Analysis: Russia is becoming a vassal state to China – and Beijing is taking full advantage
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
Chinese, Russian and Indian leaders hope their meeting in Beijing this week projects unity and helps usher in a new world order.
They want to offer an alternative to American superpower hegemony. And with Donald Trump taking a wrecking ball to the old world order, they believe this is their moment.
But don’t get carried away. Much of this is kabuki theatre, long on posture and shorter on substance.
Take Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He hopes the event puts Russia on a par with China in the eyes of the world, in turn validating his war in Ukraine and propping up his standing back home.
But in reality, Russia is on the way to becoming a vassal state to Beijing. Trade between the two countries has shot up by two thirds since the start of the Ukraine war, most of it on China’s terms.
China gets Russian oil, on the cheap, because sanctions stop Putin selling it elsewhere and in return Russia buys a lot of Chinese goods. China has Russia over a barrel, literally, and is taking full advantage.
China’s leader Xi Jinping says the trio should see themselves as “partners, not rivals”. But Indian leader Narendra Modi knows economic frictions between the two countries and border disputes undermine all that.
And then there’s tension between China and Russia over North Korea. North Korea is on Chinese turf, in mafia terms, but Putin has been muscling in, increasingly cosy with the hermit kingdom’s leader Kim Jong Un.
So the threesome bromance flowering this week is not all that it seems. There are cracks that a competent US administration could seek to exploit.
The one winner
The Trump team may not do so based on current form. It is letting the Ukraine war continue instead of applying the kind of pressure on Russia its allies believe will bring it to an end.
The longer the war goes on, the stronger the ties between Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang. And the more divisions, it seems, in the Western alliance.
Instead of courting the only democracy in the troika, India, Trump has worked hard to alienate, imposing 50% tariffs.
The one winner in all this is China, the rising power the Trump administration says it’s most worried about.
Xi Jinping may say he wants a multipolar world. In reality, he wants the world re-ordered to suit Chinese interests. And nothing this week will deter him from pursuing that end.
