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3 US shadow over China-Russia
ties By M K Bhadrakumar
On March 22, even as Chinese President Hu
Jintao was preparing to leave on a state visit to
Russia, an unusual visitor arrived in Beijing.
Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the US
Joint Chiefs of Staff, was embarking on a four-day
official tour of China.
Beijing lost no
time signaling how pleased it was over the latest
indication of the warming ties between the armed
forces of the two countries. Receiving Pace within
hours of his arrival, Guo Boxiong, vice chairman
of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China's
top military authority, said, "The current
China-US
military ties are not easy to
come by, thus the two sides should treasure it."
Guo ranks second to chairman Hu in the 11-member
CMC.
But no less lacking in political
symbolism was the immaculate timing of the
announcement by US computer-chip giant Intel on
Monday, even as Hu was arriving in Moscow, that it
would build a US$2.5 billion semi-conductor plant
in Dalian, China's northeastern port city.
China secured the bid in the teeth of
competition from India and Israel. The Intel
plant, expected to become operational in 2010, is
expected to provide jobs, training, logistics and
other services worth $15.4 billion to China's
backward Liaoning province. It will use
90-nanometer technology, an advanced method of
computer-chip-making, which will overnight
catapult China on to the cutting edge of the
global semiconductor-manufacturing industry.
If timing has a place and meaning in
diplomacy, the two developments in Beijing over
the weekend provided an apt scene setter for Hu's
state visit to Russia on March 26-28.
China's foreign-policy priorities are
moving further away from the heyday of the
Sino-Russian strategic partnership circa 2006. The
triangular equations involving the United States,
China and Russia are once again casting shadows on
the Moscow-Beijing axis. To what degree Washington
has engineered this shift in Beijing as a matter
of its geostrategy for the New American Century it
is hard to tell, but it coincides with the 35th
anniversary of the late US president Richard
Nixon's path-breaking visit to China.
In
Beijing, at least, as the People's Daily commented
recently, "Nixon's handshake of 35 years ago
continues to be felt as China and the United
States continue to explore new possibilities for
their relationship in a vastly different world."
Indeed, no sooner than Hu concluded the
last leg of his visit to Russia, and emplaned for
Beijing from the Tataristan capital Kazan, US
President George W Bush put a telephone call
through to the Kremlin. Bush conveyed to President
Vladimir Putin that Washington is ready to discuss
in detail US plans to deploy parts of its
missile-defense system in Central Europe. Bush and
Putin agreed that Washington and Moscow should
hold regular dialogue on this contentious issue in
US-Russian relations at all levels.
Bush
would have noted that the exhaustive Russia-China
joint statement issued in Moscow on Monday after
Hu's talks with Putin at the Kremlin failed to
refer to the single most critical issue affecting
Russian foreign policy at the moment, namely the
US plans regarding the deployment of its
missile-defense system.
The Kremlin also
seems to realize the limits to the Russia-China
strategic partnership by choosing to release in
Moscow its long-awaited "Russian Federation
Foreign Policy Survey" on Tuesday when Hu was
still on Russian soil. Moscow was all but
suggesting that there is life beyond Chinese
friendship for Russia's foreign policy.
On
the missile-defense controversy, the Russian
foreign-policy document says, "The appearance of a
US missile-defense base in Europe would represent
a reconfiguration of America's military presence
in Europe and the formation of a strategic
component that could negatively affect Russia's
nuclear deterrent potential." Yet on such a
crucial issue affecting Russian interests (and
world peace), while major European countries have
spoken out, China keeps mum.
Energy
cooperation Arguably, Hu's state visit to
Russia should have taken place once the incipient
transition of the contemporary stage of world
development gained clarity. But then the visit was
linked to the time-bound gala Moscow opening of
the "Year of China in Russia" on March 28, and it
had to be dutifully undertaken. Beijing did the
next best thing under the circumstances by
thrusting the economic content of Sino-Russian
relations to the forefront of Hu's agenda in
Moscow.
But even then there wasn't much to
showcase. An energy deal for increased Russian
supplies by 3 million tons of oil to China via the
Naushki border checkpoint was billed as a key
agreement to be signed during Hu's visit. The deal
is important as Russia's performance in energy
cooperation has been sagging. Russia contracted to
supply 15 million tons of oil to China in 2006,
but managed to supply only 10.3 million tons.
But for reasons unclear, the signing of
the agreement was put off "indefinitely" at the
last minute. Energy cooperation was thought to be
a core sector of the Russia-China strategic
partnership. Is it
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