Transcript
Read the full transcript of the event here.
Summary
Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia appeared to be growing ever closer. Russian President Vladimir Putin being one of a handful of known leaders to attend the Winter Olympics, where he signed a landmark strategic partnership with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping.
Will that 'no limits' partnership survive Russia's newfound pariah status? In this live event, co-chair of the China Research Group Alicia Kearns MP was joined by Professor Sergey Radchenko, Dr Maria Repnikova and Bonny Lin. These three leading Sino-Russian experts set out the historical and geopolitical context of the China-Russia relationship and answered questions including:
How the invasion of Ukraine has been portrayed in Chinese and Russian media
How reliant the strategic partnership is on the personal relationship between Putin and Xi
Whether Russia can accept being the junior partner in the relationship
How the West's response to the invasion will shape China's thinking on Taiwan
Speakers
Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. His books include: Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia.
Bonny Lin is a senior fellow for Asian security and director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, she was the acting associate director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE and a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where she analysed different aspects of US competition with China. She recently co-authored a piece for Foreign Affairs magazine titled: China’s Ukraine Crisis.
Maria Repnikova is an Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. Her research examines China’s critical journalism, political persuasion, and soft power; China-Africa cultural exchanges; and China-Russia comparisons. She recently published a book titled Chinese Soft Power, which explores the Chinese theorisation of the idea of soft power, as well as its practical implementation across global contexts.