Sleeping Dragon, Hidden Bear
This week’s summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Washington, D.C. commemorates the 75th anniversary of the organization’s founding. Established amidst the rubble of the post-WWII era, NATO was created in 1949 by the Western power alliance as a bulwark against the looming threat posed by the Soviet Union and communism. Throughout the Cold War period, underwritten by the philosophies expressed in the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, NATO served as a strategic defense coalition to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion. These strategies manifested in various forms, from proxy wars in East Asia and Latin America, to CIA-backed soft power initiatives to cultivate support for free market capitalism and freedom of expression in countries along the periphery of the East-West axis. But perhaps, most strikingly, and more covertly, a crucial mission of NATO was to drive separation and division between the Russian and Chinese communist regimes, and chill Sino-Russo relations. Preventing strategic unification of the world’s two communist superpowers and containing communist global ambitions were key to Western ideological victory.
And for a while, it worked. The threat of NATO pushed the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries into a wary, yet mainly peaceful coexistence with the West after Stalin’s death, marked by a series of nuclear test ban treaties. China under Mao on the other hand took a more hardline approach, seeking to implement a stricter, more doctrinaire version of Marxism, with an overtly antagonistic attitude towards the NATO alliance. This divergence in philosophy and geopolitical strategy eventually led to the Sino-Soviet Split in 1961, further dividing the communist world against itself.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and with it, the keystone of the USSR’s stranglehold over Eastern Europe. The formal dissolution of Russia’s Soviet empire in 1991 signaled the end of communism in Europe. Meanwhile, a new form of communism was silently transmogrifying the sleepy provincial society of post-Mao China.
The Sleeping Dragon Awakens
Fast-forward 35 years to today’s world, where China is the foremost global supplier of manufactured goods, and boasts the second largest GDP, behind only the United States. A carefully orchestrated mix of political authoritarianism and state-controlled capitalism, beginning in the late 1970s through reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping, has allowed the Chinese economy to flourish, unbound by the restraints of competing market forces that characterize Western capitalism. Simultaneously, prosperity at home has permitted China to grow its sphere of influence and project power abroad.
Nowhere is this projection more visible than in the realms of energy and the mineral resources associated with renewable energy technologies. As a command economy, China, more than any other country in the world, has been successful in laying out and achieving long-term plans to acquire and harvest strategic mineral reserves across continents, from Congolese cobalt to Chilean lithium and copper.
Moreover, as mainland China is hydrocarbon-poor, Beijing has increasingly entangled its energy policy with that of Russia, one of the region’s premier exporters of natural gas and oil, to fuel its behemoth industrial and manufacturing base. Similarly, eager to access China’s superior prowess in digital technology and consumer goods production, Russia is keen to enter bilateral trade and defense cooperation agreements. And thus, a new Sino-Russo rapprochement is ascendent.
Dance of the Dragon-Bear
The emergence of the “Dragon-Bear,” a phrase coined by Bulgarian geopolitics expert Velina Tchakarova, is a significant development in global geopolitical realignment that Western observers are watching closely. Against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s aggressive stance towards Taiwan, signs of closer coordination between the two powers is indeed troubling. In July 2023, the Dragon-Bear launched a series of joint military exercises in the Sea of Japan. While Russia’s defense ministry claimed the drills were in the interest of strengthening naval cooperation and maintaining peace in the region, Western analysts viewed it as an intimidation tactic. In an interview with Voice of America, Stephen Nagy, a specialist in the politics of the Asia Pacific, said, “Russia and China are trying to convey to Japan and the U.S. that they are very unhappy with their cooperation in NATO and the [Indo-Pacific] region, and they want to prove that they can achieve the same level of cooperation in the region as [Washington and its allies].”
Other military cooperation between the two nations include the delivery of Russian S-400 air defense systems and Su-35 fighter jets to China to improve the PRC’s ability to threaten and attack U.S. warships. Russia has also supplied personnel and technological support in developing China’s missile defense early warning system, and the two countries have launched bilateral scientific exchange programs in telecommunications companies such as Huawei to jointly develop sophisticated defense technologies.
In terms of energy relations, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become China’s top source of crude oil imports in 2023, supplying 107 million tons (a 24% increase compared to 2022).
Recent expansion of natural gas infrastructure between Russia and China further underscores the increasingly tight-knit relations between Moscow and Beijing. Russian supply of gas to China kicked into high gear in 2019 with the opening of Gazprom’s Power of Siberia pipeline. In 2023, Russia exported 22.7 billion cubic meters (Bcm) of gas to China, up 47% over 2022’s shipment of 15.4 Bcm. Plans to enhance Russia’s capacity to deliver vital hydrocarbons to its southern neighbor include the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, although negotiations to begin construction have stalled in recent months.
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Beijing’s intransigence in initiating the long-anticipated second Siberian pipeline highlights a contradiction in Sino-Russo relations. While China remains reliant on Russia for oil and gas, China’s dominant position as an economic superpower displaces Russia to the subordinate role in the partnership. Russia meanwhile has been forced to pivot towards the PRC (and India) as buyers of last resort for its natural resources, after Western sanctions imposed in light of the war in Ukraine have severely diminished Putin’s capacity to do business in Europe. These conditions lock Russia and China into a spiral of mutual dependence, where China clearly has the upper hand, and Russia serves as a vassal state.
The touted “friendship without limits” exclaimed by Xi and Putin before the Ukraine invasion does indeed seem to have some strings attached. Putin’s weak hand has allowed Beijing to take advantage of Russia’s desperate need to offload its oil and gas supplies, which account for more than half of the country’s GDP. Xi has reportedly negotiated a 28% discount on Russian wholesale gas prices until 2028, and has secured additional heavily discounted rates for oil and coal. Moreover, these agreements stipulate that payments are accepted in renminbi, favoring China in exchange rate conversion, and providing China with expanded access to global credit.
Despite the bitter taste of subjugation, Russia enjoys a number of benefits from its current arrangement with Beijing. In addition to providing a reliable and insatiable market for oil and gas, China has used its considerable leverage among emerging economies in Southeast Asia and Africa to refuse to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine and to resist Western encouragement to impose sanctions and embargoes on Russian exports. China has also propped up Russia’s critical component supply chain, providing a vital lifeline to the war effort.
My, What Big Teeth You Have
China’s strategic partnership with Russia thus represents a credible threat to security in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and by extension, the rest of the NATO alliance. Although China’s stance on Russia is admittedly bearish, Moscow burnishes Beijing’s reputation as a formidable military foe. With Russia’s standing as the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and with its expertise in sophisticated espionage tactics and cyber-hacking capabilities, Russian backing bolsters China’s claim to be not only an economic soft power, but a defensive hard power as well: a true superpower. And the network of pipelines linking the two nations are the veins pumping the lifeblood of the emergent Dragon Bear.
On July 3, to little fanfare in the Western media, China and Russia opened the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Founded in 1996 as an effort to coordinate foreign policy in Central Asia (Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan), the SCO has since morphed into a pan-Asian alliance including India, Pakistan and Iran. The SCO overlaps with many of the BRICS nations, who have recently expressed interest in deepening economic ties through currency coordination in opposition to the petrodollar. With clear ambitions to broaden its influence as a power bloc, the SCO may be seen as an emerging counterweight to NATO, a 21st Century iteration of the Warsaw Pact. As Putin boldly stated in his opening comments, “Russia-China relations, our comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, are going through the best period in their history.”
While European heads of state clink champagne glasses with Washington insiders today, they might do well to revisit one of NATO’s founding principles: beware the Dragon-Bear.
Electrically yours,
K.T.
As further confirmation of the concerns raised in "Bearish Dragon," the political advocacy of German Greens is partially funded via German taxpayers through the Heinrich Böll Foundation (hbs.) Here's an anti-nuclear power example post: "Renewables replace nuclear and lower emissions simultaneously," Craig Morris, 20 Nov 2019, Energy Transition - The Global Energiewende blog. https://energytransition.org/2019/11/renewables-replace-nuclear-and-lower-emissions-simultaneously/
An Initiative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. © 2012 - 2024. The Heinrich Böll Foundation receives German taxpayer funded subsidies. The hbs has elegant offices in Berlin. The hbs also has offices in the West Bank of Palestine, Moscow, Russia, Beijing, China, and Washington, DC. Many of the policies of the hbs are socialist policies.
CGNP Comment 30 April 2024: The claims made by this website are absurd and counterfactual. Germany's Energiewende has been an ecological and economic disaster. As of 15 April 2023, Germany's emission-free nuclear power fleet was shut down. Germany, just like any modern society needs abundant, dispatchable electric power. Neither solar nor wind can provide dispatchable power and batteries are not a cost effective means to store the huge amount of electric power required. Since Russia has exercised its control over its natural gas pipelines as a tactic to attempt to prevail militarily in Ukraine, Germany has been forced to dramatically increase its reliance on heavily-polluting coal. See: HTTPS://UNHERD.COM/NEWSROOM/GERMANYS-GREENS-EMBRACE-COAL/ Coal-fired generation produces toxic air pollution and toxic water pollution from coal ash. Using the Electricity Maps application at https://app.electricitymaps.com/map, it shows that as of 5:00 AM GMT on 30 April 2024, France's electricity had 20 grams of carbon intensity per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. Germany's electricity had about 362 grams of carbon intensity at the same time. Germany's example shows what not to do. A foundation of German government deception is being exposed. See for example "Top German Greens officials accused of deception in nuclear phase-out advice" 27 April 2024 https://tinyurl.com/Greens-fraud
As of 11 July 2024, CGNP's post did not appear after it was posted.
Really superb article KT. Painful to read in many ways because our current administration has basically handed the keys over in a number of lame missteps.