The Rise of China and the China-Russia Strategic Partnership

This book argues that China’s quest for a strategic partnership with Russia reveals the country’s desire to create a geopolitical environment in favour of their country’s re-emergence as a great power at the systemic (global) level. The partnership with its “no-limit” is expected to help China counterbalance its perceived US containment and reshape the US-dominated world order. By intensifying Sino-Russian economic and energy cooperation and trade in the framework of the partnership, China attempts to gain entry to Russia’s markets and particularly its energy resources to sustain its economic growth that is viewed by Deng Xiaoping as the basis underlying China’s “hard” power, and particularly its military capabilities. By intensifying their military collaboration, China seeks to gain entry to Russia’s military weaponry and technology for the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and work together with Russia to contain their perceived US unilateralism, hegemonism and interventionism. The Chinese foreign policy elites increasingly view US unilateralism and hegemonism as detrimental to China’s “core interests” (e.g., its territorial integrity and national rejuvenation). This sheds light on why the Chinese foreign policy elites conceive the China-Russia partnership as ‘vital’ for China’s peaceful development (commonly known as peaceful rise overseas) and the ‘ballast stone for global peace and strategic stability’. This book will be of interest to sinologists and scholars of China's foreign policy.