Sino-Russian treaty NUTSHELL

The state policy is the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation; also known as the Sino-Russian Agreement. It has served as a benefit to Russia and China. The original date that the policy was signed into law was July 16th, 2001, by President Jiang Zemin, of the People's Republic of China and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation. Since then, the same people have resigned it as recent as June of 2021. Important notes that are inside of the policy are statements that promote hope and establish a just, new world order based on universal recognition of principles and norms of international laws. Other parts of the treaty include the consolidation and good neighborly ties of cooperation in all fields between the two countries. All for the fundamental interest of their people for the maintenance of peace, security and stability in Asia and the world. While everything listed inside of the Treaty is supposed to be for the people of China and Russia, something that you can conclude is that there are economic benefits along with the humongous growth of sovereignty improvements with military strategies and techniques shared between the countries. With the trade improvements of both economies, there is an outward push towards Western civilizations that both countries have benefited from during this Treaty by buying from each other. The reason the Treaty exists, and the two superpowers can come together is not just because their borders are next to each other but because their current outward views are the same regarding this policy. Something to note right away from this agreement is that it looks to find peace on the world as people try to find mutual respect for different sovereignties in different states. It is the beginning foundation or articles that seek peace and long-term generational friendship without War and conflict from the two countries. It even notes to never use nuclear war as an option for conflict. Besides that, we are going to be taking a deeper look into the economic benefits of the two countries, both socially and globally. Specifically, we are going to look at Articles 14 through 18 as found in (Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, n.d.).

            So, what led to these absolute superpowers coming together under this Economic Forum and a treaty? Well, humongous trade assets from Russia to China was one as noted in Article 16 from the previous citation; “On the basis of mutual benefit, the contracting parties shall conduct cooperation in such areas as economic and trade, military know how science and technology, energy, resources, transport, nuclear energy. Finance, aerospace, aviation, information technology and other areas of common interest. They should promote economic trade cooperation in border areas and local regions between the two countries and create necessary and favorable conditions in regards the law of each country.”  Other things that are noted inside of that annotation were their trading of military knowledge and science technologies. China is paying Russia billions of dollars for their recent warfighting techniques and strategies and information sharing. The treaty also embargoes billions of dollars of natural resources that China does not possess and needs to trade abroad anyways for things such as oil and natural gas. It just so happens that Russia has an abundance of that, so it stems an economic benefit for the Russian people as they get to work to provide a benefit for their neighbor in China. On a similar token, the Chinese government gains recognition from the world power of Russia that its sovereignty over different things in the world, like Taiwan, should not be infringed upon by other states. They also come to the agreement that their borders must no longer be militarized by either country’s forces, and they can have sovereignty with peace, which is impressive, and I mean formidable for the people of Russia and the people of the Republic of China. As much as China wants their sovereignty recognition for its outlying countries or states, so does Russia with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This treaty led to the strengthening of these two nations because of their agreement or disagreement that certain matters do not affect their progress with trade. Something to note that is interesting is China's take on Russia's current actions because China is a huge trading partner with Ukraine as well. But because of this treaty, it does not have a bias and continues to trade.

            As we talked about before, one of the most important things from this Treaty was the economical improvements of exchange between Russia and China. One of the major and more notable things was the ESPO Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline. This was enabled in 2009 and was an agreement that provided a $25 billion loan to Russia from the Chinese Government to build over the next 30 years, a pipeline which would support Chinas need for natural resources. There were years of holdups between China and the Russian companies, however due to an additional investment of $270 billion, Russia signed an agreement that allowed the CPN to continue its pipeline. In 2014, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed to another 30-year deal that would begin delivering gas from Russia to China in 2018 after the necessary infrastructure was completed by the Russian government. Then the price of the gasoline was a “commercial secret.” As seen in page 54 of (JSTOR: Access Check, n.d.) “Russia had a dilemma in developing the pipeline, on one hand it needs the assistance of China and the other Asian Pacific powers to spur economic growth. The Russian Government does not have the resources itself, and the corruption in bureaucracy make them inefficient smite much of its efforts.” This goes to show that even with all that financial help the Russian government was not ready to stand up yet in the “RFE.” From 2005 to 2012, Chinese imports from Russia still rose from fifteen billion to forty-three billion, although the percentage of total imports remains at 2.4%. What this data is representing is the economic growth of Russia through Chinese purchases with that trade dependency in the Asia countries. Those two superpowers have opened a big need for each other. One needs energy while the other one wants to supply it to fuel their own industry and infrastructure. That was not the only thing that came from this policy. Security was an enormous part of what both sides sought to gain with huge military advances. Especially on the Chinese side with their aircraft reverse engineering of what Russian engineers had already produced for their fighter jets and different things. More recently, there was extreme coordination in naval maneuvers which demonstrated great military cooperation of these nations. This treaty ended up growing into a much larger and beneficial agreement for both countries and their sovereignty. Another aspect to note is the superpowers of China and Russia scripted the Economic Forum for Central Asia (defined as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan) and its weak states included,

            The driving political factors that drove this treaty into what it is today is something you can see from a Russian news article, “The backbone for Russian-Chinese trade and economic relations is the Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation signed on July 16, 2011, which is characterized as the "comprehensive equal confident partnership and strategic interaction." Action plans for implementing this document are approved by these two governments every four years.” (TASS,2022) The Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China must revisit this and improve it every four years to keep the governments extremely involved with each other. It removes restraints because the governments do communicate well, as seen from its profitable returns of this treaty where "Energy supplies to China have reached record highs. More than 15 bln cubic meters of gas have been exported via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline since its launch, the construction of the transit gas pipeline through the territory of Mongolia from Russia to China is under consideration," he said, referring to the Chinese gas market as "the most promising and dynamically developing market in the world." from article (TASS, 2022a). The last thing noted from this news organization, which is hugely important about this Treaty, is that the Russian-China cooperation is not subject to external influence. This has extremely high value for these Partnering Countries. They operate independently from influences from NATO or the G7. Something stated very well though, is that it is also not driven against any third party, as seen here. "China-Russia cooperation has significant internal driving force and independent value, it is not directed against any third party and is not influenced from outside," (TASS, 2022c). As much as this Treaty has improved both nations in many ways, the outlook from the world is also a different Perspective. As seen from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Sino-Russian cooperation on both sides may appear like they are trying to have a Russian-China overtake over the West. The likeliness of that is extremely low due to the Sino-US dynamic which involves both nations with their aerospace, pharmaceutical and big cooperations between a lot of municipalities. It is notable to express that TASS and Xinhua take pains to emphasize their contribution to global security and World Peace and stability and development as seen here by (Shattuck, 2020). As mentioned before, I believe that the Treaty Between Russia and China has had great economic benefits for the country of Russia and for China not only economically but for their militaries and for their own powers of their people.

Work Cited

Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20110605071535/http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjdt/2649/t15771.htm

Bolt, Paul J. “Sino-Russian Relations in a Changing World Order.” Strategic Studies Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 4, 2014, pp. 47–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26270816. Accessed 12 Oct. 2022.

Shattuck, T. (2020, August 18). Sino-Russian Narratives of Cooperation and What It Means for the Baltics. Foreign Policy Research Institute. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/08/sino-russian-narratives-of-cooperation-and-what-it-means-for-the-baltics

TASS. (2022, February 3). Economic ties serve as backbone for Sino-Russian relationship. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://tass.com/economy/1397267

TASS. (2022a, February 2). Energy supplies from Russia to China hit record high, says Kremlin aide. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://tass.com/economy/1396821

TASS. (2022c, May 24). Chinese Foreign Ministry says Sino-Russia cooperation is not subject to external influence. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://tass.com/world/1455003