported royal courts and power.
As a powerful demonstration of the importance of regions, peoples and places along the spine of Asia, about 85 per cent of the 60 “mega-empires” in history — states controlling at least 1mn square kilometres of land — emerged either in or close to the Eurasian steppe belt.
That, of course, is why there is such anxiety about today’s relationship between Russia and China — and why US policymakers have talked of trying to decouple the two great powers.
It is “not a good outcome”, noted Marco Rubio, that “we’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese”.
US national interests were not served, he said, if “Russia becomes a permanent junior partner to China in the long term”.
An aerial view of the China-Kazakhstan Logistics Cooperation Base in Lianyungang, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province — part of the Belt and Road Initiative © Ji Chunpeng/XinhuaWhether Russia is a reliable partner to China, however, is not clear.
A significant part of Russia’s territorial expansion came in the second half of the 19th century at China’s expense.
Oppressive and humiliating agreements such as the Treaty of Kulja in 1851, the Treaty of Peking in 1860 or the convention for the lease of the Liaotung peninsula of 1898 are quietly and diplomatically forgotten in the telling of both countries’ pasts, for the benefit of convenience.
That dominance has now shifted, with China not only the source of much-needed revenue for Russia’s war-stressed economy, but also of advanced and dual-use technology.
Some leading Chinese scholars are also willing to look beyond the constant expressions of solidarity between Putin and Xi — whose personal relationship seems genuinely warm — to express more critical views of Russia.
Feng Yujun of Peking University provides one good example.
Russia’s aim, he has noted, is “to restore the Russian Empire and rebuild a geopolitical space in Eurasia dominated by Russia from east to west”.
Moreover, Russia’s culture and aims diverge dramatically from those of Beijing — not least in “its inherent sense of insecurity, deep-seated hostility towards the outside world, insatiable desire for territorial expansion, geopolitical impulse to seek spheres of influence, and the messianic ideology rooted in Orthodox Christianity”.
All of these “shape very strongly its worldview and foreign policy today”.
In the absence of a favourable peace settlement, “Russia’s hostility toward the outside world will only intensify”.
Feng is not the only person to form critical views of China’s apparently steadfast partner.
When firebrand Russian nationalist commentator Alexander Dugin criticised these views, adding that many Chinese people underestimated Russia’s “tenacity and perseverance”, he was roundly attacked on social media sites, with many endorsing comments such as “Russia must lose”.
Others observed not only that Dugin “is an extremist who is extremely unfriendly to China”, but recalled that he had previously argued for the dismemberment of China — because he judged the latter posed a threat to Russia.
The suspicion goes both ways.
Last month, a leaked document revealed that Chinese efforts to recruit officials, businesspeople and experts close to the heart of power in Moscow had risen sharply since the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian intelligence officers were ordered to anticipate the threats posed by China and told to “prevent the transfer of important strategic information to the Chinese” — particularly about weapons systems.
China, moreover, was labelled not as an ally or a partner, but as “the enemy”.
There is no doubt that the war in Ukraine has been useful to China.
Trade has soared, with Beijing securing valuable resources at knockdown prices in face of sanctions, albeit imperfectly imposed.
In the year of the February 24 2022 full-scale invasion, trade between Russia and China rose 30 per cent to $190bn a year.
By the end of 2024, it had risen by another 30 per cent to about $245bn.
Many lessons have been learnt from the battlefield, including the performance of military hardware, the value and operational opportunities of drone warfare, and the weakness of command, all of which will benefit the Chinese military in years to come.
Above all, though, the calculation in Beijing has been that as well as having little to gain from restraining Moscow, the ability to do so in a meaningful way is limited.
As such, sharing a narrative and reiterating declarations of friendship — both for domestic and international consumption — offer benefits with little risk.
For now, what unites Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China is not a shared worldview, nor similar local, regional or global objectives.
Marriages of convenience last for as long as it suits both sides.
In this case, there is a powerful incentive in framing the problems of the past and the challenges of the future in similar language, and with similar themes.
And little is more powerful in such cases than the legacy of history.
Peter Frankopan’s book ‘The Silk Roads: 10th Anniversary Edition’ is out now from Bloomsbury (£16.99)
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