OBSERVARE

Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 14, Nº. 2 (November 2023-April 2024)

CHINA, RUSSIA, AND THE REINVENTION OF EURASIA

CARLOS GASPAR

cemedeiros@autonoma.pt

Senior researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of Universidade NOVA de

Lisboa (Portugal). Invited Full Professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (UAL) and Associate

Researcher at OBSERVARE, Observatory of Foreign Relations. Advisor to the Board of Directors of

Fundação Oriente. Advisor to the National Defense Institute. Member of the European Council on

Foreign Relations. Member of the Board of Advisors of the Royal Elcano Institute. Member of the

Portuguese Association of Political Science. Author of O Pós-Guerra Fria (2016); A Balança da

Europa (2017); Raymond Aron e a Guerra Fria (2018); O Regresso da Anarquia (2019); O Mundo

de Amanhã (2020); O Fim da Europa (2022).

Abstract

In the post-Cold War era, the transformation of relations between Russia and China is

inseparable from the reinvention of Eurasia, which is at the heart of the new alliance between

the two major continental powers. The revisionist strategies of Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's

China depend on Sino-Russian convergence. Moscow and Beijing have begun to build an

alternative order based on the multilateral organization of the Eurasian space, whose

counterpoint is the United States' strategy in the Indo-Pacific. This process paves the way for

China's emergence as the leading Eurasian power for the first time in international history.

Keywords

Eurasia, China, Russia, World Order, Belt and Road Initiative

Resumo

No post-Guerra Fria, a transformação das relações entre a Rússia e a China é inseparável da

reinvenção da Eurásia, que está no centro da nova aliança entre as duas principais potências

continentais. As estratégias revisionistas da Rússia de Putin e da China de Xi Jinping

dependem da convergência sino-russa. Moscovo e Pequim começaram a construir uma ordem

alternativa a partir da organização multilateral do espaço euroasiático, cujo contraponto é a

estratégia dos Estados Unidos no Indo-Pacifico. Esse processo abre caminho à emergência da

China como a principal potência euroasiática, pela primeira vez na história internacional.

Palavras-chave

Eurásia, China, Rússia, Ordem mundial, Belt and Road Initiative

How to cite this article

Gaspar, Carlos (2023). China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia. Janus.net, e-journal of

international relations, Vol14 N2, November 2023-April 2024. Consulted [online] on date of last

visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.14.2.1

Article received on September 1st, 2023, and accepted for publication on September 5th,

2023

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 14, Nº. 2 (November 2023-April 2024), pp. 1-10

China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

Carlos Gaspar

CHINA, RUSSIA, AND THE REINVENTION OF EURASIA

CARLOS GASPAR

On May 16th, Ambassador Li Hui, Special Representative for Eurasia, began his diplomatic

contacts in Kyiv to discuss the "political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis", as announced

by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. After passing through Warsaw, Berlin, Paris

and Brussels, his mission ended in Moscow, where Li Hui was Ambassador of the People's

Republic of China between 2009 and 2019, a crucial decade for the consolidation of the

alliance between the two major continental powers.

China – the new China or the old Middle Kingdom – is not known to have ever appointed

a "Special Representative for Eurasian affairs". The organizational structure of the

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not have any department for Eurasia, although

there is a Department for Central Asia and Europe. Nor it is known that Eurasia has

become a current term in the Chinese political debate, just as Eurasia as a geopolitical

concept is not a typical reference in strategic and international relations studies in China.

And yet there is Beijing's special envoy for Eurasia, who has included Russia, Germany,

France, Poland and Ukraine in his perimeter: only post-Soviet Russia assumes its

Eurasian identity, which is alien to the other four European states visited by the Chinese

representative for Eurasian affairs.

This novelty of Chinese diplomacy – a rare thing in itself – has its origins in the

reinvention of Eurasia in the evolution of relations between China and Russia since the

end of the Cold War. The decomposition of the Soviet Union was the starting point for

the reconstruction of Eurasia, the leitmotiv of the old pan-Slavic theories that

hibernated during the decades of Russian communist rule, even when Stalin and Mao

Zedong achieved Eurasian unity with the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance treaty in

1950.

The end of the Soviet empire was both an ideological catastrophe for the Chinese

communist regime and a strategic blessing for China's security equation, which was no

longer focused on the Soviet threat and was able to fully implement Deng Xiaoping's

program of reforms and international openness. The reformist strategy translated into

the "Asianization" of the new China, which ensured the process of accelerated

modernization and the resurgence of the old empire as a major international power.

In this sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant a shift in China's strategic centre

of gravity, which moved from the continental hinterland to the coastal regions where

most of its industrial economy is concentrated. On the other hand, Russia's decline paved

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 14, Nº. 2 (November 2023-April 2024), pp. 1-10

China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

Carlos Gaspar

the way for the normalization of bilateral relations between Moscow and Beijing, with the

completion of the process of defining the borders between the two states in 1994 and

the formalization of the first version of the "strategic partnership" between China and

Russia at the summit bringing together President Jiang Zemin and President Boris Yeltsin

two years later. Finally, the breakdown of the Soviet empire meant that the People's

Republic of China has now three new contiguous states – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and

Tajikistan, three of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia, which Beijing

recognized in 1992.

China’s priority became to complete the talks on territorial demarcation that it began

with the Soviet Union. In this context, it resumed the process with the three New

Independent States, with which it concluded separate border agreements between 1994

and 1996, extending the territory of the People's Republic of China in Central Asia

China then brought together Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Shanghai

to establish a framework for multilateral consultation to ensure political stability in its

continental rearguard

. In 2001, the Shanghai Five established the Shanghai

Cooperation Organization (SCO), which also included Uzbekistan. The SCO's priorities

focus on the security domain, including the neutralization of pan-Islamist movements

and Islamic terrorist networks, notably the East Turkestan Independence Movement

(ETIM), which organizes the Uyghur opposition in Xinjiang. At the same time, Russia

guarantees the security of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are members

of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) since 1992.

The SCO is the first multilateral security institution created by China in the post-Cold War

era, which confirms a relevant convergence between Beijing and Moscow, both

committed to defining a framework of political stability in Central Asia, which has been

the regional "separator" between the two great continental powers since the 19th

century

, and the first Eurasian institution, formed at a time when Russia wanted to

return to Europe and China has become the hegemonic power in East Asia.

This dynamic did not change in the following years. While the United States (US), after

9/11, focused on the "Greater Middle East", including Afghanistan and Central Asia – US

troops set up temporary military bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to

support their operations against the Taliban – Russia and China maintained their

"strategic partnership" and continued to turn their backs, one turned to "Europe from

Lisbon to Vladivostok", the other towards maritime Asia.

Everything changed ten years later, when it became clear that China was no longer an

emerging regional power, but a challenger that can challenge the international

preeminence of the USA, called into question by the division of the Western coalition in

the Iraq War, the debacle of the military occupation of Iraq and the international

financial crisis.

China obtained 16.000,00 km2 of territory in the redrawing of the borders with the three new Central Asian

republics. Jeffrey Mankoff (2023). "The War in Ukraine and Eurasia's New Imperial Moment". Washington

Quarterly 45 (2): 138. Jeffrey Mankoff (2022). Empires of Eurasia. How Imperial Legacies Shape

International Security. New Haven: Yale University Press. See also Daniel Markey (2020). China's Western

Horizon. Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Yuan Jingdong (2010). "China's Role in the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization".

Journal of Contemporary China 19 (67): 855-869. Alyson Bailes et al (2007). The Shanghai Cooperation

Organization. SIPRI Policy Paper 17.

David Dallin (1949). The Rise of Russia in Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

Carlos Gaspar

The responses of Russia and the US to China's "peaceful rise" are symmetrical and

opposite. In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin recogniseD that the centre of gravity of

international politics has shifted to Asia and advocated Russia's "pivot to the East"

consolidate the alliance with China and, at the same time, to integrate it into a “Greater

Eurasia”, which made it a priority to reintegrate the post-Soviet space into the framework

of a Eurasian Union, including a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that excluded the

leading Asian power

Russia's response to China's resurgence was the reinvention of Eurasia, the center of

which has shifted from Moscow to Beijing, as Russian strategists aligned witht the

Kremlin, including Sergei Karaganov and Timofei Bordachev, recognized

. The reference

to Eurasia is natural, since this concept has been an integral part of Russian strategic

culture since the 19th century and, additionally, this vision evokes the Russian imperial

project, without having to align with the radical ideology of the new Russian pan-Slavists,

represented by Alexander Dugin

In Washington, President Barack Obama recognized that the center of gravity of

international politics has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the "Greater

Middle East" to "Greater Asia". In this context, he defended the "pivot to Asia" of US

strategy to contain the rise of China and, at the same time, to integrate it into the

international order, namely in the G20, as a "responsible stakeholder". This historic

turning point made it a priority to reorganize its alliances and partnerships in the Asia-

Pacific with the formation of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which excluded the

main Asian power

The US response to China's resurgence is the reinvention of the Pacific, which was

enlarged to become the Indo-Pacific – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's original formula that

united Japan, Australia and India with the leading maritime power to prevent the

emergence of a "unipolar Asia"

. The transoceanic reference is natural in the strategic

culture of the main maritime power, which organized the defeat of the Soviet Union from

the transatlantic alliance and the US reproduced this model in the quadrilateral coalition

of the Indo-Pacific

Jeffrey Mankoff. Russia's Asia Pivot. Confrontation or Cooperation? CSIS, February 2nd, 2015. Mikhail

Troitskiy (2014). The Sino-Russian Pivot and American Power. MGIMO, Pin Points 40. Ekaterina Kuznetsova,

Vladimir Inozemtsev (2013). "Russia's Pacific Destiny". American Interest, October 10th, 2013. Fiona Hill,

Bobo Lo. "Putin's Pivot. Why Russia is Looking to the East". Foreign Affairs, July 31st,2013. Kadri Liik, editor

(2014). Russia's Pivot to Eurasia. ECFR.

Putin defines the EEU as a "supranational association" that should be a pole and a bridge between Europe

and Asia-Pacific. Jeffrey Mankoff (2023): 140. See also Vladimir Putin. "A New Integration Project for

Eurasia. The Future in the Making." Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union,

October 3rd, 2011.

Sergei Karaganov. "From East to West, or Greater Eurasia". Global Affairs, October 25th, 2016. Sergei

Karaganov, Timofei Bordachev (2017). The Turn to The East to Greater Eurasia. Valdai Report. Toward the

Great Ocean 5.

Marlene Laruelle (2015). Eurasia, Eurasianism, Eurasia Union. PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 336. Marlene

Laruelle (1999). L'idéologie eurasiste or comment penser l'empire. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Jeffrey Bader (2013). Obama and China's Rise. An Insider's Account. New York: Brookings Institution.

Hillary Clinton (2014). Hard Choices. The Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster. Aaron Friedberg (2022).

Getting China Wrong. Cambridge: Polity Press. Andrew Small (2022). No Limits. The Inside Story of China's

War with the West. London: Melville House.

Gudrun Wacker, Felix Heiduk (2020). From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. Significance, Implementation, and

Changes. SWP Research Paper 9.

Rory Medcalf (2020). Indo-Pacific Empire. China, America, and the Contest for the World's Pivotal Region.

Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

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In Beijing, during the process of choosing the new General Secretary of the Communist

Party of China, which ended with the appointment of Xi Jinping in September 2012, the

strategic debate opposed the supporters of strategic patience, who defended a line of

continuity to avoid a premature confrontation with the USA – the fatal mistake of the

Soviet Union, according to Deng Xiaoping – and the supporters of strategic voluntarism,

who wanted to reveal | China | as a great international power and confront USA

hegemony. Two formulas identify the divergent choices – the reformist old guard wanted

to "hide China's strength and avoid pretensions to hegemony" (Tao Guang Yang Hui),

while the revisionist vanguard wanted a dynamic strategy to mobilize China's strength

and "achieve results" in international politics (Fen Fa You Wei)

The defensive line advocated the "March to the West" – a Chinese version of Karl

Haushofer's "Drang nach Osten" that evoked the dilemmas of Germany's continentalist

strategies

, implicitly in Wang Jisi's version, explicitly in General Liu Yazhou's version.

For Wang Jisi, if the US is going to focus on the Asia-Pacific, the only way to avoid direct

confrontation between the two great powers is for China to focus on its "Drang nach

Westen" along an axis that should unite Shanghai and London – the symbols of old and

new globalization

. For Liu Yazhou, the defence of land borders and stability in Central

Asia is more important than the conquest of Taiwan: Xinjiang must be recognised as a

central position, decisive both to ensure a secure land connection to the energy resources

concentrated in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, and to link China with South Asia, the

Middle East and Turkey

The offensive line advocated the transformation of China into a major maritime power to

confront the US in Taiwan and the adjacent seas, and global competition with the

hegemonic power entails forming an alternative order to the liberal order. Central Asia is

a rearguard with no decisive strategic value as long as the USA and its allies can be

excluded from this secondary area: the multilateral concert in the SCO ensures the

withdrawal of US troops stationed in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and the

gradual withdrawal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the US from

Afghanistan confirmed this calculation. Yan Xuetong considered that there are only two

great international powers – the US and China – and that the inevitability of a new bipolar

division requires that the rising power can have its own normative model to create a new

world order

In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the "Land Silk Road" in Nur-Sultan (Astana),

Kazakhstan, and the "Maritime Silk Road" in Djakarta, Indonesia

. The new strategy –

the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in its official name – anticipated the reorganization

Yan Xuetong (2014). "From Keeping a Low Profile to Striving for Achievement". Chinese Journal of

International Politics 7(2): 153-184.

Michel Korinman (1990). Quand l'Allemagne pensait le Mmnde. Paris: Fayard.

Wang Jisi. Marching Westwards. The Rebalancing of China's Geostrategy. Beijing: Center of International

and Strategic Studies Report, 7 October of 2012.

The text is written shortly after a period of political and social tensions in Urumqi. Lu Yazhou. On Advance

Toward the West, August 8, 2010. See also Yun Sun. March West. China's Response to U.S. Rebalancing.

Brookings Institution, January 31, 2013. Michael Clarke (2016). "Beijing's March West. Opportunities and

Challenges for China's Eurasian Pivot". Orbis 62 (2): 296-313.

Yan Xuetong (2019). Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The choice of the name refers to a previous initiative of the United States - the New Silk Road Initiative

announced in 2011 by Robert Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economy, Agriculture and Energy, who

wanted to build telecommunications networks, roads and railways to ensure Afghanistan's regional

integration. Robert Hormats. The United States "New Silk Road" Strategy. U.S. Department of State,

September 29th, 2011.

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of Eurasia as a space integrated by digital, energy, rail and financial networks of

continental connectivity along three land corridors – in the South, in the Centre and in

the North – and a sea route that encircles Asia to the Mediterranean

. For the first time

since the beginning of the reform period, the new strategy presents China as an

alternative model of political and economic development to the liberal model

The Belt and Road Initiative, the pillar of the Sinocentric "Community of Common

Destiny" announced first by Hu Jintao and then by Xi Jinping

, will be open to all states

– except the US, by definition excluded from the Chinese order – and more than 140

states, including Italy and Portugal, will sign bilateral agreements with China within this

framework. The new Chinese "Silk Routes" replace the old European "Silk Routes" of

Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama and herald the end of the long cycle of Westernization.

The Belt and Road Initiative is China's response to the strategic shift of the US and

Russia. Xi Jinping advocated China's "Eurasian pivot" to consolidate the alliance, or quasi-

alliance, with Russia

, needed to counterbalance US hegemony. But Xi Jinping's strategy

heralds an offensive turn: China needs a secure ally in the continental rearguard to be

able to concentrate its forces on the transition of power and replace the declining

hegemonic power, just as it needs to become a maritime power to fight against the US,

starting with the Taiwan Straits and the adjacent seas that it wants to integrate into its

sovereign territory

. In this context, Xi's China needs Putin's Russia more than Putin's

Russia needs Xi's China.

International politics is now dominated by the bipolarization between the US, on the one

hand, and China and Russia, on the other. In 2014, the annexation of Crimea tested the

cohesion of the coalition between the two revisionist continental great powers.

Xi's decision forced Putin to shape the Eurasian Union. In 2013, Moscow decided to create

a Eurasian Economic Union, whose credibility demanded the integration of Ukraine. But

Kyiv had been preparing to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union,

which was incompatible, in its own terms, with membership of the Eurasian Economic

Union

. Putin forced President Viktor Yanukovych to choose Moscow, but the break with

Brussels provoked an uprising of Ukrainian nationalist currents, which occupied the

center of Kyiv during the winter months. The Maidan movement ultimately prevailed

against President Yanukovych, who fled to Russia as the Russian military intervention in

Crimea began on February 28, 2014

. Three weeks earlier, on February 6, the eve of

Nadège Rolland (2017). Drivers of the Belt and Road Initiative in National Bureau of Asian Research. China's

Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative: 93-120. William

Callahan (2016). "China's 'Asia Dream'. The Belt and Road Initiative and the new regional order". Journal

of Asian Comparative Politics: 1-18.

Francis Fukuyama. "Exporting the Chinese Model", January 12th, 2016.

The "Community of Common Destiny", presented by Xi Jinping at the Forum of Belt and Road Initiative in

2017, is a modern version of the Tianxia, the Chinese imperial order. His predecessor, Hu Jintao, was the

first to use the formula. Jeffrey Mankoff (2022). See also Wang Gungwu. On Tianxia. The China Story,

August 6th, 2013.

Chen Xiaotong, Marlen Belgibayev (2014). China's Eurasian Pivot. Asan Forum, 1 December of 2014. Bobo

Lo (2019). Greater Eurasia. The Emperor's New Clothes or an Idea whose Time Has Come? Paris: IFRI

Russia NEI Reports.

Rush Doshi (2021). The Long Game. China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Anders Aslund. Ukraine's Choice. European Association Agreement or Eurasian Union? Peterson Institute

for International Economics Policy Brief, September, 2013.

Serhii Plokhy (2017). The Gates of Europe. A History of Ukraine. New York: Basic Books.

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China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

Carlos Gaspar

the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Xi met with Putin, but no one, at least

publicly, took any notice of the meeting

The annexation of Crimea and the armed insurrection of Russian militias in the Donbas,

which is at the origin of the "hybrid war" in Eastern Ukraine, confirmed Putin's strategy

focused on breaking with the international order and realigning with China. The People's

Republic of China did not recognize the annexation of Crimea, nor did it condemn Russia,

and in May, the annual summit between Xi and Putin in Shanghai consolidated the

revisionist Entente and guaranteed China's access to Siberia's strategic hydrocarbon

reserves with the construction of a new gas pipeline, the Power of Siberia.

In June, Ukraine finally signed the Association Agreement with the European Union that

marks the border with the Eurasian Economic Union, founded by Russia, Belarus, Armenia

and Kazakhstan – Kyrgyzstan will join later. The tensions between the Eurasian Economic

Union and the Belt and Road Initiative's partnerships in Central Asia are evident from

the outset, which justifies the decision by Xi and Putin to declare the two complementary

projects the following year

Kazakhstan, where China built the Khurgos dry port, is crucial in the rail connection

linking Xian, Moscow and Duisburg in the northern corridor, as well as in the energy

connection of the gas pipelines linking Turkmenistan to China in the central corridor of

the new "Silk Roads". The southern corridor connects Xinjiang directly to Pakistan – the

"China-Pakistan Economic Corridor" – and ends at the port of Gwadar in the Indian

Ocean. At this juncture, the division of labour that prevails in post-Soviet Central Asia

enhances Russia's decisive position in the security dimension and China's in the economic

dimension and guarantees the co-existence of the two great powers in "Central Eurasia".

In the same vein, the Sino-Russian convergence set the framework for successive

enlargements of the SCO. In 2017, India entered by the hand of Russia, which wanted

to counterbalance China's tendentially hegemonic position in the construction of "Greater

Eurasia"; Pakistan entered by the hand of China, to maintain the balance between the

two nuclear powers of South Asia; and Iran, aligned with Russia in Syria's civil war and

with China to resist US-imposed isolation and international sanctions, completed the

accession process as a permanent member in 2022; Afghanistan, Mongolia and Belarus

have observer status; and Turkey announced its candidacy for 2024 – it would be the

first NATO member state to enter the multilateral institution that shapes the "Greater

Eurasia" and is a fundamental pillar of the neo-imperial order that the powers of the

Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis defend as an alternative to the international order of the

United Nations

"Meeting with President of China Xi Jinping", President of Russia, February 6th, 2014. "Xi Jinping Meets with

President of Russia, Vladimir Putin", PRC Consulate-General, Toronto, December 6th,2015. February of 2014.

Alexander Gabuev. "Eurasian Silk Road Union. Towards a Russia-China Consensus?" Diplomat, June 5th,

2015. Martin Kaczmarski, Witold Rodkiewicz. Russia's Greater Eurasia and China's New Silk Road:

adaptation instead of competition. OSW Center for Eastern Studies OSW Commentary, July 21st, 2016. See

also "Russia, China, agree on integration of Eurasian Economic Union, Silk Road Projects", TASS, May 8th,

2015. "Xi Jinping Holds Talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the

People's Republic of China, May 8th, 2015.

Yuan Jing-dong. "Forging a New Security Order in Eurasia. China, the SCO, and the Impacts on Regional

Governance". Chinese Political Science Review, June 20th, 2022. See also Andrei Kortunov (2017). SCO:

The Cornerstone Rejected by the Builder of a New Eurasia? Moscow: Russian Institute of International

Affairs. Alexander Lukin (2021). "Sino-Russian Rapprochement and Greater Eurasia. From Geopolitical Pole

to International Society?" Journal of Eurasian Studies 12(1): 28-45.

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China, Russia, and the reinvention of Eurasia

Carlos Gaspar

In 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and, above all, the prolongation of the Russian-

Ukrainian War after the initial failure of the Russian offensive, confirmed the Sino-Russian

alliance – the most dangerous geopolitical scenario for the US, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's

prediction

– and transformed the balance between the two main revisionist powers.

As in 2014, the Russian offensive was preceded by a summit between Xi and Putin on

the eve of the Winter Olympics, this time in Beijing. But in 2022, no one could ignore the

decisive importance of the meeting between the two Presidents on the eve of the invasion

of Ukraine. Xi and Putin approved a Joint Declaration that marked Russia's convergence

with China on major issues of international politics and described the bilateral

relationship, for the first time, as a "friendship without limits"

. The summit meeting on

February 4th, 2022 marked the end of the old international order

and the invasion of

Ukraine confirmed the escalation in the power struggle between the major powers and

the irreversible split between the "wider West" and the Eastern coalition.

The Russian-Ukrainian War – the coup d'état that was supposed to decapitate the

Ukrainian state turned into a protracted war – revealed Russia's vulnerabilities, which

justifyied the perception of both Chinese and US elites about Russian decadence. The

alliance between the two continental powers was not questioned – Chinese neutrality is

a fraud from the outset and the Eurasian mission of Ambassador Li Hui confirmed the

fundamental alignment between Beijing and Moscow. But the revisionist coalition is now

led by China, which, for the first time in international history, became the leading

continental power in Eurasia

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