Early morning at 4 AM on May 16th last week Russian President Putin's special plane arrived at Beijing Airport for a two-day state visit to China 4 AM is indeed an unusual time for a foreign head of state to visit Because although Russia's comprehensive national strength has declined sharply in recent years its GDP is not as good as Guangdong in China, but it is still a major country A permanent member of the UN Security Council, it's unlikely for a foreign head of state to take a red-eye flight For us ordinary people, we sometimes buy red-eye flights to save money when traveling abroad But it's not like Putin is so poor, right? So why did he visit China at 4 AM? It's worth noting that Putin arrived in Beijing at 4 AM and has become the earliest foreign head of state to arrive in China for a visit Just open a map and check the time difference between Russia and China, and you'll understand Moscow time is 5 hours behind Beijing time So 4 AM Beijing time is exactly 11 PM in Moscow So now you understand Putin arrived in Beijing according to Moscow time He arrived in Beijing at 11 PM Moscow time and the Chinese welcoming convoy took him directly to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse After arriving at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Putin could rest for a few hours and when he woke up, it would be morning in Beijing Then Xi Jinping held a grand welcoming ceremony for him at Tiananmen Square 21-gun salute and reviewing the honor guard This schedule arrangement is most reasonable for Putin and the most efficient It's true that Xi Jinping and Putin have had a close relationship over the years You can see from the statistics that including video meetings, they have met more than 40 times This is very rare among heads of state Especially among major powers, it is even rarer Meeting between the Chinese and American presidents is very difficult But now Xi Jinping and Putin meet and get together frequently Another aspect is that Putin was inaugurated as the Russian Federation's president for the fifth time on May 7, and he also amended the constitution And after he became president, the first country he visited was China And China's President Xi Jinping, after being re-elected for the third time also broke the norm and amended the constitution The first country he visited was also Russia, and the first person he met was Putin So you see, these two broke their countries' constitutional systems and the first country they visited after re-election was each other's and the first foreign leader they met was each other, showing how close their relationship is Today we will talk about the story of Putin's visit to China To talk about Putin's visit to China, we may have to mention an event from a few years ago This time, as I mentioned, from March 15 to March 17 this year the presidential election was held in Russia In this presidential election, Putin ran again for the fifth time as President of Russia And he won with a high vote of 87%, becoming the President of the Russian Federation You see, Putin has already been the president of Russia for 20 years Adding the 4 years of Medvedev as a shadow president he has actually been in power for 24 years Now he is elected again as president of Russia and it is said that after this term, he can be re-elected once more Theoretically, he can work until 2036 Adding the previous 24 years and another 12 years he could actually be in power for 36 years in Russia This exceeds the record of Peter the Great and Stalin So Putin has become almost an unprecedented leader in Russian politics with no predecessors or successors in terms of his length of service So how did he achieve this? As we all know, the Russian president is constitutionally limited to only two consecutive terms Putin managed to find a way to stay in power for so long Today we will talk about the story of Putin's constitutional amendment from a few years ago In 2018, Putin was elected president But according to the Russian constitution, this was his fourth term as president According to the constitution, he was not eligible to run for president again So in 2018, there was widespread discussion in Russian politics about who should succeed Putin after his presidency But clearly, Putin had not had enough of being president Putin is quite young, about the same age as Xi Jinping These two often think about continuing as president of Russia But how could he continue as president of Russia? Russia has a constitution that must be respected, right? At this point, Putin started suggesting that the Russian constitution should be amended When amending the constitution it would not sound good to say directly that the term limit should be changed So Putin played a trick He proposed a constitutional amendment with three main aspects First, it stipulated that Russian political leaders and major government officials should not have foreign residency or citizenship And those running for president must have lived in Russia for 25 consecutive years Previously, the requirement was only ten years This gave the impression of safeguarding Russian national interests He also emphasized that the Russian constitution is above international law Even if Russia signs an international treaty if it conflicts with the Russian constitution the Russian constitution takes precedence. This part is about the political field It gives the impression of protecting Russian national interests. This is one part Secondly, he cleverly made a reform The Russian president was previously limited to two consecutive terms The change was to allow only two terms in total No matter if they are consecutive or not, after serving two terms you can no longer serve as the president of the Russian Federation This also sounds good The third part is about livelihood issues, because Russia's economy has been struggling in recent years Russian citizens, according to public opinion surveys rank the number one issue as the pension problem, with pensions not increasing So there is a lot of dissatisfaction among retirees Therefore, during this constitutional amendment Putin proposed a livelihood issue called the indexation of social welfare and pensions. What does this mean? It means that both social welfare and pensions are adjusted annually according to the inflation index This was very welcomed by the public, right? So you see He proposed these three parts of the constitutional amendment This constitutional amendment was widely discussed in Russian society and received broad support The process of amending the Russian constitution is quite complex First, it must go through three readings in the Russian Duma These three readings require three votes, and after voting a referendum must be held in the Russian Federation The Federation has more than 80 autonomous entities, all of which must hold referendums and more than half of the population must agree for it to pass So the threshold is quite high But you can see that during this constitutional amendment process it seemed unrelated to his consecutive terms Then on March 13, 2020 during the second reading of this constitutional amendment process a deputy chairman of the Russian Duma This deputy chairman is equivalent to the vice chairman of China's National People's Congress This person is quite famous in Russia She is the first female astronaut of the Soviet Union, Valentina Tereshkova She said she had some opinions on this constitutional reform process What was her opinion? She said the first proposal should be to remove the restriction on the consecutive terms of the Russian president Saying it is unreasonable, and that the country is in a critical period of survival, right? It's rare to have a strong president like Putin If he is not allowed to serve and this constitutional reform passes, Putin will obviously have no chance. It's unreasonable, right? So she made this proposal, and after proposing it It was said that since this involved President Putin President Putin must come to the scene to speak. It is said that at 3:30 PM that day Putin rushed to the Russian Duma and delivered a speech Putin's speech seemed grandiose. What did he say? He said that indeed the country's president should have a term limit But no term limit is also possible, for example, look at our neighbors Haha, what neighbors? He was obviously referring to China, right? Because China had just completed a constitutional amendment removing the consecutive term limit You see, Putin and Xi Jinping often exchange information and they amended their constitutions around the same time Then he said, look at American history In American history, there was no term limit for the president It wasn't until 1947 That was only recently, and the US has been a country for over 200 years So he said that during a country's critical period when the country is in a crucial phase, it needs a strong president I think not being restricted by the term limit is also acceptable But my idea is that 50 or 30 years later Russia needs a normal power transition, and the term limit should not be removed Or the consecutive term limit should still be maintained Putin said this and then left What did this mean? Tereshkova immediately made another proposal What was her proposal? She said, in the presidential election after this constitutional amendment no one should be restricted from running, because this is a new constitution The old constitution is no longer valid So no matter how many times a person has served as president under the old constitution, it doesn't count That's the old constitution, and under the new constitution, anyone can run In other words, Putin's previous terms are reset to zero With this reset, Putin can run for the new Russian presidency The cleverness here is that it maintains the Russian constitution The president is still limited to two terms, this remains unchanged Secondly, Putin has freed himself from this constitutional constraint He is no longer restricted by the term limit. Putin is already 71 years old If he serves two more terms, he will be 83. So, if you calculate this At 83, Putin may not be able to continue, and he may not want to So this constitutional amendment tailored by Tereshkova for him crafted a constitutional reform plan that suits him. This reform plan maintains the two-term limit for the president in the Russian Federation's constitution while freeing Putin from this restriction At the on-site vote, the result was Only the Communist Party of Russia cast 44 votes against, while the other 380 votes were in favor The Communist Party of Russia, as we all know led by Zyuganov, is now a small party With over 400 seats, having just over 40 votes means they have only 10% So their non-recognition is meaningless, and the proposal passed Later, this constitutional reform plan passed the third reading As I mentioned, this process included three aspects. Putin was very clever These three parts of the constitutional amendment included nationalist content under the banner of protecting Russia's national interests The second part included livelihood issues in the amendment which was welcomed by the public The third part included the term limit When these three parts were voted on together, the public couldn't distinguish them They might only see the pension increase and indexation and the protection of Russia's national interests Thus, the new Russian constitution was passed So you can see, after this constitution passed Putin gained the right to run for president again in 2024 So on March 15th this year, Putin ran for president for the fifth time In this presidential election, there were four other competitors But the four had no real competition against Putin In the end, Putin won 87% of the votes The other candidates each received about 3% of the votes on average So Putin was far ahead, and some people said that besides Putin, the other candidates had a very fierce competition among themselves. By fierce competition it meant their vote rates were all around 3% So it was basically a fake election Because Putin secured the position of national president thereby beginning his fifth term After this fifth term, there will certainly be a sixth So there is no suspense that Putin will be in office until 2036 Everyone knows that Putin has been president of Russia since 1999 He has been president for 24 years now During this time, he has resumed visiting China and meeting Xi Jinping Honestly, seeing the close relationship between Putin and Xi Jinping now and the close relationship between China and Russia, I often have mixed feelings You can look at the past 70-80 years of Sino-Soviet relations After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Sino-Soviet relations were initially one-sidedly in favor of the Soviet Union Then Sino-Soviet relations soured After Deng Xiaoping came to power, Sino-Soviet relations normalized But it was only normalization At that time, China's diplomacy was mainly good with the United States After 1989, China's relations with Western countries began to tense Sino-Soviet relations gradually began to get closer again, and later the Soviet Union collapsed Russia inherited the international legal status of the Soviet Union Then, Russia's international status began to decline sharply Now, Sino-Russian relations are warming up again I want to talk about a topic When analyzing Russia's visit to China, I want to talk about understanding why Sino-Russian relations are so close now You might need to understand the Ukraine war In fact, the biggest beneficiary of the war between Russia and Ukraine which has been going on for two years, in my view, is China Why do I say this? You can look at the relationship between Russia and China before the war Russia was still trying to balance its relationships, supporting China but also trying to maintain good relations with European countries So their support for China was reserved The relationship between China and Russia was not so close But now, after two years of war as of 2024, you can see that the relationship between Russia and China has become one where China now has the upper hand and Russia is basically unilaterally leaning towards China This really is a matter of timing and circumstances So I often say that predicting international affairs 50 years in advance is very difficult Very, very difficult The relationship between China and Russia, and China and the Soviet Union has undergone several rounds of drastic changes over the past 70-80 years So let's analyze what Putin wants from this visit to China What China wants to get from Russia and what China and Russia aim to jointly counteract First, let's talk about Russia. Since the Russia-Ukraine war Russia's economy has been broadly sanctioned by Western countries, so it has no choice It can't sell its oil or natural gas Many countries are cutting off their economic ties with it So Russia, economically, has to lean towards China unilaterally You can look at the trade between China and Russia In the past five years, trade between China and Russia has been rapidly increasing It has more than doubled in the past five years Now the total trade volume between Russia and China reached $240 billion in 2023 And this $240 billion is very important to Russia 30% of Russia's exports go to China, and 40% of its imports come from China You can imagine, Russia's dependence on foreign trade with China has exceeded the warning line, to be honest If China were to cut off trade, Russia would be finished immediately Because this 30% and 40% are Russia's lifelines So Russia's primary need from China is to expand trade relations You can see that Putin brought six deputy prime ministers this time He didn't bring the prime minister, but he brought the commerce minister and others Then he stayed in Beijing for a day and flew to Harbin What did he do in Harbin? There was a China-Russia exhibition in Harbin Honestly, they want to use Heilongjiang as a base to greatly develop trade between China and Russia Another need is, as everyone knows, the Russia-Ukraine war Russia still needs more support from China But China has promised the West that it will not sell lethal weapons to Russia Meaning that China's support for Russia is limited to dual-use items Not long ago, when the US Secretary of State visited China it was pointed out that China is exporting many dual-use items to Russia Such as chips and precision processing instruments The US also suspects China of exporting aircraft parts to Russia But there's no evidence However, the export of chips and precision processing instruments is confirmed, and China acknowledges it But China doesn't intend to compromise with the US on this China believes that its relationship with Russia includes selling such items, and the US can't do anything about it The US cannot easily impose direct sanctions on China for this This is China's plan Russia has a significant demand for China China's trade with Russia is known to be $5.94 trillion in 2023 This $5.94 trillion in trade, compared to Russia's $240 billion accounts for only about 4% of China's total foreign trade This means that 35% of Russia's foreign trade is with China while only 4% of China's trade is with Russia So the proportion of Russia's trade in China's overall foreign trade is very, very low Therefore, China does not have much economic dependence on Russia At most, I will buy a little more of your natural gas and oil But China may not even want that. It is said that Russia wanted to discuss with China a second gas pipeline through Mongolia to China, but China did not agree Why? Because this would pass through a third country which increases many uncertainties Additionally, China may not want to rely too much on Russia for energy You, Russia, can depend on me, but I can't depend on you I would rather support Iran, right? After supporting Iran, I can buy oil from Iran I don't want to buy too much oil from Russia This is China's plan You can see that this time, China and Russia issued a joint statement This joint statement is worth analyzing The biggest point of analysis is that China may reappear in the Far East That is, the Outer Xing'an Ridge, or Outer Northeast China Why do I say this? Because the joint statement mentions several points about Outer Northeast China The first point is the issue of the Tumen River estuary As everyone knows, in 1860, China and Russia signed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Beijing This treaty ceded more than 600,000 square kilometers of land The Tumen River area became a border between North Korea and Russia Before that, it was a border between China and North Korea But later, due to this humiliating treaty the land was ceded to Russia After the land was ceded, the last 15 kilometers of the Tumen River became the border between North Korea and Russia Since then, China lost its access to the Sea of Japan. But later, through persistent efforts China once secured the right to access the sea via the Tumen River Meaning that Chinese ships could sail through the Tumen River to the Sea of Japan But in 1936, Japan blocked the Tumen River And that was the end of it After 1949, the Soviet Union and North Korea built a bridge over the Tumen River This bridge was so low that Chinese ships could not pass through Later, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, and Sino-North Korean relations also worsened So although China theoretically had the right to access the sea via the Tumen River, it was not implemented After Sino-Soviet relations improved, China reconfirmed the issue of access to the Tumen River estuary with the Soviet Union and later Russia Russia seemed to acknowledge it on the surface, but North Korea has become a major obstacle So this time, the joint statement between China and Russia mentioned that China and Russia would jointly negotiate with North Korea. What does this mean? It means it's not a trilateral negotiation but a joint China-Russia negotiation with North Korea If China and Russia jointly negotiate with North Korea, North Korea might yield Because North Korea's most important relationships are with China and Russia It also balances between China and Russia So if China and Russia jointly negotiate with North Korea the issue of access to the Tumen River estuary might be resolved, returning to China's control But honestly, the issue of access to the Tumen River estuary is very complex Why? First, the Tumen River is very shallow, with an average depth of less than 1 meter So it is possible for fishing boats to pass through But it is very difficult, if not impossible, for large cargo ships to pass through It would require extensive dredging And this complicates the issue. Then there's the problem with the bridge In short, I believe China insists on the issue of access to the Tumen River estuary to restore treaty rights These rights may not have significant economic value But I want to restore treaty rights This treaty right allows China to reestablish a presence in Outer Northeast China This is the first point The second point is the joint development of Heixiazi Island Heixiazi Island is known as the last piece of land negotiated between China and the Soviet Union Heixiazi Island originally belonged to China Later, during the Sino-Soviet conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway, it was occupied by the Soviet Union It was occupied for decades During the Sino-Soviet negotiations, both sides made concessions China recovered half of it. Initially, China planned to turn it into a nature reserve But now, China has changed its mind and wants to develop Heixiazi Island China wants to jointly develop Heixiazi Island with Russia This could become a future foreign trade base This is the second point The third point is that the Sino-Russian Treaty of Beijing mentioned exploring the establishment of a Sino-Russian agricultural demonstration zone in the Russian Far East Actually, the Sino-Russian agricultural demonstration zone has been ongoing in the Russian Far East for years Many people from Heilongjiang Province have set up farms in the Russian Far East raising pigs, growing soybeans, and chickens The Russian Far East has vast black soil and a sparse population Siberia and the Far East together have only six to seven million people The Chinese side, especially in Heilongjiang and Jilin, has a dense population and limited arable land So there is a mutual need between China and Russia. However, Russia has always been wary of China fearing that if there is a large influx of Chinese immigrants into the Russian Far East, Siberia might be lost in the future But China continues to negotiate with Russia aiming to establish a Sino-Russian agricultural demonstration zone in the Far East I believe this is China's plan to reestablish a presence in Outer Northeast China In this joint statement between China and Russia I think China achieved some results Politically, the statement mentioned that Taiwan is part of the territory of the People's Republic of China and supports China's national unity As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia made this statement China has gained substantial political support while also making its first steps towards reestablishing a presence in the Far East taking advantage of Russia's current crisis China has obtained significant benefits, while Russia has no choice because, amid the internal and external pressures of the Russia-Ukraine war it has to lean unilaterally towards China Of course, both sides have a common need: to jointly counter the United States Everyone knows the US harbors deep resentment towards Russia It sells weapons directly to Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war almost to the point of direct NATO engagement with Russia, which they dare not do But short of that, they've used every conceivable method to deal with Russia They don't have any real fondness for China either, right? The US has been urging China to sanction Russia, but China refuses to cooperate China views the US as its biggest adversary, not Russia So as China lacks the capacity to confront the US alone it needs to pull Russia closer, and Russia needs to pull China closer too So these two countries including their leaders who have both broken constitutional norms are banding together to confront the US in the future This is likely to be a main theme in international relations over the next 10-15 years But what does this mean for the future? I believe that Russia's economic dependence on China will further increase Russia will become a dumping ground for Chinese goods You can see that electric vehicle exports to Russia have already increased significantly Russia's own automobile industry is probably doomed And the relationship between China and Russia is slowly becoming a repeat of the old Sino-Soviet relationship As China's economic development continues to intensify I personally believe that Russia's international influence will continue to strengthen In the Sino-American rivalry, Russia will become an important piece for China Well, that's all for today Thank you all
