China-Russia Strategic Partnership: The Strategic Fulcrum of China's Rise?
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020241232987 |
| Author | Lei Yu,Sophia Sui |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
China-Russia Strategic
Partnership: The Strategic
Fulcrum of China’s Rise?
Lei Yu
Center for Pacific Studies, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, China
Sophia Sui
School of Medicine, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
During the post-Cold War era, China has committed to creating a strategic partner-
ship with Russia. Doing so is a key part of China’s foreign strateg y of restoring its past
glory as a great power, with this partnership as the strategic fulcrum for its “peaceful”
rise at the systemic or global level. It also reflects China’s desire to intensify cooper-
ation with its largest neighbour to sustain economic growth. By formulating a strategic
partnership, China wishes to re-shape the current global order and counterattack its
perceived containment of its rise by the US. By intensifying cooperation, particularly
around the economy and resource development, China hopes to sustain the growth
that its political leaders have long considered as underlying China’s“hard”power and
rejuvenation. By expanding their military collaboration, China aspires to accelerate
the PLA’s modernization and work with Russia to contain US military unilateralism
and hegemony.
Keywords
China-Russia, strategic partnership, China’s foreign strategy, China’s rise, new world
order, US containment and hegemony
Corresponding author:
Lei Yu, School of Northeast Asian Studies, Shandong University, Weihai Branch, 180 Wenhua, Xilu Rd,
Weihai 264209, China.
Email: lei.yu@mymail.unisa.edu.au
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2024, Vol. 79(1) 40–60
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00207020241232987
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Introduction
After the Soviet demise in 1991, China shaped a strategic partnership with Russia by
persistently upgrading their relationship. International analysts have noted that the
China-Russia relationship “evolve[d] quickly”following the Soviet collapse and the
onset of the US unipolarity, to what Boris Yeltsin, Russian president (1991–1999)
and Chinese president Jiang Zemin (1993–2003) declared in 1996 to be “an equal and
trustworthystrategic partnership.”
1
In 2011, VladimirPutin and Hu Jintao (Chinesepres-
ident, 2003–2013)elevated the relationship bydesignating it a “comprehensivestrategic
partnership,”
2
and this was followed by Xi Jinping and Putin’scallfor“a new stage in
the comprehensive strategic partnership”in 2014.
3
In 2019, Xi and Putin announced
their intention to further upgrade relations to reflect a “comprehensive strategic partner-
ship for a new era,”
4
and in early 2023, thetwo elevated their relations to “an intensified
comprehensivestrategic partnership fora new era”to deal with the challenges of US uni-
lateralism and hegemonism and maintain global peace and strategic stability.
5
The China-Russia strategic partnership is seen by both states as an instrument to
contain what their foreign policy makers perceive as the US’s hegemonism, unilater-
alism, and interventionism, and to usher into the world a new order deemed by both as
“more reasonable”and “fairer.”
6
Moreover, Chinese foreign policy elites view the
1. Bates Gill and Matthew Oresman, China’s New Journey to the West: China’s Emergence in Central
Asia and Implications for US Interests (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, 2003). Lei Yu, “The settlement of China-Russia border issue: Land for partnership?”
Europe-Asia Studies 72, no. 5 (2020): 894–910.
2. Paul J. Bolt, “Sino-Russian relations in a changing world order,”Strategic Studies Quarterly 8, no. 4
(2014): 47–69; Ying Fu, “How China sees Russia,”Foreign Affairs, 14 December 2015, https://www.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-12-14/how-china-sees-russia (accessed 14 January 2024).
3. Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Christopher Marsh, Russian Foreign Policy: Interests, Vectors and Sectors
(New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2014), 132.
4. Foreign Ministry of the PRC, “Joint statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian
Federation on a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era,”6 June 2019,
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/gjhdq_676201/gj_676203/oz_678770/1206_679110/1207_679122/
t1670118.shtml (accessed 14 January 2024).
5. China and Russia signed the Good-NeighborlyTreaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 2001, in which
both states promise to create a good neighbourly relationship between them, based on the principle of
“maintaining an enduring friendship and never being enemies again.”For more details, see Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the PRC, “The Sino-Russian Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and
Cooperation,”16 July 2001, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_ http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn//pds/ziliao/
tytj/t11111.htm (accessed 14 January 2024). China and Russia issued their “Joint statement on
upgrading China-Russia comprehensive partnership of strategic coordination for a new era”in 2019, in
which the two states pledge strategic cooperation in international affairs to safeguard their core interests
in the international arena and push for a new global order and the maintenance of global security and
strategic stability. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, “Joint statement,”6 June 2019, http://
www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-06/06/content_5397860.htm (accessed 14 January 2024).
6. Marcin Kaczmarski, Russia-China relations in the Post-Crisis International Order (New York:
Routledge, 2015), 156; Sophia Sui and Lei Yu, “Sino-Russian military cooperation in the context of
strategic partnership,”Asia-Europe Journal 18, no. 3 (2020): 325–345.
Yu and Sui 41
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