China and Russia are an alliance of disruptors

Four years ago, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping made pancakes together in Vladivostok while thousands of their military forces conducted joint exercises in Siberia. This month, as China hosted the Olympics, Putin and Xi announced that a ‘new era’ in international relations had begun, one in which the two great authoritarian powers of the 21st century will reshape the liberal international order established in 1945 and reaffirmed in 1991. Some call it Cold War II, yet the blossoming relationship between Moscow and Beijing may best be thought of as an alliance of disruptors.

As Russia roils Europe over Ukraine and China turns its attention to Taiwan after crushing Hong Kong’s democracy over the past two years, these two historically major powers are reasserting themselves almost in tandem. As a result, prospects for global destabilisation are greater than at any time since the last gasp of Soviet adventurism in the 1980s.

Beijing and Moscow are increasingly confident about their ability to disrupt western influence in areas near and far from their borders. They are becoming bolder in their attempts to frame narratives — even if that means peddling outright falsehoods — in order to delegitimise liberal institutions. They grow more and more comfortable with conducting aggressive behaviour in the name of ‘self-defence’ or global peace.

One should not go too far in presuming that Moscow and Beijing have become (as Mao Zedong once put it) as close as lips and teeth. A binding military treaty between the two is unlikely ever to happen and centuries of distrust will remain under the surface.

Since the 17th century, the two have clashed over territory in Siberia and jockey-ed for power in eastern Asia along with Japan and the United States. As recently as 1969, ​they fought an undeclared war for seven months along their Ussuri river border.