Xi just bought himself a headache in Moscow

Minxin Pei :
Xi Jinping’s powwow with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this week was no summit of equals. The Chinese leader returns home in a clearly dominant position, assured that a Russia weakened by its war of aggression in Ukraine will have to rely on China for trade, technology and diplomatic support for years to come.
Yet, those fretting that Russia’s dependence on its autocratic neighbor will strengthen China’s efforts to challenge the US-led West should not panic. Chinese leaders will soon discover that keeping their strategic partnership viable and strong will be harder than it looks.
Those prophesying an enduring Sino-Russian alliance should first consider their rocky history, and the factors of discord inherent in asymmetrical relations between two great powers.
Despite today’s vastly different circumstances, the geopolitical interests of China and Russia are nearly identical to those of China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Then, as now, both powers were bound by their shared fear and resentment of American dominance.
In fact, as formal treaty allies, China and the Soviet Union had deeper and far more extensive security ties than they do today. In February 1950, they signed the “Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance.”
A decade later, the alliance collapsed in spectacular fashion, with Beijing denouncing Moscow for betraying communism and the Soviet Union reciprocating by ending all economic assistance to China.
To be sure, a key factor responsible for the split – the bad chemistry between Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and China’s Mao Zedong – is missing today. The Xi-Putin bromance is often cited as an extra layer of strength in their nations’ partnership. While this may be true, an obvious question is what happens to an alliance so reliant on the relationship of two men who might not be around in 10 or 15 years.
More importantly, as illustrated by the Sino-Soviet split, the biggest risk to an alliance of unequal partners is not personality – it’s the very unequal nature of the relationship. That imbalance gives the weaker partner surprisingly strong leverage over its supposed patron.
The first area where differences are likely to spill into the open is in deciding how confrontational they should be toward the West. Like Mao in the 1950s, Putin has adopted far more aggressive and dangerous tactics than his counterpart. Constrained by China’s economic ties to the West and convinced that time is on its side, Xi prefers a longer game.
A weaker partner engaged in direct military confrontation with the West understandably seeks to get the stronger party involved. In 1958, Mao invited Khrushchev to Beijing three weeks before the People’s Liberation Army unleashed artillery barrages against offshore islands held by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops, creating a military crisis that threatened to embroil the Soviets in a direct conflict with the US.
Mao’s sly invitation made it appear that he had the backing of the Soviet Union. Although Khrushchev begrudgingly gave his support after the fact, he was very upset with Mao’s recklessness because it undermined his incipient efforts to seek “peaceful co-existence” with the West, a proposition unacceptable to the radical Maoist regime.
Resentment over what each party is contributing to the relationship can also quickly erode ties. Generous Soviet economic assistance helped China build its military-industrial base, while Khrushchev provided China the technologies crucial to its nuclear weapons program.
Still, Mao wanted more (he asked Khrushchev for a prototype nuclear bomb) – and would do little to reciprocate. He rejected Khrushchev’s requests to form a joint naval fleet and to set up Soviet communications facilities in China. As today’s China and Russia deepen their partnership, similar frictions will surely arise.
A final challenge may be the feeding and care of national egos. Both China and Russia are great powers that jealously guard their sovereignty and self-image. Both are quick to take offense. The more dire Russia’s straits, the more sensitive and solicitous Beijing must be to avoid slighting ordinary Russians, many of whom may not have fully absorbed how much richer and more powerful China has become. Unfortunately, stroking the national egos of weaker powers is not something for which China has shown notable talent.
As Russia is progressively weakened by the war and Western sanctions, Xi should expect more and more requests for help. A partnership of unequal parties can only work if the stronger party is truly willing to support the weaker one with “no limits,” as Xi has ostensibly pledged. China need only look to its own troubled ties with North Korea, which has depended on Chinese support for survival since the Korean War, to appreciate how little leverage it will have over Russia.
We do not know if Xi is committed to this course of action. But the meagerness of the economic deals signed during his visit to Moscow – which glaringly omitted the second gas pipeline from Russia to China – indicates that China is not ready to go all in, at least for now. This portends trouble – not bliss – even for this marriage of geopolitical necessity.

(Minxin Pei is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College).