Russian Elite Perceptions of China: A Conversation with Witold Rodkiewicz

0:00Welcome to China Power. I'm Bonnie Lynn, your host, and in this podcast, we dissect critical issues underpitting China as a global power. Today I am joined by Dr. V. Tod Rodkiewicz, a senior fellow in the Russian department at the Center for East European Studies. In this episode, we will discuss Russian assessments of the China-Russia relationship at the strategic level. How Russia is viewing the Trump-Shi relationship and what Moscow expects from the upcoming Trump-Shi meeting. Hido, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. So I'd like to actually start with a teaser question that is related to the podcast, but not exactly on the exact questions later on. And that is what have you found most interesting or most surprising when observing the China-Russia relationship over the past year?

1:00I think what I was struck with was the degree to which the economic relationship has become so much more lopsided that it was before the beginning of the war. So the degree to which the Russian economy has become dependent on Chinese relationship has been somewhat of a surprise, something that I haven't thought about. All the tendency was there for at least a decade, but the repetitive of the change was somewhat surprising. And for example, if you look at what happened at the automotive market in Russia, that was the most kind of visible sign of that. And what happened in the automotive industry in Russia? Last year and the year before, basically most of the private cars that were sold were Chinese or Chinese brands. I don't remember the exact percentage, but it was like 80%, 80% or so. They're complete a replacement of Western brands with Chinese models. It happened very quickly, immediately. I mean, the Chinese were able to fill the gap immediately.

2:05And is there a sense among Russians as they're seeing this major increase in Chinese economic influence in China filling this gap? Is there a sense of worry or is there something that they're just accepting as a matter of fact? I think there's concern and they're not very happy about this. And the government actually, if you talk, for example, with the automotive market, the government has actually taken protectionist measures. And I think the situation this year is beginning to look at it very different. But on the whole, it didn't really change the approach, especially of the Royal Erit, which for them, the basic point was that because of China's support, they have been able to withstand Western economic sanctions. And it's kind of, they're quite open about this. It's openly discussed and admitted in Russia that without that Chinese economic connection, they wouldn't have been able to withstand Western sanctions and they wouldn't have been able to continue the war. So in that sense, there is a feeling that their bet on China has paid off in a struggle that they perceive as being an

3:11existential struggle and a substantial war. They're a minuses, but those are larger picture. They have to be accepted and the benefits are a strategic nature are much more important. Speaking of the strategic nature of the relationship, we all watched as she and Putin declared a no-limits partnership in early 2022. But that term hasn't been repeated since then, and even though the relationship has continued to grow. From your perspective in these past three years, how has the relationship actually evolved in practice and what has been most important in terms of what folks in Moscow or the Russian elite have focused on? The most important thing from the Russian point of view is that the relationship with China, the strategic partnership with China, fulfilled the function for which had been designed. In other words, it protected Russia's back. I mean, there is this, I think it's a Chinese metaphor, where this China-Russian strategic relationship will have heard this since at least 2014, that's kind of a back-to-back relationship. So everyone's fighting their own battles,

4:14but their back is kept secure by the partners, so they then have to be afraid, and they can rely, and they can kind of lean against the partner and their fight. So from that point of view, it seems that the effort, the investment that the Russian side put into this relationship, basically since mid-1990s, has paid off in the most important thing that the post of its Russian elite set out to achieve. That is the revision of the post called wars over there in Europe. So in that sense, it has worked. And are there any voices or internal debate within the Russian elite arguing that Russia needs to take a different approach? First of all, what can be observed is that the most important things, like this, this relationship with China, my thing is that it has been avoided, the discussion has been avoided. At least there's very few public signs that such discussion was there, but I think the policy towards China and the relationship with China is a logical consequence,

5:18and here there has been a far-reaching consensus within the Russian elite that outcome of the Cold War has to be revised in Russia's favor. And the second lesson, under second assumption, which I think was also widely shared, was that one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union lost the Cold War was that it fought it on two fronts. That is against the West and against China. And I think one of the strategic lessons of this post-Soviet elite was that this has to be avoided at all cost. In other words, one has to cultivate relations with China in order to fight the West. There are interesting expressions of this philosophy, because already in 2016, foreign minister Lavrov, in a piece that he wrote about historical roots of Russian foreign policy, are referred to the policy of Prince of Medieval Prince, who accepted the hegemony of the Mongol Empire in order to fight effectively against the West. That's his interpretation. That's Lavrov's interpretation.

6:22And he wrote that he believed that this wisdom and this type of political wisdom is in Russian genes. I think that's that's the general approach. And I think that it's not just propaganda. I think it reflects the way that at least the core ruling elite thinks about this relationship. In other words, how steady it was the West, the feeling that the West is a threat, not even because of what it does, but because what it is. And the feeling that from the point of view of regime security, China is a lesser evil, or its domination, its future domination is a lesser evil than the Western domination, because China is actually interested in having Putin's regime staying power, and it's actually against its interest to see in it. This is a significant change in Russian internal politics, and especially the change of regime into a pro-Western regime would be very much against China's interests. So the regime can be Putin's regime and be secure,

7:22can be assured that China isn't going to interfere in Russian internal affairs against the regime, but that it can expect support in case it runs into some internal frapple. So I think that's that's the fundamental issue. And that means that in spite of all the tensions that are inherent in this relationship, and there's constant bargaining and kind of, or various issues, and in spite of the fact that the Russian regime is not very happy with the amount of help that China provided, I think they would have liked more of it, but it was sufficient for them to survive, and that's the most important thing, and sufficient to continue the war against Ukraine, and what they see as being really conflict with the West. That's so fascinating what you describe Russia as being China as a lesser evil compared to the United States. That doesn't suggest to me that there's that much love or actual natural affinity, at least from the Russian elite level. Is that what you're saying, too? Yes, but I mean, this is about, you know, within Russian

8:24political culture, there's no room for love in politics. Love is all about interests, it's about core blooded calculation, you know, this is too serious of business to be guided by love or sympathy or lock of it. It's a matter of survival. That's how they see it. So, you know, somebody I've heard this used as an argument by an expert force, so saying, dismissing the depth of this relationship and saying it's just a tactical relationship, in other words, it's weak to loveless marriage. But people in the West forget that in traditional societies, loveless marriages were the rule that the Romantic love is an European invention of a 19th century. This is how you have to look at it. But what is interesting and what I see as a sign that this is seen as a long-term investment on the Russian part. Also, the Chinese part is the effort to persuade the population that this relationship is a long-term relationship and

9:27to change the attitudes of the populations of China and the Chinese. It's done in a very kind of subitleic way in many ways, very awkward way, but the tendency to start to propagate and to add, you know, to spread the message and to persuade the population in various ways by staging all kinds of events and initiating this relationship between towns and staging festivals and the years of culture and sports events and cultural events and, you know, just making joint movies, movie projects, and so on and so on. It's a sign to me that this is seen as a major strategic investment, a long-term investment, not just something that they think about, leaving as soon as it's possible, what would be possible, sort of changing as soon as the problem was giving up. Because there is a broader and deeper element in this, apart from the kind of resentment against the West and then, really, the desire to revise the results of the Cold War

10:32and to get their revenge on the West. And I think it's a real change, especially on the elite level, there has been a change in a way that the Russian elite looks at China. I think there has been a vision of this long traditional racist way of looking at China and Chinese, something non-European, backward, oriental, and so on and so on. I think that, especially after 2008 and mine, this was a kind of a lie. I see that there's a key moment when a lot of these things crystallized in Russian elite opinion was that China is now seen as all then the keys to the future. Putin actually talked about this, that the Western model of capitalism has proved a failure, and the Chinese have kind of managed to design an economic and social system that is effective, that provides for technological progress, and Asia is now the, and especially China, is the future. Or is the West is decadent, and it's just unstable, driven by conflicts,

11:40and it's on its way out. You have to go with the, with the future leaders, and not with those who are bound to lose in this competition, and it's alive already. So it seems like what you're saying is, yes, Moscow may be basing this on strategic calculations, but their calculation is a larger trend is in China's favor, and in some ways there's respect and admiration for what China has been able to achieve. Absolutely, and there is this streak of kind of Marxist thinking still in this elite-loid sort of repudiates Marxism and rejects, but please remember this whole generation has been raised in, in Brezhnevite, Soviet Union, they were schooled in the early 70s, late 60s or early 70s, they reject Marxism now, but they, they still have some elements of this Marxist thinking inherent in their approach to the world. What I see is this very strong element of historical determinants. So they think in terms of these large historical forces and

12:43these trends that they see, and they see the trend as being China being on the rise, and basically Asia being on the rise, and the West being in decline. Right, and as you mentioned, that was in the case a decade or two ago when there was much more racist views of China as backwards. So one of the arguments that folks have constantly make about why there might be more tensions between China and Russia, particularly given the growing power asymmetry between the two countries, is that Russia doesn't want to be the junior partner, Russia has, and the past, always been one of the most important actors internationally. But what you're saying seems to suggest the opposite, right? It seems to say that Russia leads are well aware of the trajectory. Maybe they're not publicly saying this, but they're okay with China being dominant, and they're trying to basically jump on the China ban wagon. Is that correct interpretation? Yes, absolutely. There was a time when around, you know, 2016, 2018, 20, there was more of a discussion about this, and there was this

13:50moment when there was a lot of, you know, in the foreign policy elite and the expert circles, there were people writing papers about how multi polarities no longer have possibilities, no realistic objective for Russia, because the trajectory, the logic is going to be a bipolarity, meaning the only real great powers are going to be China and the US. And since Russia is not economically strong enough to be an equal partner, it has basically a choice between either Western-dominated, US-dominated, or China-dominated system, and they have to make a choice. So in other words, I believe that since at least for the last 10 years, the objective is to find, for the best possible niche in the future, China-centric world, this is the objective. And the way to deal with growing power of China is to become so useful to China that China would think twice

14:51to destroy this relationship. And I think they were quite correct in predicting that actually Chinese would be very cautious about using their strength and their advantages against them. So for example, in Central Asia, things, they have a kind of condominium there to work out, find, they negotiate, they bargain, they have all kinds of bureaucratic bodies and fora, to manage this, all these regimes, and Russian regime and the Chinese regime, I think, are very good at prioritizing. And they know very well that they believe that their main challenge comes from the US, comes from the West. And this is the best possible blues. So Vito, let me ask you, you've been sharing a lot of the views from the Russian elites. Do you think that Putin himself also shares these views and have you seen this being demonstrated his actions towards China or his engagements with Xi Jinping?

15:52Oh yes, I think, I think Putin actually, the key figure in this, when he talks about China, over 20 years, what he's been saying about China, is it exactly what I've been trying to convey. This feeling that the China is under rise, the China is not a threat, China is an opportunity. And exactly that we have to follow the Alexander Nefsky philosophy, accepting the Chinese proponderance in order to fight the West more effectively. Literally, he said it. I even prepared a quote here. He said, let's recall the days of Prince Alexander Nefsky, 13th century. He traveled to the Horde, bowed to the hands, and received a document to be a prince, in order primarily to be able to resist effectively the invasion of the West. Why? Because although the Tatar's conducted themselves brazen and cruelly, they never touched the main thing, or language, traditions, and culture, something that the western conquerors were eager to suppress. So why are we so revered, Alexander Nefsky is a saint?

16:56Because of the policy choice he made. So just to make sure, Rital, you mentioned earlier that part of the understanding in Russia is that it's not a trend towards multi polarity. It's a trend towards bipolarity with both the US and China as the two poles. And Poon is okay with that, or I mean, it's not favorable. It's not, it's not his first preference, but he's okay with leaning towards a China pole. Yes, as I said, because the version of the things that put itself as being, you know, hard realists, placed with, they think they have a choice between two, there is no other option. This is in the economic structure and technological structures, you know, they've been writing since 1990s that Russia is not large enough and not don't have sufficient number of population to be an independent center of power in the contemporary world. So the only way is to become important with stronger partners. So for some time during the

17:5990s, they try to find a niche, sort of special niche, with the West, when this turned out to be impossible, because the terms that they wanted were absolutely acceptable, they turned to China increasingly so. So with the sort of switch gears and ask you given this Russian perception of China and the United States, what is your sense in terms of how Moscow is looking at the numerous Trump sheet meetings that are potentially on the calendar for this year? Is there concern? Is there worry? Or is this just part of the reality that they also have decept? If you go back to the times before Trump, there was always a fear, a suspicion, again, that a China might be tempted to accept some kind of a deal with the US, you know, some of these ideas that were being voiced in the US of China, US, you know, China America, that there's going to be some kind of exclusive deal.

19:08Between these two most powerful green powers, and that the Chinese would no longer need the Russians, and the Russians are going to be sidelined and kind of would lose the value, their value for the Chinese. So that was very much the case, but there were a couple of important points in this, that persuaded the Russian elite that this is not a real danger. The first moment came after Crimea, when Putin went to Beijing in 2014 after Crimea and signed a number of deals and so on and basically China was not criticizing Crimea. I remember I was in Beijing in 2014 or 2015 talking to think tankers and trying to, I was not alone, I was the whole delegation from my center for Eastern studies. We were sort of trying to provoke Chinese to beg by saying, you can only look, you're always insisting on the need to maintain the principle of territorial

20:10integrity of states, and this was always your positions. And here, the Russians are violating this principle. Is this not a concern for you? Our feeling was that the Chinese no longer needed to hide behind this principle. They felt strong enough to sort of think they were sort of curious and kind of interested in how the Russians managed to pull off an operation like that, rather than being concerned that this Russian operation was violating some principle that was useful and necessary from their point of view. I think this was one thing, and then the second moment was when Trump came, the first Trump term, when this relationship, when they saw, I'm trying to read as much as possible Russian China experts, they're the key. There's synologists, and for them, they saw that for China, the first Trump administration meant that the Chinese leadership had to revise its strategy, in the sense that they had to face the possibility

21:12of a conflict of the US in a much closer future, first of all, and also they had to face the possibility that they will not be able to avoid a hot war with the US over Taiwan or some other issue. I think there was a general consensus within the Russian China experts that the Chinese strategy of a Taiwan was based on the idea that pre-eification would be done by peaceful means. But the way to win with the United States is to become so strong that not only their confirmation would be passed. With Trump, this option was no longer recreating what I saw in the analysis of the Russian. And I think since then, the situation became even more tense, and I think there's a consensus within Russia that the differences between China and the US are so deep that there's absolutely no possibility for this option that the China and the US are

22:12going to strike a deal over Russia's head. In what have Russian experts identified what areas they want to help China on in this US China rivalry, or were they think that Russia could be most useful? Well, there are several things. One of the things that was that Russia was providing, it was implicit actually already in the deal date signed in 1986. Malper after all, deal over the security of the former Soviet border with China. That was the deal that was signed between China, Russia, and the Central Asian Republic, that then was transformed in 1996 into Shanghai Securitization. So the first thing they provide is security of the border, that they are not going to be joining the US and China. China can be safe, can feel that no threat comes from the North and the West. Second is this is also a secure way to provide China with key raw materials, especially oil. If there is a conflict with the US, China US, the possibility

23:20of supplying China by sea with oil is going to be closed. And they are providing China with oil through routes that are safe, which the US would have difficulty in interfering with. The third thing is some of the crucial technologies. So Putin actually said it. Openly a few years ago, for example, they are helping China to develop the early warning system from ballistic missile. By the way, the nature of military technical cooperation between China and Russia has changed fundamentally. It makes it much more difficult to observe, because Russia is no longer providing China with ready-made weapon systems. There is no need for that anymore, but the Russian experts were writing about this before the war began. The Russian Ukrainian War of 2002. You could find this in Russian expert publications, but the way to start it to work was that Chinese construction bureaus were hiring Russian engineer teams

24:22or construction bureaus to work on specific issues that they run against technically work on new weapon systems. So it's very difficult to find information about, but it's very real. And there are some technological areas in which Russia is still ahead of China. There are not many, but apparently there are a few. One of them, which is very crucial, concerns some marine warfare, which is absolutely crucial from the point of view of China, US conflict. What has been happening in the last four years, and I see it as a direct repayment by Russia for the support that China is providing Russia in the war against Ukraine, is the increased, and it's a paradox because the Russia is so much concentrated on the conflict against Ukraine and the West, but at the same time, you can observe the intensification of Russian diplomatic and change of Russian diplomatic language towards Japan, for example. So it's much more anti-Japanese, and also the deepening

25:25intensification of naval exercises with Chinese in the seas around Japan. So it's cleared, and there are these recent statements for the last two years about threatening to deploy medium-range missiles, if Japanese decide to station American middle-range ballistic missiles against China in Japan. It is clearly the task of Russia to draw Japanese attention and Japanese resources away from Taiwan. Not a secret. The thinking in Japan is now that has been in decoration about this, that in case of US China conflict over Taiwan, Japanese will have to become a part of it. We'll have to participate. Defense of Taiwan is seen as the kind of extended defense of Japan. So to prevent that, Russia has become active, more active than before. There's also a change in the diplomatic language of Taiwan. This is a really, really interesting discussion. I wish we could have another hour, but I do want to wrap this up with one question for you,

26:30which is, to the extent that you've described this Russian elite view of a increasingly bipolar system where China is a lefster of two evils, what extent can US policy still shape Russian elite thinking? For example, at the end of the Ukraine war, would that cause Russia to maybe reassess or do you think Russian elites are too anti-West anti-US that they're already pre-set on their current path? There are three ways. The only way that you can persuade Russian elites to change their attitude is to, first of all, to create an impression in that competition with China, it's the US that's going to win. It's a difficult thing, but this is one of the things. The second thing is actually the opposite of what has been tried by the current administration. Namely, you have to convince the Russian elite that they are going to be the ones who are going to pay the highest price for involvement in this conflict. In other words, if the America's

27:31strategy has to be to concentrate on the weakest link in the chain, in other words, to concentrate on Russia and not on China, as paradoxical as might seem. But this is the way to detach Germany. If they believe that they are going to be faced with the cost and that China is bound to lose, that is going to make them rethink their strategy. And the third thing is actually to promote this process of Russia becoming more and more dependent on China, because it creates tension inside. As I said, they lead, they're not really can be okay with that, but their population at large, not necessarily so. And what I would call the largely, again, not necessarily so. So one should kind of try to demonstrate the Russians and even exaggerate that. How harmful to the Russian interest, not the interest of the ruling elite, but the Russian population interest, and Russian interest as a country, this relationship is how much Russia is losing.

28:33If this process gets more deep, there is hopefully bound be some backlash. So far, I don't see it. It's not for gun collusion that won't be if this process continues. So I think these three things would make Russian elite think twice, especially the question of price. One of the things that Russian elite is unhappy about is the degree to which they see China as not being able to help them enough, because they would like to have more economic interaction with China on better terms. They see that the Chinese are providing them just enough not to lose, but they would like to have more. So from that point of view, they are not very satisfied. There is nothing else, but Chinese are basically treating them like the Americans were treating the British in their 40s, going to second world war, providing just enough to survive, but no fat, no extras. The second is that there's concern about the price, and there's a constant in Russian thinking when they think about their alliance, they're not going to discuss this openly about the Chinese

29:33Russian alliance, but you can see that when they discuss other alliances, the Western alliances, they pay so much attention and they are so attuned to the question of who is bearing the cost, and how the cost is divided, and how they see it as a problem, as a sign of tension. If you apply the same thinking, they must apply the same thinking to their relationship with China as well. So it seems to me that they are a very sensitive decision. If you raise the price, that might generate some worth thinking. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Rital. Thank you for a very eye-opening discussion about Russian elite views and in some ways Russian respect for China that we don't hear too much about in DC, and then for your very clear three recommendations on actions that the United States could take to potentially create more of a wedge between China and Russia. Really appreciate you joining me today. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.