Vocabulary Study

Explain the meaning of the following words and word-combinations as they are used in the text. Translate them into Russian:

boilerplate	a communiqué
to pledge mutual support for sovereignty and territorial integrity	to align with one country at the other's expense
an inalienable part	the emerging disarmament
to deploy global and regional anti-missile systems	the nonproliferation partnership
an assessment	aloofness
a hurdle	to be cautious
mutual denunciation	the nuclear realm
to elevate the status of the Russian ruble

Reading

Scan the text below about the Russian-Chinese relations. Summarize the information.

Global Insights: Chinese-Russian Relations the Best Ever?

Chinese and Russian leaders meet frequently, but last week was special. President Hu Jintao of China and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia conferred three times over the course of four days – at the June 15–16, 2009, Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Yekaterinburg, then later on June 16 at the first-ever heads-of-state meeting of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and again afterwards when Hu made a state visit to Moscow from June 16–18.

Hu’s visit helped mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Beijing. It coincided with the signing of over 40 contracts worth some $3 billion between Chinese and Russian business leaders, as well as a lengthy – if largely boilerplate – joint statement reaffirming the two countries’ general desire to cooperate further in the future.

One interesting section expanded upon how the two governments usually pledge mutual support for their sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Russian government explicitly affirmed that Tibet along with Taiwan are “inalienable parts of the Chinese territory”, while the Chinese supported “Russia’s efforts in maintaining peace and stability in the region of Caucasus”, which might be read as including Georgia in the South Caucasus, in addition to Chechnya and the other troubled Russian provinces in the North Caucasus.

Though the declaration did not mention the United States by name, it did attack certain U.S. policies. For example, one passage observed that, “The security of a certain country should not be placed over that of other countries, nor should it be obtained by enlarging military and political alliances or by deploying global and regional anti-missile systems”. The text also affirmed Beijing’s and Moscow’s opposition to the “weaponization” of outer space.

In an interview with China Central TV the day of Hu’s arrival in Russia, Medvedev cited the high-level exchanges, mutually supportive statements, and other bilateral achievements in what both governments refer to as their “strategic partnership”, as evidence of what he called “the highest level of ties in the history of Russian-Chinese relations”.

While Medvedev’s assessment is probably correct, the metric does not present an especially high hurdle. The modern Chinese-Russian relationship has most often been characterized by bloody wars, imperial conquests, and mutual denunciations. It has only been during the last 20 years, with Moscow’s power decapitated by the loss of its Soviet empire and China achieving major economic – but not military – success that the two countries have managed to reach a harmonious modus Vivendi. China now has the world’s third-largest economy, with Russia currently lagging in eighth place and falling further behind China due to its slower economic growth. Nevertheless, Russia still has a much more powerful military, especially in the nuclear realm.

Although these harmonious interests largely persist, the global economic crisis and other developments have introduced new challenges into the China-Russia relationship. When commenting on their economic ties, Medvedev took care to cite the 2008 figure of $55 billion in two-way trade, rather than more recent numbers. Bilateral trade and investment has since fallen from the record level of the previous year, due to the global economic slowdown and especially the collapse in world prices for Russian oil, gas, and other raw material exports. Russia's trade envoy to China acknowledged that two-way trade had decreased to $7.3 billion during the first quarter of 2009, a 42 percent drop-off from the same period in 2008.

As troubling for Moscow, Chinese-Russian trade remains seriously imbalanced. Russian exports to China consist overwhelmingly of commodities, while China sells mostly consumer goods and other higher-value products to Russia. Lower global prices for Russian raw materials and the declining Chinese purchases of Russian high-technology goods resulted in a $13,5-billion Russian trade deficit with China last year. Medvedev asserted that he and Hu discussed “changing the structure of commodity turnover, opportunities for increasing the share of machinery and technical products, and the share of high-tech products in our commodity turnover structure”. The two presidents also signed a memorandum of understanding to encourage greater mutual trade in high-tech products. But similar efforts in the past to rebalance their exchanges have had little impact.

On a more positive note, after many years of false hopes and frustrated deals, Russia and China now seem on the verge of establishing their long expected energy partnership. The two governments had already agreed this April to a record loan-for-oil deal. Under its terms, the Development Bank of China will offer a $25-billion loan to Russia’s state-run energy companies to ensure they build and use a branch line from the massive East Siberia Pacific Ocean oil pipeline currently under construction. Russia’s Transneft Corporation has already begun building the branch pipeline, while Russia’s Rosneft energy conglomerate has pledged to pump 300 million tons of oil through it over a 20-year period.

Hu and Medvedev favorably mentioned the oil-for-loans agreement several times during the past week, with the Russian president assess ng the value of the entire deal at around $100 billion. Medvedev added that the two governments were considering applying the same model to additional energy sectors.

The reasons for the possible extension became clearer when Gazprom announced during Hu’s visit that it would not begin delivering natural gas to China in 2011 as planned because Russian and Chinese negotiators could not agree on a price for the gas. Gazprom was supposed to begin building the Altai pipeline, which could deliver over 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to China, in 2008. “As soon as there is a price, we will start the construction, but this is a complicated issue”, a senior executive Gazprom observed.

At a joint news conference with Medvedev, Hu underlined the importance of accelerating the natural gas discussions. Expectations now are that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will address the issue when he visits China this October.

Perhaps the most important difference that emerged in the recent meetings concerns the contrasting Russian and Chinese perspectives regarding the expanded use of their national currencies in economic exchanges. Since he became president last May, Medvedev has been pushing to enhance Russia’s role in global financial decisions. A key element of this campaign has been to elevate the status of the Russian ruble, by making it a major world currency and by diminishing the role of the U.S. dollar.

The Chinese government has been much more cautious about challenging the dollar's position as the world’s dominant global currency. China holds an estimated $2 trillion in dollar reserves, almost five times Russia’s total of slightly more than $400 billion. Chinese officials have therefore been wary of making statements that might depreciate the value of its holdings.

Beijing’s restraining influence became apparent when the BRIC summit leaders issued a communiqué that, while endorsing a “more diversified” global currency system, did not explicitly attack the dollar or call for new reserve currencies. In their Moscow talks, the Chinese would only consent to “using national currencies in mutual payments” for certain transactions. An important indicator of the importance of this agreement is whether the Chinese will consent to purchasing oil in rubles. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is also Rosneft’s chairman, said selling energy in rubles was a “strategic” issue for Russia.

President Barack Obama’s upcoming trips to Moscow next month and Beijing later this year represents the potential for a final, unstated concern: that the United States might try to align with one country at the other’s expense. Chinese officials might fear that the emerging U.S.-Russian disarmament and nonproliferation partnership will bring Washington and Moscow into conflict with Beijing over its aloofness from existing strategic arms control processes and its stubbornly persistent missile buildup. Russians in turn might worry about the talk in Washington of forming a “G-2” between the United States and China, which would effectively bypass the emerging BRIC mechanism and even the G-8, which includes Russia but not China.

(from http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com)

Discussion

1. Determine the spheres in which Russia and China cooperate. Discuss this question with your classmates.

2. Is there any real risk in the Russian-Chinese relations from the direction of the United States? What do you think? Prove your opinion.