The Real Rivalry in the Far East
Are China and Russia truly allies or strategic opponents?
“Potentially, the most dangerous scenario, would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 55.There is an old saying in traditional China: the people always suffer no matter the political and social circumstances 興百姓苦，亡百姓苦.
That is because the quality of the leadership often shapes the general direction of a dynasty. Ordinary people rarely had any influence on government decisions.
When a dynasty is on the rise, the rulers, for whatever reasons, can mobilize the country for public projects, such as building dams, bridges, and walls, and often drag the country into wars.
When a dynasty is in decline, the fate of the vulnerable and average person is typically miserable. To a large extent, the short span of a person’s life was not really within their control, much like an insignificant pawn on a chessboard played by the rulers and those who pull the strings.
The people as water: political power and its fragility
To a large extent, historical experiences are often built into the shared memories of a nation, exerting their impact with the force of collective unconsciousness. At the same time, for some of the most capable rulers of the ancient dynasties, such as Emperor Taizong 唐太宗 of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), who managed one of the most successful dynasties, they were well aware of the vulnerable foundation of political power.
Emperor Taizong ruled by following the ancient maxim: “water carries a boat, it can also capsize it” 水能載舟，亦能覆舟, while sharing the burden of governing with his most capable ministers. The essential idea is that the people are the water, the foundation of a dynasty, while the emperor or political leaders are represented by the boat. In today’s words, the government should fear the people, not vice versa.
Since the Duke of Zhou 周公, from the Zhou dynasty (1046 -256 BC), dynastic rulers knew that there is no such thing as the so-called Mandate of Heaven exclusively reserved for a political leader and a dynasty1, meaning their rise to power was not divinely promised or preordained. Political leaders must be both morally sound and capable enough to garner support from the people, consistently upholding the rule of virtue.2 In other words, the erosion or loss of virtue would indicate the inevitable fall of the regime.
Therefore, one recurring scene in traditional China was dynastic breakdowns and the rise of new dynasties in a constant cycle. Like the natural cycles of seasonal changes, no dynasty can rule permanently.
Yet, even with all the alternations between social chaos and the restoration of order, there was a crucial common knowledge that has been distilled as part of intellectual and popular culture: that the realm is not the private property of the emperor or the royal family.
All under Heaven is not one man's domain. All under Heaven means just that, all under Heaven. 天下者，非一人之天下，乃天下之天下也。
Ralph D. Sawyer and Mei-Chun Sawyer, trans. and comm., The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 41.For instance, the Donglin Faction 東林黨人, a group of scholar-officials and teachers at the Donglin Academy in Wuxi, Jiangsu, during the late Ming dynasty (1604-1644), inherited this cultural tradition through public lectures, rigorous criticism of government corruption, and political battles with the influential interest group led by the eunuch Wei Zhongxian.
This spirit, traditional yet resonating with the civic activism of the modern age, can be summarized as follows: when the country rises or falls, it is every person’s responsibility to act.
But, with the encroachment of collectivistic thinking and totalitarian domination, this part of cultural tradition has been very much tamed by political power, forgotten by most people in communist China.
Every time I see the phrase “no limits”partnership touted by Russian and Chinese media, cited by everybody else, I feel a weird sense of shiver running down my spine, as if history itself smirks at me, silent and sly.
It makes sense from Russia’s perspective. Due to Western sanctions, the Kremlin had no one to blame but its own aggression and barbaric wars on Ukraine. That is to say, it should swallow the fact of being isolated. Given this circumstance, the formation of a “no limits” relationship with Beijing brings both practical and symbolic benefits.
From Beijing’s perspective, due to the historical link between the Communist Party of China and Russia, and a somewhat shared motivation against the US hegemony, it’s a policy necessity, even if it’s a gamble.
Nevertheless, from China’s standpoint, the act of teaming up with Russia is fundamentally to bargain with a tiger for its skin.
Shadows of the past: China’s uneasy history with Russia
Historically, China and Russia were not friends. As a neighbor in the north, the Czarist Russia was the most formidable threat to the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
In 1858, the Czarist Russia and the Qing government signed the Treaty of Aigun, through which China lost over one million square kilometers of land.
History proved that Russia’s thirst for others’ territories is nothing new. With the collapse of the Czarist Russian Empire, the Soviet Union kept the DNA of invasion alive.
In 1929, in the Chinese Eastern Railway dispute, the Soviet Red Army invaded Manchuria to seize control of the railway, killing a few thousand Chinese soldiers.
Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, in the midst of the Sino-Japanese war, the Communist International  consistently funded the Communist Party of China (a local branch of the Comintern) to spread communist influence in the country.3 Following the Soviet order and support, it founded the so-called Chinese Soviet Republic within the territory of the Republic of China (the official name of today’s Taiwan). Stalin only changed his policy of dividing China when the Japanese invasion compelled him to reassess his strategic calculations.
Approaching the very end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and occupied the Japanese-held Manchuria. This policy contributed to two consequences:
It helped the CCP and its Red Army take over Manchuria and the Northeastern part of China, which proved essential to their ultimate victory in the following civil war with the National Government from 1945 to 1949.
The Soviet occupation of North Korea laid the groundwork, indeed, planted the seeds of danger, for the subsequent invasion of South Korea by the concerted efforts of North Korea, Communist China, and the Soviet Union.
Either through covert and subversive operations or supporting rebellious groups as proxies, Moscow’s mission was to spread communist revolution while consolidating its own position as the center of the global communist revolution. In its eyes, either Communist China or the satellite states in Eastern Europe, which it managed to control during the Cold War, were the necessary paths leading toward Russia’s security and glory.
Fortunately, in the end, much of the world has been spared such a totalitarian nightmare.
Therefore, it’s not hard to find this thread from Russia’s relations with China over the past one and a half centuries: Moscow’s adaptability to switch its identities, from the czarist invader to “comrade,” and then strategic partner.
Today, when we talk about the two sides as strategic allies or partners, we may encounter a simple fact-check that hurts.
Yet still, it does not necessarily mean that Beijing and Moscow will stop working together. But what exactly are they working toward?
Some may interpret this semi-alliance as fueled by one common goal: to weaken the US and the liberal global order. Some others may argue that both sides want to craft a new regional order based on their shared vision and interests.
However, the trends of global politics and alliance-making are fundamentally shifting. Who can guarantee that Western sanctions imposed on Russia right now will not be lifted in the near future? After all, Europe still relies on Russia for natural resources, energy, and gas. How strong and determined is the human heart in the face of alluring benefits and tangible rewards?
In essence, Russia may be a friend to the Chinese Communist Party, but it is not a friend to China.
Behind the ‘No limits’ rhetoric
In the Chinese mind, in a traditional sense, instead of being contaminated by the dialectic logic of Marxism and Leninism, good and evil, like black and white, are complementary forces in constant fluctuations. How one approaches things reflects the essence of one’s spiritual make-up.
In this sense, designing and implementing policies based on the relative opposites is akin to clinging to one side of the Yin and Yang, without considering the possibility that things can transition, reverse, and adjust.
Yet, propaganda, in a way, like all successful campaigns of conversion, thrives on the premise that there is some amount of rigidity, mental laziness, and historical amnesia residing in a single person or society at large, and the project of social engineering and programming can be effective. It achieves its greatest effects once people have delegated their spiritual autonomy and thinking capabilities to an entity that makes decisions and judgments on their behalf, that listens to the regrets of their conscience.
Therefore, it’s not difficult to find resonance between some media voices that hail Russia and China as “friends forever,” while considering the West as a kind of perpetual foe. Such is the kind of rigid thinking that fails to recognize the gray zone. For it betrays a black-and-white, easy act of categorizing, that only ends up serving the propagandistic theater instead of giving real strategic insights.
It would be simply naive and incorrigibly wrong for ordinary Chinese even to perceive Russia as a “good brother” and the US as “evil imperialist” and other friendly countries as foreigners with bad intentions. Such a way of thinking not only reveals ignorance of recent history but also indicates a complete misunderstanding of the dynamic equilibrium that underlies all things.
In geopolitics, friend and foe are mere poles of the same circuit—an endless balance of interests. To laud one as a faithful partner and dismiss the rest as a hostile bloc betrays a less sophisticated grasp of shifting alliances.
Nevertheless, the real players of great-power realpolitik are definitely not those who should be easily mocked and dismissed. Beijing and Moscow are well aware of their political levers, and they are likely to use them effectively.
Russia’s energy resources are the burning sources that fuel the CCP’s geopolitical ambitions, while China’s status as a market and economic powerhouse provides lifeblood to Russia. This relationship, whether we refer to it as an alliance or a strategic partnership, is still shaped by mutual interests and pragmatic goals for now.
Yet, we can never be certain, from a long-term and historical point of view, to say that the China-Russia alliance is here to stay. In traditional Chinese diplomatic statecraft, there is this concept called “forming alliances with distant countries while being vigilant against nearby ones, 遠交近攻.”4
It precisely captures China’s geopolitical circumstances as encircled by both friendly and malevolent neighbors. The crux of applying it, tricky in practical situations, is to differentiate between the friendly neighbor and the hostile one, which requires political wisdom and sophisticated diplomatic skills, and above all, whether or not a country’s policy pursuits truly reflect the spirit of the nation, its development in the long run, and its positioning in changing circumstances.
In contrast, Russia’s policy is driven by a centuries-old sense of vulnerability, rooted in its history. As George Kennan put it,
“At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity… for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries.”5
Political decisions based on this mentality and historic habit would give rise to the search for some kind of buffer zones and raw military strength as perhaps the only assurance against any perceived external threats.
In the grand theater of geopolitics, the Russians toast with vodka, the Chinese raise cups of tea, yet neither sips from sincerity, only from strategic performance, carefully calculated. How long will this show endure? History reminds us that partnerships built solely on shared grievances, strategic convenience, and historical amnesia can turn out to be deadly fragile.
The Mandate of Heaven is closely related to the idea of “the unity of Heaven and man 天人合一,” a central thesis in traditional Chinese philosophy. Before the philosophical breakthrough during the Axial Period, the Mandate of Heaven took the form of the earthly ruler being the head of shamans to communicate with Heaven. In other words, the early rulers legitimized their rule by maintaining the royal monopoly of access to Heaven.
The Axial Period is a term coined by Karl Jaspers, referring to the time of spiritual breakthrough that occurred during the first millennium among high cultures, such as Greece, Israel, Persia, India, and China. The saying that wu- shamans 巫-薩滿 as the functionaries communicating with Heaven for the ruler is a unique feature in China before the Axial breakthrough.
However, an individualistic turn occurred after the Axial breakthrough, through which Confucius, Mo Tzu of Mohism, and early Taoists like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu reinterpreted the ritual tradition of the Zhou dynasty, an act of spiritual revolt, making the case that the spiritually awakened and liberated individuals are subject to the Decree of Heaven as long as they live up to it. And the key, or the door, is through cultivation of the heart 心. The result of this “inward transcendence” (Professor Yu Yingshih’s term) common among the three major schools was that during Confucius’ time, the Mandate of Heaven was no longer confined to an emperor. In a nutshell, spiritual awakening and cultivation are essentially private matters, and there is no need for religious or spiritual intermediaries, which also reveals the character of China’s Axial breakthrough — a form of moral, philosophical, and religious consciousness. This is a defining feature of Chinese spirituality. The idea of “inward transcendence” has since deeply influenced the three traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Chan Buddhism.
For a thorough understanding of the idea of Mandate of Heaven, see Yü Ying‐shih, “Between the Heavenly and the Human,” in Chinese History and Culture, Volume 1: Sixth Century B.C.E. to Seventeenth Century, ed. Josephine Chiu‐Duke and Michael S. Duke (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 1–19.
Fu Sinian 傅斯年, Xingming guxun bianzheng 性命古訓辨證 (Shanghai: Shanghai Sanlian Press, 2018), 114-124.
Iwatani Nobu, “How the War with Japan Saved the Chinese Communist Party,” Nippon.com, July 27, 2021, accessed June 1, 2025, https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00722/.
Liu Xiang, Zhanguo ce jianzheng 戰國策箋證, annotated by Fan Xiangyong (Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Press, 2006), 313.
George Kennan, “The Long Telegram,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, accessed June 1, 2025, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm.