Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) is in the middle of a key six-country Middle East tour, yet the eyes of much of the world are as much on the deepening geopolitical alliance between Beijing and Moscow, which warmed further this month.
On Monday and Tuesday last week, the ever-energetic foreign chief met with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov.
Ties between Moscow and Beijing have become significantly deeper under the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), with a burgeoning bilateral economic and political dialogue.
The axis appears to be on the brink of a trilateral dialogue including Tehran after Beijing on Saturday last week signed a 25-year Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
As Iran has been squeezed by Western sanctions, it has launched a charm offensive toward Moscow and Beijing, and one of the manifestations of this was the three nations in December 2019 conducting for the first time naval drills in the north Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman.
Yet, it is the alliance between Russia and China that is the one the West is most worried about. Beijing and Moscow are working together much more closely not just to further bilateral interests, but also to hedge against the prospects of a continuing chill in US and wider Western ties.
The Wang-Lavrov meeting came immediately after the imposition of new sanctions against Beijing from Brussels, London, Washington and Ottawa because of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, while Russia is also under sanctions.
In the face of this growing Western pressure, Lavrov and Wang last week sought a summit of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. They say this is necessary to establish direct dialogue about ways to “resolve humankind’s common problems in the interests of maintaining global stability.”
Beyond the chill between the two powers and the West, there is a burgeoning Chinese-Russia bilateral agenda. This is founded, in part, on the strong personal relationship between Putin and Xi, with the Chinese leader recently saying that the bilateral relationship is at “the highest level, most profound and strategically most significant relationship between major countries in the world” and also praised Putin as “my best, most intimate friend.”
One manifestation of these deepening ties is an emerging China-Russia security axis. Take the example of the China-Russia semi-regular joint war games, including in 2018 in the Trans-Baikal region in Russia’s Far East involving about 300,000 troops.
This military dimension to the bilateral cooperation agenda has helped enable stronger, common positions on key regional and global issues. This includes North Korea — with which both nations have land borders and are long-standing allies of Pyongyang — and also Iran, over which Beijing and Moscow pushed hard during the administration of then-US president Donald Trump for a continuation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The support that Russia and China have given Iran has warmed trilateral ties, which was manifested in December 2019 when the three nations conducted naval drills.
While those operations were viewed primarily through a military lens, they have potential significance for the global economy.
The troubled waters of the Strait of Hormuz — through which passes one-fifth of the world’s oil, one-quarter of the liquefied natural gas and US$500 billion of trade — provide the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.
With the global economy continuing to be lubricated by oil, despite a growing shift toward cleaner energy sources, there have been attacks on ships, including in 2019. To be sure, tankers guided by satellite can be redirected to replace ships in distress, but the oil industry nonetheless remains worried by the threat hanging over the busy Middle East shipping lane and the valuable commodity cargo that travels through it.
At the time of those 2019 attacks, the Trump team blamed Tehran for the growing disorder in the regional waters. More than half-a-dozen states participated in a US-led naval force, including Australia, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
However, most European governments declined to participate, fearful of critically undermining the nuclear accord with Tehran.
The ties between Iran, China and Russia are shaping Wang’s tour of the region.
The partnership signed last week is a clear signal of intent that will bring Tehran into Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This underlines that ties among the three countries could yet grow warmer still, especially if relations between them and the West deteriorate further during the administration of US President Joe Biden.
While the dialogue is deepest between Moscow and Russia, Tehran might increasingly be brought into the fold, which would have key implications not just for the Middle East, but for broader international relations into the 2020s.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Prior to marrying a Taiwanese and moving to Taiwan, a Chinese woman, surnamed Zhang (張), used her elder sister’s identity to deceive Chinese officials and obtain a resident identity card in China. After marrying a Taiwanese, surnamed Chen (陳) and applying to move to Taiwan, Zhang continued to impersonate her sister to obtain a Republic of China ID card. She used the false identity in Taiwan for 18 years. However, a judge ruled that her case does not constitute forgery and acquitted her. Does this mean that — as long as a sibling agrees — people can impersonate others to alter, forge
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS