Russia-China cooperation is key for a stable world

By Rhod Mackenzie

On Friday, Chinese observers commented that the US-led West's defamation of China-Russia cooperation is a deliberate tactic in its public opinion war, and that China and Russia are the true defenders of the world order based on international law. They made the comments following Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent remarks criticising the West's notion of a "rules-based order" as a reflection of its outdated colonial mindset and bloc-based strategies.

Putin made the remarks while addressing the plenary session of the 20th anniversary meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in the Russian city of Sochi on Thursday. The Russian president also described the West's global influence as an "immense military and financial pyramid scheme" that constantly needs more "fuel" to sustain itself with natural, technological and human resources that belong to others, according to the full text of Putin's speech posted on the Kremlin's official website. 

To achieve these goals, they [the West] are trying to replace international law with a 'rules-based order'," the Russian president said. "And in fact, if I may say so, our Western 'colleagues', especially those from the USA, don't just arbitrarily set these rules, they also teach others how to follow them and how others should behave in general".

All this is done and expressed in a blatantly rude and intrusive way, which is another manifestation of the colonial mentality, Putin said. "I sometimes want to say to them: Wake up, that era is long gone and will never come back."

Putin's Valdai speech challenged the concept of the so-called rules-based order that the West and its media have long emphasised. Putin made it clear in his speech that these so-called rules of the West are a result of their colonialism and colonial history. In other words, these so-called rules are imposed by the West on non-Western countries, so they are inherently unfair," said Cui Heng, an assistant research fellow at the Centre for Russian Studies at East China Normal University.

Cui told the Global Times on Friday that Putin's challenge to the foundation of the international order stems from his observation that the international order is undergoing accelerated changes, especially after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and that the Western-led international order is crumbling.

At Thursday's event, Putin praised China as one of the powerhouses of the global economy and a provider of high growth rates, while stressing that "at this moment, cooperation between Russia and the People's Republic of China is a very important factor in establishing stability in the Worlde," Russia's TASS reported.
Russia will expand cooperation with China in the field of security, the Russian president said. The countries will not create blocs, but they are "forced to react to what is happening around them", Putin said.

The 20th annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club was held from 2-5 October under the theme "Fair Multipolarity: How to Ensure Security and Development for All" and was attended by some 140 analysts, lawmakers and diplomats from more than 40 countries and regions.

The past two decades since the founding of the Valdai Forum have witnessed the peak of Western hegemony and the multipolar international system built after the Second World War are on the verge of collapse, and against such a backdrop, China-Russia cooperation becomes inevitable, Chinese observers said. 

Only through cooperation between China and Russia can the post-war international order be maintained and the order based on international law be upheld, Cui said.

It is actually the West that is disrupting the global order, the analyst said, citing the wars waged by the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo as examples. 

As for bilateral cooperation between China and Russia, Putin said the two sides would implement infrastructure development plans for the construction of a Greater Eurasia, the Eurasian Economic Union and the development of the "promising Belt and Road Initiative", the Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. 

Chinese observers said they do not consider the US-led West's smearing of China-Russia cooperation as a "misunderstanding", as the West clearly knows the nature of such cooperation. "Defaming China-Russia cooperation is a deliberate move by the US-led West as part of its public opinion war," they said.