Are Moscow and Beijing able to develop a common view of the world order and the place of their own history in the world historical process? What factors determine the two powers’ view of what the new world order should be? Andrey Sushentsov, Dean of the School of International Relations at MGIMO University, tries to answer these questions.
Last year, 2024, marked the 75-year anniversary of Russian-Chinese relations. In that time, bilateral ties have gone through different periods, ultimately reaching the level of a comprehensive partnership,entailing strategic interaction. In an era of ‘asynchronous multipolarity’, as we pursue the development of sovereign and strategically autonomous policymaking, the question of the national genesis of knowledge regarding the structure of international relations is of fundamental importance.
Soviet Russia developed its own comprehensive approach to international relations after the end of the Second World War, in the context of the unconditional victory of the Soviet state and the Soviet people, for whom this war became the Great Patriotic War. It served as a bifurcation point for the system of international relations, yielding a world order clearly divided into two poles, where the Soviet Union became one of the two centres of power. A new generation of international relations specialists – diplomats, scholars, analysts and experts – faced the prospect of constructing a new structure of international relations. As a consequence, it became necessary to develop a conceptual framework and analytical apparatus for analysing international processes. In that era, a characteristic feature of Russian-Chinese relations was the common view of the two countries on how the world was organised, in what direction and under the influence of what processes and global trends it was developing. This common worldview of Moscow and Beijing, supported by the class analysis approach to the study and assessment of history shared by the elites and academic community of both countries, provided the USSR and the PRC with a common epistemology of the international, that is, a common approach to the analysis, assessment and forecasting of international relations.
During the Cold War, Soviet-Chinese relations underwent significant metamorphoses. The countries experienced a period of acute conflict and even confrontation - the border conflict on Damansky Island in 1969, which became quite bloody, was an illustrative event of this stage. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1980s, tensions in Russian-Chinese relations were replaced by progressive, constructive development. A landmark result of this development was the signing of the Russian-Chinese Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Formation of a New International Order on April 23, 1997. This document was revolutionary by the standards of its time. Despite the fact that the 1990s were a time when Western ideas and narratives dominated world politics and the science of international relations, the Russian and Chinese foreign policy leaders, the authors of this document, found the intellectual courage and foresight to formulate an alternative image of the system of international relations based on the sovereign equality of states, respect for sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, and a mutual consideration of interests. An important thesis of the declaration was the statement that the type of domestic political system in a country does not play a role as a parameter in foreign policy co-operation, i.e. the issues of domestic policy in a particular state remain its internal prerogative and are a secondary subject for foreign policy, if they appear on the agenda at all.
However, over time, the Russian and Chinese epistemologies of international relations have become somewhat different. These differences became particularly significant and pronounced in the post-bipolar era. In this period, many states, trying to find their place in the transforming world order, paradoxically turned not to national experience but to the Western epistemology of international relations. English emerged as the basic language of international relations theory, and the relevant disciplines in universities began to be taught using textbooks published in the United States and Great Britain. Having studied the curricula of a number of major universities in a group of leading countries from different regions of the world, my colleagues and I have discovered that even now, in a significant number of countries the practice of training diplomats and international relations specialists is imported. We are talking about importing books, courses, and sometimes even teachers – having received some form of education in the West, they broadcast a Western perspective when they return home.
