Perhaps more than anything else, President Medvedev’s state visit to China on 23–24 May 2008 underscored the three ‘Ss’ for the two nations: strategic partnership, its stability and sustainability. It also means that Moscow and Beijing have managed to achieve policy stability and continuity through three leadership transitions: Boris Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev for Russia; Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao for China.
No matter how presidential Medvedev’s appearance in Beijing was, his summit with his Chinese counterpart was considerably discounted in the West as routine, unsubstantial [4] and, of course, taking place in Putin’s ubiquitous shadow (Erlanger 2008). This parallels a new trend in the West’s Russia bashing, which has moved from mystifying Putin’s ‘soul’ (Ignatius 2007) to minimising and even mocking his successor.The growing conflicts of interest between Russia and China—real or perceived—over various issues such as trade, energy, military sales, and so on, are also said to be eroding the strategic quality of relations between the two Eurasian giants (Marcus 2008; ‘Chinese media reports only good things about Russia’s president visit’, VOA, 29 May 2008, <www.6park.com/news/messages/83390.html>).
While such assessments might touch on some of the technicalities of Moscow–Beijing ties, they nonetheless miss some important aspects of the evolving, deepening and broadening relations between the two largest nations on the Eurasian continent.
Perhaps more than anything else, Medvedev’s two-day visit to China was to reaffirm the continuity and stability of Russia’s China policy under the new president, with or without Putin’s influence. In the past eight years, China gained considerable experience working with Putin when Medvedev served as head of Putin’s 2000 presidential election campaign headquarters, as presidential chief of staff (2003–05) and as Deputy Prime Minister (2005–08). This time, the Chinese side would have taken a closer look at Medvedev as Russian President and at how he and Putin coordinated policies towards Beijing. In the longer run, Medvedev will have to put his own stamp on how to approach China and certain policy adjustments might be unavoidable. In the meantime, China wants to avoid surprises. [5] This is why China took the initiative to invite Medvedev as soon as he was officially elected Russian President in March. [6]
It so happened that China was Medvedev’s first foreign visit outside the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); he was also the first foreign head of state to visit China after the Sichuan earthquake. The Russian military mounted the largest international relief effort in its history (Hongjian et al. 2008) when it sent a rescue team, which was among the first to arrive in the quake area, and was the only foreign search team to find any survivors. Once in China, Medvedev authorised additional assistance (eight cargo planes carrying 250 tonnes of goods) (Hongjian 2008; ‘Medvedev orders more humanitarian aid to quake-stricken China’, Itar-Tass, 24 May 2008). Before leaving China, Medvedev also suggested that Russia would host summer camps for dozens of Chinese children who had suffered as a result of the devastating earthquake (‘Summer camps in Sverdlovsk region to receive Chinese children’, Itar-Tass, 29 May 2008; ‘Chinese children from quake-hit Sichuan to rehabilitate in Kemerovo’, Itar-Tass, 7 June 2008). The real number of Chinese children going to Russia, however, quickly snowballed to more than 1000 as various Russian resort campuses competed to host Chinese children (‘Russian President’s representative visits students from China’s quake-hit Sichuan Province’, Xinhua, 26 July 2008). [7] The ‘ordinariness’ of Medvedev’s first official visit to China as president assumed some degree of extraordinariness.
Medvedev’s choice of China as the destination for his first foreign visit should not be overrated. It was, however, a quite different decision compared with Medvedev’s two predecessors. In 2000, Putin chose Britain for his first foreign tour, despite the Kremlin’s announcement shortly after Yeltsin’s resignation that Beijing would be the first trip abroad for Putin and after China’s repeated invitations in early 2000. In time, however, Putin became increasingly interested in the ‘Euro–Asian dimension’ (Palata 2008), which was quite different from the first few months of his presidency, when he toyed with the ‘hypothetical’ idea of Russia joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and when he ‘confessed’ to the visiting US Secretary of State his ‘European essence’ and his Asian superficiality (practicing judo and eating Chinese food) (Bin 2000).
Medvedev’s explicit ‘Ostpolitik’ at the onset of his presidency was also the opposite of Yeltsin, who was obsessed with Western-style political democratisation and economic ‘shock therapy’. Before his sudden exit from power at the end of 1999, Yeltsin chose Beijing to remind the West of Russia’s huge nuclear arsenal, in a manner more in keeping with ‘a recidivist Soviet premier’ (Wines 1999). In between, the father of the Russian Federation became progressively more disillusioned with the West.
[4] The visit could have contributed to the West’s assessment: no surprise, no breakthroughs, still no new large military contract, and no new paperwork for the long-talked-of Russian oil pipeline to China.
[5] China was quite surprised by Putin’s succession arrangement.
[6] To a certain extent, Medvedev’s choice of China as his first foreign visit in the capacity of Russian President was an act of reciprocity to Hu Jintao’s visit to Russia in 2003 as his first foreign trip. See Bin (2003).
[7] The number of Chinese children who will travel to Russia for recuperation in 2008 and 2009 is expected to reach 1500; see ‘First group of Chinese children affected by recent earthquake arrives in Russia’ (Interfax, 20 July 2008).