Article by Luis Carapinha, member of the International Department of the PCP
Medvedev, the new Russian president, travelled to China on his first visit abroad. During the visit and beyond the new announced cooperation agreements – which confirm the good progression rhythm of the commercial relations between China and Russia, - the two countries signed, in Beijing, on the 23rd May, a conjoint statement on the main international issues. In a final press release, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president and Secretary-General of the Communist Party of China, highlighted the importance of the "partnership and cooperation strategic relations", between Beijing and Moscow, which represent a " priority of the foreign policy", assumed by the two countries.
It is difficult to conceal the significance of that document and of the Sino – Chinese "alliance", considering the convulsive character of the present period. Marked by the offensive imperialist threats and the USA militarization of the international relations challenge, as a way of exorcizing the economic and systemic crisis and counteract the decline of its influence in the world.
Against the insane attempts to rise a new hegemonic order, the conjoint statement, reaffirms the United Nations central role, within the international arena and the rigorous respect towards the purposes and principles of its Chart – the respect for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the States, the rejection of the aggression and the interference in internal matters, equality, reciprocal advantages and pacific coexistence. It implicitly refuses the USA anti-missile shield global project (to which NATO, the EU and possibly Japan, are associated). And the settlement of space weapons – the USA, during the Conference on Disarmament, in Geneva, last February, refused the Russian and China’s proposal of prohibition of space militarization. It condemns all forms of terrorism and the use of Human Rights as a means of interference.
It defends the means of dialogue in the Iran’s file and the prominent role of the Xangai Cooperation Organization – of which China and Russia are nuclear members – as a guarantee of stability, peace and Eurasian space security.
It is not a question of subscribing or squeeze towards the eleven subjects of the Sino-Russian declaration. But, instead to calibrate and outstand the dynamics of the coincident action of both countries within the world’s correlation of forces and the potential of contention before the imperialism most aggressive and obscure purposes.
Sharing an extensive territorial boarder, China and Russia increasingly represent an unmistakable common target of the USA and the main capitalist powers’ military strategic siege. Their path and internal situation are distinct.
In Russia, the coming out of the socialism defeat abysm did not wipe out the great structural weaknesses and the marks of the political ambivalence. The accomplishment of the capitalist restoring implied a power a centralization of power, during Putin’s "consulate", and which drove away the spectrum of disintegration. And the insistence on economic liberalism allowed the coexistence with the reassuming of the State role in strategic sectors, which utterly displeases the "West".
During the last 30 years, China experienced an unique economic growth process, at a world wide scale. On registering decisive achievements, the development and consolidation of the assumed objective of the "socialism with Chinese characteristics", it is confronted, today, with complex challenges, problems and contradictions.
Inserted within the resettlement of global forces – vide the joint statement of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs from Brazil, Russia, India and China, on the 16th, in Russia, or the foundation of the Union of Latin-American Nations, on the 23rd, and not exempt of contradictions, the articulation of the two giants is not a despicable factor, before the framework of the struggle of peoples and workers – where the irreplaceable strength of the struggle against the capitalist oppression, resides, towards social emancipation.
