Great @WSJ deep dive story on 🇨🇳🇷🇺 by @yarotrof & @tggrove. @DmitriTrenin nails it: “There is an increasing realization in Russia that getting too close to the Chinese giant can lead to undesirable dependence on Beijing.” Couple of additional thoughts 👇 wsj.com/articles/weary…
2/ Moscow indeed becomes increasingly alerted to and concerned about its growing dependency on China, as is evident in recent conversations with 🇷🇺 senior government officials and business executives from both private sector & SOEs.
3/ It's not really about the mutual distrust exposed by early stages of COVID management, and not about spying including the most recent case since great powers spy on each other, even closest allies (Angela Merkel can tell you all about it)...
4/ ... and it's not about the asymmetry between 🇷🇺🇨🇳 per se. The Kremlin is not naive to believe that Russia's comprehensive national power will ever become symmetric to China's or America's. The key for Moscow is its strategic autonomy and ability to safeguard 🇷🇺 core interests.
5/ What worries Russia? 1) Growing 🇨🇳 assertiveness; 2) Growing 🇨🇳🇺🇸 rivalry + the rest of the world moving in one camp or another thus reducing Moscow's ability to balance; 3) Russia's growing dependency on China, particularly in strategic tech, which 🇨🇳 may use as a leverage.
6/ As @DmitriTrenin rightfully says, “the most important thing for Russia is to maintain equilibrium, and not to fall into the struggle between America and China.” ICYMI, here is his recent piece on potential balancing strategy for Moscow 👇 carnegie.ru/commentary/817…
7/ Amid broken 🇺🇸🇷🇺 relations ＋ worsening of 🇨🇳 relations to 🇮🇳 & other players including🇪🇺that Moscow would want to use for balancing, finding an alternative to China is hard. Here I tend to agree with @KofmanMichael, and disagree with dear colleague&friend Feng Yujun 冯玉军
8/ It doesn't matter how many times Putin & @realDonaldTrump have spoken: fundamental change in 🇺🇸🇷🇺 relations is unlikely. An excellent explainer by @eugene_rumer & @dicktfirefly in their recent paper, part of @CarnegieEndow #GlobalRussia project carnegieendowment.org/2020/06/15/u.s…
9/ Russia is working hard not to be seen as China's junior partner, and there is a skillful team at @MID_RF trying to manage that, but diplomatic maneuvering will only give you as much without deep changes in foreign and, more importantly, domestic policy
10/ What are Top-3 things we should watch for? 1) What happens to 🇨🇳🇷🇺 military partnership, including sales&co-development of weapons? 2) What happens to @Huawei in Russia, esp. in 5G? 3) Will 🇨🇳 be able to convert Moscow's reliance on its market into ownership of 🇷🇺 assets?
11/ As part of shameless promotion of our work, I know no better resource to follow those crucial developments in 🇨🇳🇷🇺 ties than the website of @CarnegieEndow's new project, #PaxSinica 👇. We will continue to watch this space & provide granular analysis carnegie.ru/specialproject…
