May 31, 2016
Russia and China are eager to take their relationship of regional security to a new level with one of the main areas of cooperation aimed at dealing with issues relating to the situation in neighboring regions, according to a report by CCTV.
A conference on bilateral Russian-Chinese relations, which is being held in Moscow currently, will highlight the need for some sort of transformation and revision of bilateral relations under the new situation, according to Zhang Xin, researcher of the School of Advanced International Studies at East China University.
“Let’s take a look at the past year or two. We know that Russia is under increasing pressure from Western sanctions and this seriously affects the country’s economy.
The analyst pointed out that the conference itself is a meeting of experts, so one should not consider statements made at these meetings by experts and specialists, as official.
Nonetheless, judging by what has been heard at the conference, the analyst has highlighted three main directions of cooperation in the sphere of regional security.
According to the analyst, first of all it is important to understand if the Shanghai Cooperation Organization can be reorganized into a regional platform for cooperation in the field of security to include participants apart from the current ones.
“Secondly, we see a clear trend in Russia’s active attempts to increase its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, which is widely manifested, in particular, in security cooperation,” Xin said.
He further said that both the countries have discussed this during the recent Russia-ASEAN summit, which was held a week ago. This is another recent trend, the importance of which in the context of regional security in the Asia-Pacific region may further increase.
Thirdly, it is interesting to see whether the two sides will start expressing mutual support for each other’s basic positions on regional security more openly and loudly in the surrounding regions.
In these areas, both sides seek to achieve a higher level of cooperation and support from each other. I believe that these three areas are probably the main points in the context of cooperation between Russia and China in the field of regional security.
