DATE=7/19/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=CHINA-RUSSIA RELATIONS
NUMBER=5-46688
BYLINE=ED WARNER
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:

INTRO:  The meeting of the presidents of China and 
Russia in Beijing this week indicates warming 
relations between the two sometimes quarrelsome 
powers.  What brought them together in large part is 
their joint opposition to the planned U-S missile 
defense system, but they found agreement on other 
issues as well.  V-O-A's Ed Warner asked three 
longtime analysts for their opinion of the Beijing 
summit and its possible implications for the global 
balance of power.

TEXT:  When Russian President Vladimir Putin and 
Chinese President Jiang Zemin met in Beijing this 
week, their main topic of conversation was the United 
States.

Paula Dobriansky, Washington director of the Council 
on Foreign Relations, says President Putin was anxious 
to have Chinese backing before he meets President 
Clinton at the G-Eight summit in Okinawa: 

                  /// DOBRIANSKY ACT ///

      Moscow wants to make it quite clear that there 
      is very strong opposition to a national missile 
      defense program, and Russia is not going to move 
      forward in this area along the lines which the 
      United States has suggested to date.  It also 
      demonstrates or solidifies the statements that 
      have been made out of Moscow about the kind of 
      relationship that exists between Moscow and 
      Beijing -- a kind of a counterweight to the 
      hegemonic power of the United States in the 
      world at large today.

                    /// END ACT ///

Concern over U-S policies brought the Russian and 
Chinese leaders together, says William Kirby, director 
of the Asia Center at Harvard University.  But he 
believes a full-fledged alliance that could threaten 
the United States is all but inconceivable: 

                  /// 1st KIRBY ACT ///

      What is not inconceivable, however, is that they 
      emerge as leaders of a group of nations that is 
      uneasy with American unilateralism in the world, 
      and the sense that the United States is pursuing 
      its strategic objectives and its defense policy 
      in contravention of signed agreements, such as 
      the 1972 ABM Treaty, and without reaching new 
      accords with the important nuclear powers, which 
      are Russia and China.

                     // END ACT ///

Mr. Kirby says the two countries are closer today than 
in decades, partly because Beijing no longer fears the 
Russian political model could be a destabilizing 
influence in China.  Russian democracy has made 
insufficient progress, and President Putin, stressing 
order and centralization, is a reassuring figure.

Personal relations are critical, says Mr. Kirby:

                  /// 2ND KIRBY ACT ///

      In the 1950's, Mao and Krushchev truly loathed 
      each other, and that as much as anything else 
      was the undoing of that relationship.  Mr. 
      Gorbachev also was not well liked in China, not 
      just personally, but in terms of his political 
      policies.  I think Putin and Jiang Zemin are 
      likely to get along in a sober, businesslike 
      fashion, but without anything like a new 
      alliance despite talk of future strategic 
      partnerships. 

                    /// END ACT ///

Other factors stand in the way of a more substantial 
alliance between Russia and China, says Keith Bush, 
director of the Russian and Eurasian program at the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies in 
Washington.  The two countries may deplore U-S 
policies but remain in need of U-S help: 

                   /// BUSH ACT ///

      In both cases, their relations with the United 
      States are more important than with each other.  
      This is certainly true for China, whose trade 
      with the United States is probably 10 times as 
      high as that with Russia.  It is also true that 
      Russia depends much more on the United States 
      than on China.  So this is good rhetoric, but it 
      is not a strategic partnership or alliance.  It 
      is somewhat limited because of the rather poor 
      economic ties between them.

                   /// END ACT ///

While Russia supplies China with a billion dollars in 
arms each year, overall trade between the two counties 
has declined from 10-billion dollars in 1994 to less 
than six-billion dollars last year.   (Signed)

NEB/EW/WTW



19-Jul-2000 18:54 PM EDT (19-Jul-2000 2254 UTC)
NNNN

Source: Voice of America
.