Trend China-Russia partnership deepens toward an entente that knits Eurasia together

Summary

While the United States, the EU and Russia competed over influence in Eurasia, China expanded economic ties with the new states while taking care not to provoke Moscow. The report says Beijing in principle recognized Russia's security and political primacy in the region and preferred bilateral deals to regional bodies, while pushing the Belt and Road from 2013 to reach European markets and Eurasian raw materials. After Western sanctions over the 2014 Ukraine crisis and the annexation of Crimea, the two powers reached political compromises that produced a comprehensive strategic partnership and a shared aim of limiting Western influence in Central Asia and the Black Sea region. Cooperation has since spread from trade into security and military affairs, including joint exercises in the Asia-Pacific and management of security interests through the SCO, and is evolving from a friendship without limits toward an entente built on shared principles of world order. The authors observe that under Chinese and Russian leadership Eurasia is being integrated into a wider continental structure while US strategic focus shifts toward the Indo-Pacific.