China and Russia talk about being strategic partners, but neither actually is central to the other's concerns. China's indispensable partner is the United States; Russia's is Europe or, more specifically, Germany. In 2007, Chinese-Russian trade reached $48 billion, up from $5.7 billion in 1999, making China Russia's second-largest trading partner after the European Union. But current Russian-EU trade exceeds $250 billion -- the lion's share of it being between Russia and Germany -- and Chinese-U.S. trade exceeds $400 billion. China and Russia, Lo demonstrates, "pay far more attention to the West than they do to each other." Their relationship is opportunistic. As Lo puts it, the two giants "share neither a long-term vision of the world nor a common understanding of their respective places in it."
In addition -- and this is the most important aspect of Lo's argument -- whatever opportunity does exist in the relationship, China is in a better position to exploit it. China extracts considerable practical benefits in oil and weapons from Russia. In return, Beijing flatters Moscow with rhetoric about their "strategic partnership" and coddles it by promoting the illusion of a multipolar world. In many ways, the Chinese-Russian relationship today resembles that which first emerged in the seventeenth century: a rivalry for influence in Central Asia alongside attempts to expand bilateral commercial ties, with China in the catbird seat. Lo politely calls this incongruity an "asymmetry."
According to Lo, the terms of Chinese-Russian trade "are becoming more unbalanced every year" -- so much so that he compares the role of Russia for China to that of Angola, China's largest trading partner in Africa. Russia will remain important as long as the weapons and fossil fuels keep flowing (and no economically viable alternatives to hydrocarbons emerge). Lo does not say so explicitly, but in an imagined multipolar world, Russia looks like a Chinese subsidiary. China treats Russia with supreme tact, vehemently denying its own superiority -- a studious humility that only helps it maintain the upper hand.
