Relationen mellan Kina och Ryssland

The strength of the relationship is rooted in its underlying strategic rationale. Both Russia and China consider the U.S. their principal enemy. Both gain from Washington having to divide its strategic focus and having to worry about a potential alliance between its two greatest foes. Both countries reap a massive military dividend from not having to actively defend their long, shared border. As a result, experts who have predicted the collapse of Sino-Russian cooperation have repeatedly been proved wrong.

Yet it’s not all copacetic, even if the two countries, Russia especially, go out of their way to make it seem that way. Since 2019, Moscow has been getting a not-altogether-pleasant education in what living in the shadow of a powerful, prickly China could mean.

Russia, after all, has suffered over 200,000 deaths (and probably more than the official figures indicate) amid a pandemic that began in China. Meanwhile, writes former Russian diplomat Alexander Lukin, Moscow has grown frustrated by Beijing’s aggressive recruitment of Russian citizens as spies, its use of Confucius Institutes and student groups inside Russia as propaganda tools, and its tendency to promote Chinese media abroad while restricting the reach of Russian media in China — in other words, by the same behavior that has annoyed so many democracies.

There are other lurking problems. Russian officials have recently been diffident toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative. That makes sense, given that one of the project’s purposes is to turn much of Central Asia — where Moscow has long wielded great sway — into a Chinese sphere of influence. Xi’s description of China as a “near-Arctic power” doesn’t sit well with Russia, which has little interest in sharing its Arctic influence. Finally, China’s vast military buildup isn’t simply changing the balance of power vis-à-vis the U.S.; it’s also eroding what was once Moscow’s asymmetric advantage in Sino-Russian dealings.

For now, the personal relationship between Xi and Putin seems to be cemented by a common, intense antagonism toward the U.S. It is an illusion to think that Washington can, in the near term, drive its two rivals apart.

Kinas president Xi Jinping motsätter sig användandet av kärnvapen i Europa, skriver flera medier. Uttalandet ska ha gjorts under mötet med Tysklands förbundskansler Olaf Scholz som just nu besöker Kina, rapporterar statliga nyhetsbyrån Nya Kina.

Xi uppges ha sagt att det internationella samfundet gemensamt måste markera mot ”användandet av – eller hotet om – kärnvapen”.