Opinions #32/24

A lot has been written and said about China and Russia in the last two years. Putin and Xi Jinping’s alliance was considered “temporary.” Because supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine was counterproductive for Beijing. Because the risk of US sanctions (and thus the G7 bloc) would force Xi to abandon his friend Vladimir as soon as possible. Many also remembered the failure of the agreement between Mao Zedong and Khrushchev, which in the last century was supposed to result in the two communist empires living “a thousand years of friendship,” but a few years later started a war on the waters of the Ussuri. These are reasonable analyses, although stained by typical Western wishful thinking that leads to a confusion of objective data and subjective hopes. However, month after month, prophets of the collapse of the Moscow-Beijing agreement had to deal not only with the continued solidarity between the two countries, but also with the increasing political manifestation of Xi Jinping’s intention to support Putin. For reasons that many have identified in the leadership role that China wants to assume in the so-called Global South: a world previously attracted by Europe and the United States, in which coercion and double standards in assessing responsibility for ongoing crises and conflicts are becoming less and less acceptable. Now more than ever, with two ongoing wars – in Ukraine and in Gaza – there are distortions in diplomacy and values that are difficult for even Euro-Atlantic public opinion to comprehend. And more than ever, after the Kiev government, struggling with the failure of a much-vaunted peace conference in Switzerland without Russian representatives present, has sought Beijing’s help to restart talks with Moscow, which have so far been denied by Zelensky’s decree to sign the agreement. In fact, there is something bigger and deeper behind the “borderless alliance” between Russia and China. This explains to us a study by a great American expert like Joseph Torigian, published in the Foreign Affairs magazine. Torigian, a specialist in archival work (American, Russian, and Chinese), has found what might be considered the origins of Xi Jinping’s pro-Russian vocation. The origins, bearing the name of Xi Zhongxun, a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official in the 1950s and father of the current president. For decades, Xi Zhongxun has epitomized Beijing’s pro-Soviet policies and for that reason has faced successes, punishments, and recognition, depending on the ideological climate of the moment. From his father, Xi Jinping inherited a positive predisposition toward the Russian world, expressed in his passion for the two literatures: “Chinese and Russian.” Torigian, a scholar for whom the most prestigious American universities compete, is also a theorist of an original approach to historical sources that results in the selection of topics “based on the widest gap between the underutilization of available documents and their theoretical and empirical significance.” Through this particular analytical prism, Torigian finds a very personal element in the rapport between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, based on the experience of disorientation they both had to face. Putin with the collapse of the USSR, Xi Jinping with the rise and fall of Maoism and post-Maoism. This is another factor that makes both leaders, who are also equals, aware of the risks of destabilization and, conversely, in favor of stability. International relations first and foremost. The credibility of the intentions of the main “autocrats,” which plays a positive role – at the current historical stage – in the choice of countries attracted by this “hard core.” Prerequisites for landing in BRICS, SCO, G20. In all international forums where the West is excluded or outnumbered. A dynamic that also concerns Iran, a state under “special surveillance” for decades, which at the cutting edge of a very tense international situation won an election in favor of a new progressive president. A surprising choice that, according to Alberto Bradanini’s analysis, turns out to be less sensational and potentially poignant than current popular opinion suggests. Either way, it’s the exact opposite of what’s happening in Europe. Where different elections, national and EU, have led, Donald Sassoon explains, to a contrasting and cacophonous reality based on a certain fact of instability.