The new Russian President Medvedev traveled to China on his first visit abroad. Beyond the new announced cooperation agreements, which confirm the forward momentum of the commercial relations between China and Russia, the two countries also signed in Beijing on the May 23 a joint statement on some important international issues. In a press release, Chinese President Hu Jintao highlighted the importance of "partnership and cooperative 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 Russian-Chinese "alliance," considering the convulsive character of the present period. These developments are important as the current period is marked by imperialist threats and by US militarization of international relations being pursued as a way of exorcizing the economic and systemic crisis and counteracting the decline of its influence in the world.
Against the insane attempts to promote a new hegemonic order, the Russian-Chinese joint statement reaffirms the United Nations central role within the international arena and the rigorous respect of the purposes and principles of its Charter, the respect for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the States, the rejection of aggression and interference in internal matters, equality, reciprocal advantages and peaceful coexistence. It implicitly refuses the US anti-missile shield global project (to which NATO, the EU and possibly Japan, are associated). On the settlement of space weapons the US, during the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva last February, refused the Russian and China's proposal on prohibiting the militarization of space. The Russian-Chinese agreement also condemns all forms of terrorism and the use of human rights as a means of interference.
It defends the means of dialogue in the case of Iran and discusses the prominent role of the Xangai Cooperation Organization of which China and Russia are members as guarantees of stability, peace, and Eurasian space security.
It is not a question of subscribing to the eleven points of the Sino-Russian declaration, but instead to examine the dynamics of the Russian-Chinese agreement within the world balance of forces the potential of contending with imperialism's most aggressive and secretive purposes.
Sharing an extensive territorial boarder, China and Russia increasingly represent a common target of the US and the main capitalist powers' military strategic siege. Their path and internal situation are distinct.
In Russia, the defeat of socialism did not wipe out the great structural weaknesses and the marks of the political ambivalence. The accomplishment of the capitalist restoration implied a centralization of power during Putin's "consulate" which drove away the spectrum of disintegration. And the insistence on economic liberalism allowed the coexistence with the resumption of the state's role in strategic sectors, which utterly displeases the "West."
During the last 30 years, China experienced a unique economic growth process. On registering decisive achievements, the development and
consolidation of the assumed objective of the "socialism with Chinese characteristics," is confronted today with complex challenges, problems and contradictions.
Within the readjustment of global forces witnessed by the joint statement of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs from Brazil, Russia, India and China, or the foundation of the Union of Latin-American Nations last May, and in view of the contradictions, the statement of the two giants is not a minor factor within the framework of the struggle of peoples and workers towards social emancipation from capitalist oppression.
--From Avante. Luis Carapinha is a member of the International Department of the Portuguese Communist Party.
