Posted on 11/10/2013 9:09:10 PM PST by cunning_fish
Russia is playing all sides as it expands ties with both China and many of the countries along its periphery, including Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and India. The moves appear to be aimed at giving Russia the ability to hedge against Chinese influence.
The Diplomat has closely followed the growing ties between Russia and China over the past year or so. This most recent example of this expansion of ties was Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s trip to Beijing last month to meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as part of an annual meeting between the two heads of state.
The most important outcomes of the meeting centered on energy cooperation, a growth area for the bilateral relationship as of late. Specifically, Medvedev said that Russia’s state oil company Rosneft would supply an additional 10 million tons of crude oil to China over the next 10 years. According to Xinhua, China purchased 24.33 million tons of crude from Moscow in 2012. The two countries also agreed to jointly build an oil refinery in China and continue nuclear cooperation.
According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Medvedev said the following at the meeting: “Russia-China relations are comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership both in name and in fact. Russia is ready to further expand the scale of trade and investment with China.”
Trade between China and Russia reached US$88 billion in 2012. While in China, Medvedev said the two sides hope to raise that to US$100 billion by 2015 and US$200 billion by 2020.
Given their historically competitive relationship, the booming ties between China and Russia have puzzled many analysts. However, there is growing evidence that Moscow is seeking to balance against China’s influence by expanding its
(Excerpt) Read more at thediplomat.com ...
PeiPing.
Good to see Russia playing at “the Great Game” on the world stage. It has worked for many centuries—they would be fools to trust to ‘Globalism’ or other one world systems that have proven themselves failures.
The one thing that Russia and China are doing is driving the US out of the picture completely in Asia.
IMHO, US is driving Russia out of Central Asia but lazy to take advantage of the results for themselves.
That actually shapes all the future Chinese expansion (for a new Silk Road to grab a Gulf oil).
China and Russia are as much friends as Stalinist USSR and Third Reich.
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