Carnegie Moscow Center
The heads of the BRICS states who gathered in Ufa for another summit have rather different ideas about why their countries are participating in this organization. The Carnegie Moscow Center asked a number of experts to comment on the motivation of BRICS’ key players: Brazil, India, Russia, and China
Vladimir Putin will likely see the BRICS summit as proof that the West’s attempts to isolate Russia have failed. However, Russia’s growing fascination with the BRICS and the SCO coincides with diminishing Chinese interest in both projects.
Recently-announced plans to lease 115,000 hectares of Russian land to China have fomented fears of Chinese colonization. The experience of other countries, however, indicates that the real risk would come from Russian officials themselves
Chinese nationalists welcomed the historic renaming of “Aigun,” a region where a 1858 treaty redistributed land on the left bank of the Amur River to Russia. The name change will likely help the Chinese nurture memories of a “bitter history” with its neighbor to the north
The Russia-China rapprochement is a sign of the changing world order, in which the West is still very relevant, but no longer dominant.
According to Russian military experts, the new S-400 missile system can reach distances of up to 400 km. This range signifies a fundamental change in the rules of the game in Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands, two potential hot spots where China is involved.
The Sino-Russian entente—with its unstated, but transparent goal of reducing U.S. global dominance—is easily the most important result of the Ukraine crisis and the preceding deterioration of Russian-Western relations. The West needs to take this seriously.
The story with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which ended to the benefit of Russian national interests, nevertheless exposes the weakness of the Russian decisionmaking process in relation to the Asia-Pacific.
Russia should give the green light to the establishment of an SCO Development Bank where China takes dominant positions in the authorized capital and management bodies. In exchange, Moscow could coordinate investment principles on terms that would be most favorable to itself and its partners.
Decomposition of “Russia” into many players provides clues to some aspects of the relationship between Moscow and Beijing. While the most important decisions are made by Putin himself, the views and interests of other players may influence the final policy.