China and Russia: A Complex Partnership — with Sören Urbansky and Martin Wagner

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the European Wanchi podcast. We bring together young scholars, professionals and experts, talk about the evolving relationship between EU and China. To have deeper into this theme, be sure to catch our new episode every two weeks, and with that, I welcome you to the European Wanchi community. Today, I am very honored to welcome our two expert guests, Professor Martin Wagner and Professor Zernobat Scheele. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation to the European Wanchi podcast, and I'm very delighted to have you and are very much looking forward to hearing your insights. Hi, hello. Thank you for the invitation. So EU-China relations obviously do not exist in isolation, but are rather shaped by interaction with third countries, and I think the first country we think of is the United States. But in this episode, however, we turn our heads to the other side of the globe and talk about China's relations to Russia and with Russia, and also what impact that has on the EU. So both of you have academic careers rooted in Germany and also China, and are deeply engaged in the research regarding Russia-China relations, which is also culminating in your book recently published, China and Russia, this tip neighbors, in which you provide us with first a more historical account of sign-of-russia relations, and then also examine their relevance for contemporary politics. And to sum it up, that is exactly what awaits us in today's episode. So let's jump right into it. Above all, if you would need to find a title describing the sign-of-russian relations over the years from the early 17th century to today over the so-called "limitless partnership" in 2022, how would you label it? What's your title? Well, I think I like the idea of distant neighbors because it pretty much describes their situation over a long time in a sense that they both have big gardens, their houses far away from the joint boundary and at times they have to negotiate some things like, do we cut the hedges this year or does this tree or that tree need to go? Or there's too much shade from your plan or whatnot. I mean, these things always occur, but it's not a very close relationship. They don't have a chat every day. Recently, they do more often, but if you look back to the past centuries, it was more of a distant relationship. And sometimes they form coalitions when other neighbors or people in the street disagree on some points, like sweeping this street or whatnot, they may form a coalition to jointly be successful in one way or the other. That's why I think distant neighbors, meaning not friends with mutual kind of law for affection, but more of a pragmatic relationship. It is difficult, though, I have to say, to find one precise title, because when you look at those 400 years of history, their relationship was so different. You know, when it comes to the early modern ages, the 17th to the 19th centuries, then they were different when both countries turned into communist partnerships in the 20th century and they are again different in the 21st century. So it is always kind of an asymmetry. There's always one senior partner, and it was China. Before the 20th century, it was the Soviet Union in the 20th century and in this China again, in the 21st century. So maybe one could just say they were empires throughout the 400 years and they were always entangled. So maybe the English title of the forthcoming translation of our book, entangled empires, that is forthcoming in June, I think, is not the worst title, I think, to answer the question. Thank you. I think you also touched upon it quite a bit, this asymmetry, but also intertwinement. And I think it's also important to introduce the academic concept, asymmetric interdependency at that point, that a lot of researchers also use to describe the Russian-China cooperation. So would you agree that this could also be an appropriate label that this reflects sort of the relationship between both? Sure, I mean, I think there's good reasons why you can label it as a asymmetrical interdependency. And if we look back to the past four centuries, there has always been some form of asymmetry. Now China is the senior partner, but if we look back to the early periods of their mutual engagement, China was also the senior partner. That flipped around in the mid-19th century when Russia annexed or occupied territories that kind of indirectly at least belong to China or to China or be on Chinese influence. And this asymmetry stayed that way until way into the 20th century and flipped again more recently in more recent decades, precisely after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise, economic rise, but also geopolitical rise of China in recent years. And now we have this senior junior relationship the other way around. I think nowadays Russia is much more dependent on China in economic terms. When you look at statistics and also rankings that China is the most important trading partner for Russia, but I think for China, Russia comes at the seventh or eighth place. It's not the prime trading partner. It's also not crucial for certain sectors of energy supply, although energy is a huge role in relations. But if you look at what Russia gets from China these days, I wouldn't go as far as saying Russia would cease to exist without Chinese imports, but for instance the war in Ukraine would much look much different as we see today, for instance, just to give you one example. But also, I mean, this asymmetric in the dependency can also over size, I think, in some ways the state and also downplay historical or subnational nuances. When you look at local actors in the past, they had their own agendas, maybe not these days present so much. But if you look only back to the early 20th century, local governors or regional governors had much more to say in their relation. In that regard, there might have been an asymmetry in one way between the two states, but that may have looked different on the regional level, even at the local level. So that's why I'm always a bit cautious of these international relations concepts or political science concepts. Just adding one or two minor observations on the problem of interdependency. Zoyaan talked about the economic aspect in the 21st century. This is totally true. And don't forget about the fact that Russia and China are the significant other to each other and they can't ignore the other throughout 400 years of their past. Because they share a common border of nowadays 4,000 kilometers in the periods before the 20th century, it was 12,000 kilometers. So the longest land border ever throughout history, they just cannot ignore the other because also of their structural equivalents. They were both monarchic empires. They were both communist empires and now they are both autocratic orders in the 21st century and also because of their size. It's just different. You know, the relationship between Russia and let's say Poland or Germany and the relationship of China and Japan, then the relationship of China and Russia for both of them. And this kind of brings us back to the question of a good or fitting title. I think this enabler is still quite fitting. I mean, Marty mentioned the border and now as you have a roughly 4,000 kilometers of a state border between China and Russia. And half of it that is 2,000 kilometers is the Amur or Hylung Zhang River. And that's roughly the distance between North and Denmark and South and Italy. And until 2022, you had no single bridge, not even one bridge across this river. So there were connections like Farries and when the river was frozen and winter, you could cross on foot or bypass. But the significance of having no bridges shows you a lot about the relation nowadays. Meaning there's an increasingly closer connection between the centers, meaning Moscow and Beijing or the economic centers, but not in their direct neighborhood. Russia tries to keep China at distance. You can also see this coming back to the bridges that China since the 1980s, late 80s when relations improved, offered to build those bridges and even pay for the Russian part of it. And Russia always declined and said, "No, we don't need any bridges now. They have two bridges. One, I think, Redwood Bridge and one, regular Street Bridge." All right. Thank you very much for giving us such a detailed glimpse already into the dynamics. And I think first, it's very useful to unpack, sort of say, the relationship, the historical relationship so that we're all at the same page. And for that, I also already had the opportunity to read your book. which you outline I would say three major faces. Correct, Rift? I am wrong so first up until the 19th century where you identify a rather distant relationship. And then in the 19th and 20th century where both parties, Russia and China sort of approach each other also due to the shared communist ideology. And then maybe a third phase, the current phase, one of asymmetry combined with alignment, vis-à-vis the West. So maybe could you walk us through the most significant steps and changes in the China-Russian relationship historically first? Yeah, these three phases. You mentioned them as like we call it the imperial phase, I think, lasting until the early 20th century. Then we have the communist phase. I mean, of course, it's not a synchronous in a sense that both became communist in the in the in the in the 1910s or 1920s. China a little bit later, but already you have this communist party in China and the Soviet engagement with those people. And that lasted until the late 20th century. And then the third phase is of course what you mentioned correctly is the authoritarian phase. We call it I think the post-Soviet period of Russia and also the post-Japan man period of China. If you look back at the first phase, you really have this distance. This distance is felt in the relation in a sense that looking at infrastructure, we had this long border. It was sparsely populated. We have this episode of the first Russian envoy going to Beijing. And it took him, I think, two years for the whole commute from Tabaltsk in Siberia to Beijing and then back to Siberia. Like these contexts were not on a regular base, like a train schedule, but sporadic and often also failed. Also, the centers were far away, so to speak. And we have this increasing engagement in the late 90th century, building off railroads, but also a population movement. The Russian Far East gets populated. China's Northeast gets populated. This is actually the phase with the closest human interaction, if you if you may say so. With having several hundred thousand Chinese subjects in the Russian Far East and also 200,000 roughly Russians or post-Russian Empire subjects in China, mostly in Harbin and Northeast China, but also in other places where you have everyday encounters. And then this gets disentangled in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century while there's an increasing political engagement and culture engagement in a sense that literature gets translated classics. Classic reads get translated from one side to the other. There's this ideological overlap then in the 1950s. The proclaimed friendship between China and the Soviet Union, which then collapses pretty quickly. Maybe we come back to this episode later, but and we have this ideological conflict, despite the fact that both are commonists. So we have this close, I would call it ideological and strategic engagement and alignment with a sudden break, whereas now we have a closer engagement than ever before in economic terms, I would say, even though economic engagement was strong in the 1950s. But and this is also different, like makes it different from the 1950s and the sinusoid friendship is that they have they're they're kind of cooperating against the West, have mutual geopolitical goals both countries, although there's also areas of conflict that are not visible so much these days, but which two exist, but I think what is important is they don't have an ideological kind of bracket anymore. China is still communist, although you may argue what kind of communism is that and Russia is not claiming to become a communist, so they have different agendas here and they don't want to be a leader of some certain ideology, although there is increasing overlap in a sense that they look back at their imperial legacies and the positive way and other things as well. And if you would have to mention maybe two or three key events that happened throughout these these three phases or for each phase, maybe one event, one encounter that shaped the relationship but that had a profound impact on the relationship. Well, let's start with 1689 and the first contract that had been signed between Russia and China, which was the first contract China ever signed with another European or another country on an equal footing, you know, ever. And the interesting fact is although they had been in contact for quite a while for more than a half a century, they did not have the possibility to just talk to each other because there were no people that knew China in Russia and only quite a few that knew Russia in China if at all. So the interesting fact is that a French and a Portuguese Jesuit would talk down the treaty in Latin. So this was the language the first contract was codified. So this says a lot about, you know, also the misunderstandings and the limited abilities to talk to each other, to engage with each other. And the same holds true for the 1950s and the Sinosovia contract of friendship. You know, when we talk about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in the 21st century, we know that they have been meeting for 40 times or more often now, but it's just a black box, you know, we can't say anything about what are you talking about, how to ID interacting behind closed doors. But this situation in the 1950s is so telling because we can understand what the use of Stalin and Mao Zedong were talking about and how they interacted. And the situation is also kind of similar because back then and nowadays we have personalized power and we have an alliance that is, you know, directed against, let's call it the West or the liberal world order. And in the 1950s, it's quite telling that Stalin and Mao did not engage on, you know, the idea of friendship and did it also not engage on ideology, but it was pure power that traded their interests. Until the point that Stalin even invented an interview with Mao that was printed in the propaganda, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in order to announce that a new treaty would be signed without even asking Mao. So this also says a lot, you know, about their relationship that for the international audience, they created the fiction of unity, but among each other, it was pure power that traded their interests. I think one should also mention one aspect that is also interesting in the sense that these countries have for centuries of relation, a very long border, but actually very few episodes of real violence in a sense on a scale of like a world war or like a like a conflict where tens of thousands of people died, like lots of casualties. I mean, of course you have these episodes, but these are quite few, but these are also important to remember since they are mutually brutal. And the interesting fact is that these are actually remembered in a way. And I wanted to add just one one episode more from the provinces or from the peritory. And that is the Lagovations-Kamasakur of 1900, which occurred during the boxer uprising, which was largely in Anticolonial, but also Antibirdicist movement in China that then also the state, the Qing state, supported after being reluctant initially. And basically what happened was that you had in those cities, small, relatively small cities that existed in the Russian Far East, a sizeable Russian, Chinese communities. And the community of Lagovations on the Amor was brutally driven out of the city and kind of driven into the river and about there's different estimates, three to five or even seven thousand Chinese civilians died on the hands of Kossaks, soldiers, police, but also civilian Russian civilian population. So there was this was a huge massacre, which is on the Russian side largely forgotten when you go to Russian museums. It's always a peaceful kind of conquering of these territories and like bringing light to the Aryan, so to speak. So it's very it's a very kind of friendly way of Russian annexation. But if you look at Chinese narratives of these episodes, it's much more it's much bigger, it's much darker in the sense. And it's also still remembered, it's not that this is completely forgotten. Yeah, exactly. Let's maybe dive deeper into those phases of tensions and conflicts. You mentioned already the pro-chrome, but also the synosophage split. I think that most of our listens are familiar with what do you think does phases of conflicts or tension have what impact do they have for today's cooperation maybe? For the high level cooperation, they don't really play a role at the moment. They are not mentioned in bilateral communist keys or even like on state television, like Russian state television, when it's portraying China nowadays, you don't have any mention of the Da Manzky border war in 1969 when Soviet Union and China were actually at the brink of a large scale war due to the fact that China occupied in Ireland that it claimed that it belongs to China, but actually was previously held by the Soviet Union. And we should not forget that at that time both were already nuclear powers and even the vast of fear of nuclear escalation in the Far East. But this is not remembered anymore. It used to be remembered every decade after like 50s and inverse, we 60s and inverse, we, but this is now being muted although if you look at which a level, people still remember it, we'll talk about it, but it's not a mention on a state level. Then you have, I already mentioned museums in the Russian Far East, but there's also Chinese museums that are positively looking at the relationship between China and Russia and they are open to everybody, but there's also museums that are only open to Chinese people and some foreigners, but not Russians. So for instance, this one museum, at the border with Russia that remembers or commemorates the Black Ovation Square, the annexation of the present-day Russian Far East by Russia, and you may kind of see this as an algorithm. As if you scroll through social media, it's kind of user-friendly, in a sense, Russia portrays towards its own population in a certain way, China portrays this history also in a certain way to its own population, but not to the Russian audience, which is then basically blocked. So both states don't want history to interfere with the present relation, but they also want to keep it active in the sense it needs to be reactivated in the case of conflict, because it might be a time in the not-so-distant future when relations on a high level are not as good anymore, or China doesn't need Russia anymore, and may reactivate those dormant kind of historical phantom pains you may call them. I think the last point is extremely important when we look at past conflicts in their present impact, because for us, China and Russia relations appear to be somehow stable. When we look at the last 20 years, it seems that nothing really changed, both our friends, both have their conflicts and rivalries, but I presume that in both countries, if I may put in and see things being known, the things can change, and when we look at history, we can understand that things can change rather quickly. In the 1950s, there were high expectations among both political elites, but also let's call them the ordinary people that were happy about that new sinusoidal friendship. But then, out of a sudden, within a decade, even less, things changed fundamentally, and friends turned into foes. This is something we can understand, but also I think the political elites in both capitals are understanding that fact very well in the 21st century. And if you are already in the midst of historical narratives, what is so important is, they don't have many joined narratives at present, like a mutual cultural basis, let's put it that way, like we, like Europeans, look back at Greece or the ancient Rome, it doesn't exist between Russia and China, and even if you look at mutual relations, I mentioned those tensions, but both states or both governments see the necessity of creating a common narrative that is positive. And I think last year was most telling when both China and Russia emphasized the 80s anniversary of the end of World War II and portrayed themselves as allies, and also as biggest victims and victors of World War II, and thereby created a joint narrative, although one may argue, of course, China and Soviet Union, both were fighting against Japan and Germany, Soviet Union against Japan and Germany, but the communist government that didn't exist. And when it comes to victims, Russia always kind of on purpose forgets about victims and Belarus and in Ukraine, which are the states or countries that were fully occupied by the German army in World War II, whereas China kind of also, with an emphasis on the war tries to kind of downplay things that are not pretty that happened after 1949, just look at the great deep forward and the casualties during that great famine. But what is important here is, they want to create a positive narrative between China and Russia with regards to World War II, that also has, may have an impact on the so-called global south in the sense that, do you look at these two countries that were allies in the past, and it was not the West, I mean, I'm now repeating their narrative, it's not mine, don't look so much at the West if it comes to World War II, like the West as liberators against the Nazi and Japanese kind of aggression, so to speak. And you can see this in the past year that both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin paid state visits during the victory parades, first in Moscow and May and then in September and Beijing. But for other occasions, one has to say that these kind of shared and newly invented narratives in the 21st century are extremely artificial, you know, when you look at, for instance, the anniversary of the foundation of NATO, then China and Russia wanted to say that they are equally, you know, historically grounded, but they just invented a tradition. They did not commemorate the contract, communist contract that was signed in February 1950, because this would have been, you know, contradicting their interests. So basically they moved forward half a year and then on a date that did not have any, you know, historical background just celebrated their 75 years of friendship. And the only, I think the only answer to it is that they wanted to say that they are as old as a NATO. Yeah, I think we can see sort of like a divide between how they communicate their partnership internally and also externally. And internally they might use, you mentioned that the museums, a very approach of selective memory, probably selective memory methods, and externally they present that united front. Maybe we can move now from more historical context to a more contemporary context. And if we stick to this internal perspective, in the very beginning, we mentioned also asymmetry. And we see that there are clearly tensions between China and Russia internally. And you mentioned also senior partner, junior partner. Could we dive into that topic more deeper that we see that historically Russia might have seen itself as senior partner because of economic dominance of a China or diplomatic dominance. But now when we look into contemporary politics, the shift is clearly in favor to China, as you said, when and how clearly that disbalance from senior to junior partner began to shift. Well, I think one could say that it shifted in the early 2000s when China invented new institutions, regional institutions that were clearly aiming at the global impact. And Russia would join those. There is the new Silk Road initiative, but also the East Asian Investment Bank. And there's two initiatives at the same time that Russia tried to aim at the global impact and also to bring together the former Soviet republics that had become independent in the early 1990s. And China did not join them. And then you clearly can see this is one piece of evidence that in the early 2000s, those asymmetry became visible also, you know, to the international public. And another, you know, answer to that question could be if you look at regions where they compete, then let's talk about Africa. Let's talk about Central Asia. For Central Asia, for quite some time, there had been that silent agreement between China and Russia, that Russia is taking care of security issues, that this is basically their zero influence. But China is allowed from a Russian perspective to trade, to do, you know, economic stuff. But this agreement somehow, you know, also was questioned, but the fact that China established a military base in Tajikistan in one of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And I think quite the same is also true for Africa, where Russia is very active with warlords and in the security dimension to back authoritarian leaders in Africa, whereas China is very engaged in an economic sphere. But China has also a military base in Djibouti nowadays. So you can also answer the question, you know, from a perspective of timing, but also from a perspective of regions and also maybe fields where they compete. And for the future, I think the biggest question will be how successful both are in their endeavor to harm the international world order, because this kind of success can also bring about new rivalries, just to mention Russia's war in Ukraine. And there's different scenarios for its outcome. And China, of course, has clear interests. And this is, you know, open to the future. And I mean, what is also important to mention here is we see this clear shift that China's becoming the senior partner and Russia is in a junior role. But I think what is what matters here is that on an official stage, diplomatic level, state visits and so on, China is giving Russia the stage, especially putting the stage that Putin needs for its internal audience, the Russian people, so to speak, for the evening news, for the nice pictures on television. Because if you look back at 2022, Russia has been isolated, Putin couldn't travel much except for to North Korea or Belarus and a few other countries. So he really needed those pictures of state visits, him being a Beijing or sea coming to Moscow, and then they both being portrayed as equal partners. So for China on a cross-calculation, this didn't cost them anything because, you know, you can still show your domestic audience, still can show that we are the senior partner. Because we have the good trade statistic and we are kind of shaping this new new new relationship in the 21st century. So it was like a free gift for Putin because also China wants in a way is stable Russia in the sense that you know like they don't want a crumbling government there because at the moment at least it's a beneficial power it is the current situation. But from an economic perspective I'd say we clearly see how Russia's dependency also on China rose and grows. We see that the for example Russian international trade that is denominated in the Chinese currency and increased tremendously from from 2% in 22 to 40% in 24. How does Russia cope with this dependency? Isn't there also risks in those relationship then if one country is so dependent on the other? Exactly and when you look at the military sphere then this was exactly the reason why Russia would not sell the most you know sophisticated military techniques and technologies to China. The China demanded for decades but Russia is doing so after 2022 because this is somehow the last field where Russia can sell something to China although China has increased tremendously in the last couple of decades and is basically only or is independent from Russia in all spheres except I think the technology of targeting rockets. Yeah I mean like in a way Russia doesn't like the situation as it is right now perhaps political observers in Russia or bureaucrats politicians don't like this situation in economic military terms but there is not really much of a choice I mean they are dependent on dual use goods from China but even like not even only talking about dual use goods which which are important for the war industry even like cars regular cars for their own population computers smartphones what what not without China Russia would be much weaker so to speak and also the own population would perhaps be more upset with the current government and so that's why China is in a good position in terms of negotiations with Russia because it's quite a weak end of negotiations and if you look back at the February 2022 that's sort of the beginning of the Fultskain invasion I mean we all know these plans that Putin had in mind or his government in three days we toppled the Ukrainian government and will install our own puppet regime so to speak and will kind of Ukraine will become a Russian vassal state and this didn't work out but this was also like a plan targeted towards China because if this plan would have succeeded in a sense that Russia would have won against Ukraine and in the size of victory the West would have stayed weak or in a response especially Ukraine would have not defended itself so so so bravely then I think we would have seen a different signal Russian relation in a sense that Russia would also be in a stronger position now towards Beijing the problem of interdependency is also a problem for China it is less a problem than for Russia but still it is a problem let me give you two examples one is the fact that China does lack one kind of experience which is fighting a war the last war China fought was in 1979 it was a short war and China lost it so the Chinese army is not so you know well trained when it comes to really combatting so Russia has won advantage because of the war in Ukraine they have loads of people that have experience and combatting and also using the new military technologies just to name drones stuff like that so Russian army officers are now are teaching Chinese soldiers and officers at military academies in China and the other example I can give you is the economic aspect that of course it is a problem for Russia to be so dependent on China but China on the other hand does also not want to become as dependent as Russia is and just to remember you off the two pipelines power of Siberia there was one and where there is one that is in power and Russia wanted to build a second one power of Siberia too and China was very reluctant and postponed the plans for years and now they signed a contract that it will be built but let's wait and see how long it will take until the first you know tube is outlined so again China does not want to fall into the pitfall western countries did when they you know focused all their energy supplies on Russia so the problem of interdependency is also a problem for China less as for Russia but still it is also a problem yeah we I think at that point we see that only from all the energy imports that Russia exported to the to the EU for example China substitute in the end 15% so that we see again that that Russia basically uses 85% of their exports but is that also could that also indicate China's diversification of trade routes and also approachment to the European Union what are the relationship between the EU and China and the ethical I think I mean like if you talk about infrastructure and maybe let's stay in a sick form when they're China is not not to rely only on Russian infrastructure when it comes to trade relations with I mean you could always look at the maritime roads or routes but if you look at overland bridges the classical one was the Tansibirian railroad running for Russian territory exclusively and nowadays they've built two other railroads or one is already in place that the one that goes with Xinjiang and Kazakhstan and now I think they're building one more that also goes to a Kyrgyzstan and well I think avoid almost completely Russian territory and so this is also like a sign towards Russia I mean we can still use the Tansibirian railroads would be always if an alternative this is Gibbsio leeway in negotiations like of transport costs but also like a backup option like a in times of conflict that your trade connections will not be disrupted by by conflict let's say between Moscow Moscow and Beijing so this is this is crucial for China and it's securing trade networks also pipelines you could make the same argument with pipelines imports of raw materials and it's always diversifying even though the share of Russian imports has increased it's by far not on a scale let's say of crude oil or gas imports that Germany had right up to 2022 for instance so there's not this dependency on the Chinese side and China is purely a pitunistic you know they don't trade with Russia because they are friends and you want to support Russia that's just because of economic benefit just to give you one example when the USA threatened India with sanctions because India was buying oil from Russia from the West Siberian world fields India stopped to import that kind of oil and China you know went in to buy those barrels of oil but not for the regular price they pay but for an extremely low price so there was no initiative okay we will pay the ordinary price in order to help you because you can't get your oil out of your country we will you know pay the price we are defining and this again is a pure you know pure act of epiturnism but but yet I would say they rhetorically at least proclaim their limitless partnership which is also remarkable it was a couple of days before Russia then invaded Ukraine so what you said there's also a difference between a rhetorical commitment and then also the substantial agreements yes I mean yes short answer yes because if you look at let's say the NATO or EU as we knew it one must say with NATO we don't know where where how things are developing but let's look back at the term prior to Trump's comeback in the White House China and Russia don't have Article 5 in any of those agreements they don't they don't they don't have like this mutual defense treaty but I think also they don't need it really and that doesn't mean that they may not be in line in certain times of military confrontations just to give you like an hypothetical example um China attacks or invades or blockades or whatever Taiwan yeah so there will be a sea blockade not even like it not not even a short fired but they they try to get control over Taiwan by by blocking any and exports of the of the island Russia could send a few submarines to the US west coast specific coast just position them there speaking at San Francisco so so it's not US territory just as a sign that you know this could be interpreted as like an assistance towards China you don't need to not article 5 for that and as I say I just want to emphasize I say highly hypothetical but what I'm saying here is they are not dependent on these agreements and their kind of cooperation is much more situational and trans transactional than ours or the structures we are in economically speaking militarily speaking with NATO and other other other other organizations and if you only look at the rhetorical level the rhetoric of friendship is not consistent at all I just looked at the regular press conferences of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China with my students a couple of days ago and I was shocked really by the fact that Russia and China would announce their friendship with that friendship without limits in early 2022 and on February 24th the exact date when Russia started its invasion, a scale invasion into Ukraine. There were like dozens of journalists that envied Jane questioning the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry. And she was not a single time talking about friendship or a limitless friendship at all. And this is also striking. And that very symbolic moment China did not cope with the rhetorics at all. It would just drop it. And how is this then perceived in Europe at all? How does this constrain or further strengthen your China relations? Well China was it's hard to say but it were quite successful in their endeavour to give you know rhetorical pieces to everyone. So in the press conference they were also saying Ukraine is an independent country and a sovereign country and no one shall invade but they would also say Russia has plausible interests in Eastern Europe and historically speaking Ukraine can also be seen as a part of Russia. So basically there is this highly imbevalent standing of saying A and B in order to give A the opportunity to say O-China is on our side and to give B the opportunity that China is on our side. And in the end experts would bring this down to one term and it is a pro-Russia neutrality. All right so in terms of the perception, the external perception of Russia-China relations also when we regard now the EU because the purpose of European Guantí is to facilitate to death deeper into EU-China relations. So my question to you is does the EU have a strategy for navigating the relationship between Russia and China? Is there sort of a triangle of a relationship or does the EU is really an outside observer? I mean I truly hope that they have a strategy but I'm not aware of like a strategy that is really specifically guided towards the China-Russia relationship. I mean what became obvious already with COVID but especially after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is that economic dependency, military dependency can cost you security and money, a lot of money. And I think what we see in the EU but also like even with like industry, certain industries, the key word of the risking. I mean when we look at Russia and Europe there was a huge interdependency economically speaking but it was much less complex. And on a much lower scale than the economic dependency between China and the EU. If you look at production chains, the range of things that are exported and imported. So like a disruption on the scale of what we saw after February 2022 would have a much larger impact on the EU economy and what we can see in China is that I don't know, I don't have the most current trade statistics but even though exports are important, if you look at the overall GDP, the percentage of exports to EU to US is shrinking over the years. So there will be an impact on China as well but it may be much less especially because they are more able to keep the production of all kinds of things going than we are because we are more dependent on the import of certain parts or components or even if you look at for instance like things like pharmaceutical products. I mean like we need a certain kind of medicine we cannot subsidize or produce here. I mean just look at the masks, the COVID masks and things like that. So there's many things that there's many many construction sites. There's many things that Europe needs to deal with to become more independent from China to diversify its production chains which doesn't mean decoupling. I think decoupling and the risking are two different things but I think if and you ask a question was how is the perception. I think it's not really the perception of the alliance or kind of between Moscow and Beijing but more of the risks that exist in present like in contemporary geopolitics situation when it comes to China because China may also be conflict with Europe or with the West at a certain point of time. When we talk about Europe's homework to do, these are the Russia-China alliance then the debate is highly you know focused on two aspects. One is the economic ability to defend and Zhe'an just mentioned the problem of dependency and the risking. There's the military ability to defend. We have the 100 billion. The Zondalfa Mung to boost the German army and its abilities but there's one problem Zhe'an and R I thinking about quite some time that is totally missing in that debate that is our intellectual ability to defend. Russia and China are both and together so important for the world world of the 21st century. I mean there's no doubt about that but there's so few colleagues that do research on Russia and China when it comes to its history, when it comes to its political dimension, the economic dimension and so forth. So just to give you an example there's only three professors in the entire Germany left that do research on politics, nowadays politics in Russia, only three. So at most universities in the Germanic speaking world you can't take a course on putinism, you can't you know take a course on history of China it's the same. There's only one. Only one professor teaching Chinese history at the history department in Germany and this is extremely problematic because we don't understand Russia as we need to understand it and we don't understand China as we need to understand it. This is the first layer of the problem and the second layer of the problem is there's not a single academic institution in Germany or Austria or Switzerland and I guess even in the entire European Union that does research, severe research on China Russia relations. I may add a third layer and that's the younger generation. If you look at enrollment numbers, students learning Russian or Chinese, I only know the German statistics. These are down and these are down for good reasons. I mean since COVID China or even before that China became less attractive as a country to go to study. So enrollment numbers in the Synology or Chinese department here at my university are down there, down everywhere in Germany and when it comes to Russia of course there is the war and you cannot travel to and you don't want to travel to Russia and Ukraine is also off limits for good reasons. So we also have an intellectual problem in in in a younger generation. So even if let's say Martin showed us the dilemma that there's not enough teaching positions in German universities for certain for certain areas of expertise with the guts of China or Russia, even if they would be created in 10 years from now it would be hard to fill them because you don't have the intellectual capacity and it's not about only academia is also about the economy, the military sphere. You need people who understand and can read those countries and know what's going on. Read the newspapers, read the social media channels and what not and if you don't have those people, well we are kind of living in a dark age in the sense that we don't know what's going on there. I would say that's a very strong conclusion, a very alarming conclusion that we can draw from our podcast today and I think that's also why we're here. That's why we're having this talk, this engagement and I have to thank you for joining our podcast today and also for publishing this book about China-Russian relations and filling in this knowledge gap and at this point I would of course recommend it very highly to our listeners and yeah thank you so much for your insights, for your expertise and I'm looking very much forward to hearing more from you your research and thank you so much. Well thanks for having us. Thank you for the invitation and don't forget about the English edition of our book "Forthcoming in June".