Limited Defensive Strategic Partnership: Sino–Russian rapprochement and the driving forces

Abstract

The deepening rapprochement between China and Russia, those two formidable continental powers, constitutes one of the most noteworthy phenomena in post-Cold War world affairs. Through detailed investigation of this vital bilateral relationship over a variety of issue areas, we characterize the current Sino–Russian relations as a limited defensive strategic partnership, with strategicness constituting the core of the Sino–Russian relationship. More than that, we further argue that the Sino–Russian rapprochement is externally-driven rather than internally-driven. More specifically, realism's balance of power theory, or its variety balance of threat theory, provides a relatively convincing explanation regarding the increasingly strengthened Sino–Russian strategic partnership. In a roughly chronological way, this paper will demonstrate how America's increasing unilateralism in its foreign policy approaches was correlated with, and thus contributed to, the deepening rapprochement between China and Russia.