Old rivals, Russia and China spoke with one voice about the crisis brewing in the Korean Peninsula. Presidents Vladimir Putin and XI Jinping held a summit in Moscow, where countries issued a joint statement, outlining the overall peace plan for the Peninsula, and together condemned the militarization of the United States in the region.
Indeed, Russia and China have common interests. Both have a land border with North Korea and have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. But above all, both desperately trying to check the ambitions of the US "backyard".
It is this desire, this fear is to be covered by the West and its allies, is one of the factors pushing Moscow and Beijing to work together. These two countries often vote in tandem in the UN Security Council, where both have a permanent veto. It is a powerful diplomatic Alliance between the two giants, which were once Communist rivals.
Quick border confrontation in 1969, threatened to cause a nuclear conflict between China and the then Soviet Union. Followed by decades of mutual suspicion. But the economy has transformed relations, and as China has become one of the world's largest consumer of energy, it is naturally attracted to one of the largest energy producers in the world by a long common border.
For Russia, isolated by Western sanctions following its annexation of Crimea in 2014, the economic mobility of China was an even more important financial resource, and accelerated the geopolitical pivot to the East. Hundreds of billions of dollars of transactions, mainly in the energy and infrastructure sectors, has been agreed between the two countries.
sections: Politics, Region News, Region News |