China and Russia: Their major impact on the US and Ukraine

Jan. 17, 2020 was the last time Xi Jinping left China. Only a few months before the restrictive COVID-19 policy China implemented, Chairman Xi Jinping took a diplomatic trip to Myanmar. This was changed when a few weeks ago, Chairman Xi took a trip to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their meeting led to a statement about a “redistribution of power in the world” and included the United States six times, all in a negative way. The Washington Post called the meeting, “a bid to make the world safe for dictatorship.” Former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, said, “The world should get ready for a further significant deepening of the China-Russia security and economic relationship.”

China would get two main things from a relationship with Russia – manufacturing and capital. Russia would gain the most because of their oil situation. Russia has the ability to make China fully oil dependent, which is why China is being slow when it comes to signing a treaty. If China agrees to live off of Russian oil and allows Russia to implement their pipelines, it will be a scary sight for the U.S. and for China.

How does the Ukraine situation affect any potential deal? China has overall had a healthy relationship with Ukraine. With everything going on currently, Beijing has been silent. Their best case scenario would be if Russia does not invade and they can move on like nothing happened. But if Russia does invade, they will likely not have an issue with that. Neither China nor Russia care about NATO, so the only thing to stop them is the international backlash and potential sanctions they would receive. 

How do all the other world governments feel about this? We are able to get a glimpse through the Olympics happening right now. “There are probably more countries than Washington would like to think that are happy to have China and Russia as an alternative model,” said Steven Lee Myers. While President Biden is having a diplomatic boycott of this year’s Olympics, there are some United States allies who have not followed, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 

The “alliance of autocracies” is something that is informal and still in the works, but this could be a major factor playing into the future of the world.

By Andrew Schwartz