Post Two
China-Russia update
On June 7 the New York Times published a smuggled document, widely agreed by Western intelligence services to be authentic, which showed up the current rosy picture of the Sino-Russian relationship in a startlingly different light. The document consisted of an 8-page report by the Department for Counter-Intelligence Operations of Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB), the successor organisation to the KGB. Referring to the Chinese as ‘the enemy’, the authors accused Beijing of seeking to gain access to a wide range of sensitive Russian military and industrial technology, from the latest drones being developed for use in the Ukraine war to the techniques being used to give Russia superior access to energy sources in the Arctic. Growing efforts, they noted, were being made by the Chinese to recruit Russian spies, from disaffected scientists to members of the 20,000-odd Russian student body in China, with particular attention being paid to those students who had Chinese spouses. In the meantime the Chinese were said to be preparing the ground for reviving their long-standing claim to all or part of the vast territory sometimes known as Outer Manchuria, the 1.5 million square km expanse detached from the Qing Empire by Tsarist diplomats in the mid-nineteenth century, with scholars busy searching for traces of ‘ancient Chinese peoples’ in the Russian Far East.
On September 12, however, this spectacular show of mistrust was offset by an equally dramatic display of confidence, when President Vladimir Putin announced in the course of a trip to Beijing that Chinese might soon be permitted to travel to Russia without visas for the first time since demographic anxiety led to the suspension of a previous visa-free arrangement in 1994. This concession was seemingly made by Putin as part of a quid pro quo: a few days earlier President Xi Jinping had announced that starting on September 15 Russian citizens would be permitted to travel to China without visas for periods of up to 30 days. Taken in conjunction with the FSB report the impression it gives is one of acute schizophrenia in Russian policymaking, but in fact I believe that a logical explanation is not far to seek. The security services in Russia as in any country are bound to be suspicious; that’s what they’re there for; and their activity doesn’t imply any deviation on the part of Putin and the Russian political leadership from their celebrated pursuit of a ‘no limits partnership’ with Beijing. The intelligence outfits in China as in any country are bound to be nibbling for information by either open or undercover methods; that’s what they’re there for; and their activity isn’t likely to come as a genuine shock at the Russian end. In other words the Russians are probably just applying in their dealings with China their old maxim beloved of former US President Ronald Reagan: doveryai no proveryai (‘trust but verify’).
