Beijing | China and Russia issued a joint statement on Friday denouncing American influence and the role of Western military alliances, NATO and AUKUS, in Europe and Asia, deeming them destabilizing.
The Russian-Chinese declaration “on the entry of international relations into a new era” was published on the occasion of the meeting of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, just before the opening of the Olympics.
The two countries, with increasingly tense relations with Washington, denounce the destabilizing role of the United States for “stability and equitable peace” in the world.
In particular, they say they are “opposed to any future enlargement of NATO”, echoing Moscow’s primary demand to achieve a de-escalation of Russian-Western tensions in Ukraine.
They call on “the North Atlantic Alliance to renounce its ideologized approaches dating from the Cold War”, a line defended tooth and nail by Russia.
Russia and China are behind the concept of “the indivisibility of security”, on which the Kremlin relies to demand a departure from NATO from its neighborhood, arguing that the security of some cannot be at the expense that of others, despite the right of each state, and therefore of Ukraine, to choose its alliances.
Moscow and Beijing also denounce “the negative influence for peace and stability in the region of the Indo-Pacific strategy of the United States”.
The two capitals also say they are “concerned” by the creation in 2021 of the military alliance of the United States with the United Kingdom and Australia (AUKUS) considering that this union, in particular around the manufacture of nuclear submarines , “touches on questions of strategic stability”.
The creation of AUKUS had been strongly denounced by China, while the United States considers as a priority its competition with Beijing in Asia and the Pacific.
On the economic level, the two countries have signed strategic agreements without revealing the amounts.
Rosneft and the Chinese oil group CNPC have signed a contract to supply 100 million tonnes of Russian oil to China via Kazakhstan over 10 years. Rosneft claims to be China’s largest oil exporter (7% of annual Chinese crude demand).
Gazprom and CNPC still have also signed a new gas supply contract.
“Once the project reaches full capacity, the supply volume (…) will increase by 10 billion cubic meters and in total will reach 48 billion cubic meters per year” including the 38 billion cubic meters of deliveries via the existing Power of Siberia pipeline, according to the Russian gas giant.