First, it is mostly about pursuing commerce rather than advancing strategic and military–political interests. Second, it is predominantly concentrated on Russia’s Northeast Asian neighbours — China, Japan and the two Koreas.
Russia’s turn to the East began in the late 2000s when Moscow, spurred by the 2008–09 financial crisis, fully realised the rising economic importance of Asia. At that time the Kremlin still entertained the hope of having the best of both worlds — maintaining beneficial partnerships with both the West and the East, and possibly even acting as a trans-continental connector between the Atlantic and Pacific wings of Eurasia.
Those hopes were destroyed by the Ukraine crisis and other developments that brought Russia’s relations with the West to their lowest point since the early 1980s. As a result, the Kremlin ordered an acceleration of the economic shift to China.
In 2018, Russia–China trade for the first time exceeded US$100 billion, and even before that Russia had displaced Saudi Arabia as China’s top supplier of crude oil. The Power of Siberia pipeline will soon start delivering natural gas to China, along with increasing food supplies.
Symbolically underlining Russia’s growing closeness to China are two nearly-completed bridges across the Amur River, one meant for rail traffic and the other for vehicles. For centuries the Amur has been the main boundary between Russia and China, but there was not a single permanent bridge across the border river. Admittedly, not everyone in Russia is happy about closer ties with China. Lingering Sinophobia was recently on full display when a local court terminated a Chinese-owned project to bottle water from Lake Baikal after it triggered public protests.
Japan and South Korea are also major partners for Russia, though their trade volumes — US$21 billion and US$25 billion in 2018 respectively — lag far behind Russia’s commerce with China. Along with China, they are expected to benefit from the expanding stream of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from the Russian Arctic by Russia’s Novatek company. Novatek plans to build a huge LNG trans-shipment terminal in the Kamchatka Peninsula and establish it as a price-setting hub for the Asian LNG market.
Russia’s turn to Northeast Asia is also evident in the financial domain. In 2018 Russia’s Central Bank drastically reduced the share of its assets held in the United States from 29.9 to 9.7 per cent. At the same time, the Central Bank increased its Chinese and Japanese holdings from 2.6 to 14.1 per cent and from 1.5 to 7.5 per cent respectively. The share of the Russian Central Bank’s US dollar-denominated reserves also decreased from 45.8 to 22.7 per cent, while its Chinese Renminbi holdings jumped from 2.8 to 14.2 per cent.
Moscow’s ties with Asian powers beyond Northeast Asia are less impressive. Although Russia and ASEAN have elevated their official relations to the level of ‘strategic partnership’, the overall relationship remains rather thin. Russia’s trade with ASEAN amounted to just US$20 billion in 2018. Russia’s trade with India is negligible, at a mere US$11 billion. This is not surprising. Southeast and South Asian countries are too remote from Russia, not so rich in capital and need its commodities much less than China, Japan and Korea. The arms trade is probably the only major sector where Russia has competitive advantages in South and Southeast Asia.
While Moscow is eager to seek trade and capital in Asia, it maintains a low-profile political posture in the region. Despite viewing itself as a global great power, Russia shuns major geopolitical ambitions and commitments in the Asia Pacific. Putin’s recent summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vladivostok underscored this point. The summit symbolically reaffirmed Russia’s role as a player in the Korea game, but it showed that Moscow’s stakes on the Peninsula are not as high as those of other players. Putin spent only a few hours with Kim and then departed for a three-day visit to Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum.
Moscow tacitly recognises East Asia as China’s sphere of influence, while the Kremlin itself is preoccupied with Europe, as well as the Middle East, where Putin has established himself as a kingmaker of sorts. He is happy to leave East Asia to his ‘intimate friend’ — Chinese President Xi Jinping. There are also objective limitations to Russia’s geopolitical aspirations in Asia. The Russian Far East contains only eight million residents. The region’s basic infrastructure is poor even by Russian standards. A deficiency of blue water naval capabilities limits Russia’s ability to project power in the predominantly maritime Pacific theatre — Russia’s Pacific Fleet has only six major surface warships capable of operating on high seas, all of them commissioned under the Soviet Union.
While its reliance on Asian — especially Chinese — markets is increasing, Russia’s security and diplomatic concerns, as well as its military–political leverage, are concentrated in the western part of Eurasia. The implications are still hard to predict. It is possible that Russia’s gradual economic decoupling from its traditional economic partners in Europe could give Moscow the freedom and rationale to pursue ever-more audacious foreign policies.
There is, of course, the possibility that Russia will become China’s neo-colonial periphery. It seems Moscow has already accepted this risk. After all, Russia has been Europe’s resource periphery for centuries while acting politically as a great power. Why not repeat the same pattern with China? But it remains to be seen whether Russia can avoid becoming China’s tributary state politically alongside increasing economic dependence.
Artyom Lukin is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Research at the School of Regional and International Studies, Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok.