2023-05-18
39 分钟I'm Dan Kurtz-Falen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
I think China believes it can sort of have its cake and eat it, too.
That it can strain their relations with Russia.
It can take a neutral position on Ukraine and also,
at the same time, maintain, if not, strengthen positive relations with Europe.
But I don't think it's working.
This week, a Chinese envoy is traveling across Europe and making stops in Ukraine and Russia.
Beijing says the purpose of the trip is to discuss a political settlement to the war.
But it raises bigger questions, not just about China's attempt to position itself as a peacemaker,
but also about the growing closeness of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Alexander Gobowith and Bonnie Lin join me to discuss what these developments mean for the war,
and also what a long-term convergence of China and Russia will mean for the geopolitical landscape long after the fighting in Ukraine ends.
Bonnie Sasha great to have you here Bonnie is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies She previously served in the Pentagon including as country director for China Alexander who goes by Sasha is the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center based in Berlin where he moved after leaving Moscow at the start of the war He is one of Russia's greatest experts on China and has watched this relationship as closely as anyone for years There's a lot of newsy material to cover today,
but I want to start by looking backwards a bit at the relationship and how we've thought about it over time.
And Sasha, let me start with you.
There were a lot of smart people, if we go back just a few years,
who saw reasons why there would be long-term tensions between Russia and China.
fought a war a few decades ago, not that long ago.
There are lots of reasons for suspicion.
So tell us a bit about what that conventional view saw even as you started to see mistakes of it.