Russia and China don’t fit into the international system built under Western auspices after the Cold War. They are therefore in favor of replacing it. And it is easier to change it together.
“We hope the world will become a better place, and we have reason to believe it will. At the same time, we are well aware that the future is bright, but the road there is winding.”
This statement by Xi Jinping, which echoes a similar argument made by Mao Zedong in the 1940s, is exactly ten years old. The recently elected President of China was paying his first official visit to Moscow, during which he gave a lecture at MGIMO University.
A decade later, Xi returned to Russia this week at the start of his third term at the helm, and you could say he was right on the money then. The past few years have been full of twists and turns, and the world is about to take perhaps one of its sharpest in more than half a century. Meantime, the rhetoric of the Chinese leadership has changed little.
The Chinese are meticulous with their wording, polishing it to a dazzling shine that leaves no room for superfluous thoughts. And they have always been careful to avoid the terms "alliance" or "union" because they imply something binding, which is not their approach at all.
After his talks with Putin, Xi said: "Sino-Russian relations have gone beyond bilateral relations and are of vital importance to the modern world order and the destiny of mankind.”
In other words, he sees them as ties that constitute a holistic phenomenon and, as such, serve as a factor in world order. This is the closest the Chinese leader has come to describing alliance-type relations. A qualitative shift.
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