Facing East Asia's complexities with out a grand vision: Stuart McMillan discusses how East Asia's great powers relate to one another.

• Author: McMillan, Stuart

Recent economic, security and strategic moves by China, Russia and Japan, great powers in North-east Asia, are part of a long process of positioning themselves with or against one another in efforts to further their own hopes and ambitions in the region. The pace of the adjustments has picked up, and cannot fail to influence the US-China relationship, which will be the ultimate factor determining whether we have peace in East Asia and the Pacific. The sobering conclusion of an assessment of the relationships among the great powers of Asia and of the United States itself is that none of them has a grand vision of how they could all exist in peace.

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Relations between China, Russia and Japan have the capacity to affect the relationship between China and the United States on which peace in East Asia and the whole of the Pacific depends. This article concentrates on recent developments between China, Russia and Japan and weighs how these developments affect the US--China relationship.

The relationships interlock but for the purposes of clarity I will deal with each pair of countries separately.

Huge potential

Aspects of the relationship between China and Russia have a huge potential to reshape the region.

Xi Jinping's first foreign visit was to Russia, and President Vladimir Putin has since visited China. Xi Jinping has made many overseas visits since becoming president, but the choice of Russia for his first has considerable significance for energy supplies, defence and strategic reasons.

China wanted access to Siberian energy resources, motivated by its own huge appetite for energy, by its desire to lessen its dependence on other suppliers and by its desire to lessen dependence on its existing supply routes. A second agreement between China and Russia, under which Russia agreed to supply 30 billion cubic metres of gas a year for a 30-year period was signed last November after one had been signed earlier in that year. These moves were in addition to the supply of oil to China by Rosneft, a Russian oil company.

China also wanted to buy the latest Russian surface-to-air missile, the S-400, and a fighter plane. No deals on those have yet been reported. China has an earlier model of the missile.

A further reason for Xi Jinping's visit was probably that China is concentrating its maritime and other military resources in the South China Sea and it was prudent to make an assessment of the stability of its border with Russia.

Russia also provided China with opportunities in the Arctic. A number of Western firms were withdrawing from Arctic exploration and mining partly to observe their governments' sanctions on Russia. China was ready to take their place. It has become an observer to the Arctic Council, the body of littoral states that co-operates over Arctic matters. The relationship between China and Russia over the Arctic is, however, not without its tensions. Russia watches China's vigour in Arctic activity warily.

Political settlement

Xi Jinping stands for resolving the Ukraine crisis through political means. China respects Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, but China did not impose sanctions on Russia because of Ukraine. In fact after Russia refused to buy pork from Smithfield, an American firm, in retaliation to the sanctions, China sold pork to Russia. To replace the pork on the Chinese market, China imported from Smithfield. No doubt this arrangement will tempt someone to write an essay titled 'The Satisfying Symmetry of Sanctions'.

Russia's relationship with China is more dictated by external pressures than China's with Russia. In the period since sanctions were imposed on Russia because of its activities in Ukraine, Russia has followed a distinct Took east' policy. Although Western sanctions did not apply to Russia's exports of gas to Europe, Russia has sought to increase its exports of energy to Asian countries, particularly to China and Japan. Overall China is Russia's second largest export market and its largest supplier of imports.

Late in January China and Russia announced a plan to build a high-speed rail link between Beijing and Moscow. The cost is estimated to be $US242 billion. Russia worries about the number of Chinese on the Russian side of the Amur River, which marks part of the border between the two countries. Russia has recently announced a policy of giving land to settlers in Siberia, which looks like an attempt to encourage more Russians to populate Siberia.

Russia and China share an interest in limiting US involvement in the region. They are both members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia, which both exclude the United States. Russia is also a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, an ambitious project meant to rival the European Union but which has a long way to go before it becomes seriously influential.

Military exercises

China and Russia plan a number of military exercises together, including a maritime one in the Mediterranean this year--an event unlikely to escape notice in Europe and elsewhere.

Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, has said that Russia and China are intent on forming a collective regional security system. A formal collective defence alliance between China and Russia would have far-reaching significance for the whole region and for US-China and US--Russia relations, but it has not come to that yet. I take up that point later.

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