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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
“We are not fighting anyone”, President Vladimir Putin announced [3] in Beijing this week to the reassurance of his host, President Xi Jinping. “We are ready to cooperate with everyone, with all our global partners, including the United States.”
Xi replied privately, also with reassurance for the US. The US first, Russia second.
Publicly, this has been expressed [4] by his Politburo colleague Wang Yi as “win-win cooperation”, and by Xi as “constructive strategic stability” and “win-win” with the US [5].
More precisely, this is “comprehensive strategic stalemate”, according to a newly released report [6] from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. “Deep intertwining interests and complex interdependence are another major reason and feature of the new phase of the strategic stalemate between China and the U.S. Unlike the nearly parallel US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War, China and the US are increasingly forming an economic and trade relationship that is both complementary and mutually beneficial but also “easily manipulated and disrupted by the other…Under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, China has united as one, daring and combative, and with firm determination, ample confidence, and steady steps to containment and suppression by the United States, it has openly safeguarded its legitimate rights and interests and achieved a phased stabilization of China-U.S. relations. The China-U.S. rivalry has shifted from the initial stalemate during Trump’s term to a new stage of comprehensive stalemate.”
The China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (中国现代国际关系研究院) are the research and analysis establishment of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS); the report has been published [7] by chinadiplomacy.org.cn, which is jointly run by CIIS, the research institute of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the assessment of Arnaud Bertrand, the document’s composers include “the CIA and the FBI all wrapped in one. You can hardly get closer to the horse’s mouth – short of sitting in on a Politburo briefing [7].”
From the Russian point of view, this is a Chinese advertisement of a two-horse race which the Chinese side is confident they will win because they are already winning — so long as they don’t have to go to war, like Russia, like Iran [8].
The suspicion in Moscow of Xi’s ambition to become G2 with Trump was aired publicly before Putin before left for Beijing. It has been muffled since his return home without the agreement on the Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline which was a priority on the Russian agenda.
The Russian state media editorialized on the Russia-China-US “triangle” – the G3. “The United States and China are strategic rivals, and that rivalry isn’t temporary… relations between Washington and Beijing are defined by uncertainty and suspicion Moscow and Beijing have constructed something far steadier: a relationship whose trajectory no longer depends on atmospherics or temporary political moods… Russia and China don’t fundamentally view each other as adversaries so while practical disputes may cause irritation, delays or bargaining, but they don’t threaten the relationship itself. Both sides may occasionally exercise restraint in directly supporting the other if circumstances become too risky or complicated. But neither Moscow nor Beijing is prepared to undermine the broader partnership for the sake of tactical advantage elsewhere because the relationship is seen as strategically valuable in its own right [9].”
In this podcast with Vanessa Beeley, the discussion picks through the evidence to find the meaning of the two Beijing summits for the Iran war, the Ukraine war, and the Taiwan war, for the permanent war to follow the successions of both President Trump and President Putin; President Xi too. Click to view or listen: https://beeley.substack.com/p/the-beijing-summits-world-governance [10]
Follow Vanessa Beeley at her Substack here [11].
For background on the Arab and Iran politics we discussed, read this [12].
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