It’s been well over a year since the then-United States Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis accused Russia and China of being “revisionist powers” each working its way toward making a power grab on the world stage and announced that the U.S. would be shifting its international relations focus away from fighting terrorism and instead prioritize what Mattis referred to as a "great power competition.
." Now, 17 months
later, it looks like Mattis’ nightmares are coming true as Russia and China
have increasingly worked together in defiance of the Trump administration in a
kind of diplomatic ‘marriage of convenience’.
Just this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping made his eighth
official visit to Russia in a trip highly publicized in both Russian and
Chinese media. “This year marks the 70th anniversary of our diplomatic ties and
China’s ties with Russia are deepening at a time of profound change in the
global geopolitical landscape,” remarked former Chinese ambassador to Britain
Ma Zhengang, as quoted by the South
China Morning Post.
One of the most current examples of this newly strengthened
relationship between Beijing and Moscow is a new joint venture between
state-owned shipping corporations in Russia and China to create a “Polar Silk
Road” in the Arctic Sea. a year ago, officials in Beijing announced that China
would be pursuing investment across the Arctic Route to encourage commercial
shipping through the northern passage as a part of the country’s Belt and Road
Initiative. Belt and Road is a massive undertaking involving investments
programs worth trillions of dollars, which will go toward connecting Asia and
Europe by sea, rail, and road to promote more trade between the continents.
This week, reporting by the Wall
Street Journal this week tells us that “China is breaking into Arctic
transport through a joint venture between the country’s biggest ocean carrier,
Cosco Shipping Holdings Co., and its Russian counterpart PAO Sovcomflot to move
natural gas from Siberia to Western and Asian markets.” Both China and Russia
are members of the Arctic Council, which the Wall Street Journal describes as
“an intergovernment forum [...] which considers development issues and sailing
rights as the polar ice recedes” before going on to say that China, in
particular, has “made investment [in Arctic shipping lanes] a priority to
advance its energy and shipping interests”.
The new venture will ship
liquefied natural gas from central northern Siberia’s gargantuan Yamal LNG
project to a laundry list of destinations including Northern Europe, Japan,
South Korea, and China. The initiative will begin with a fleet of a dozen
ice-breaking tankers, and Cosco’s China Shipping LNG Investment Co. will
reportedly operate another nine tankers.
“We [China] imported about
57 million tons of LNG last year and we are looking for a steady supply of
around four million a year coming from Yamal,” a Chinese shipping executive
told the Wall Street Journal. “We also look to move container ships through the
northern sea route as warming temperatures melt the ice making it easier to
navigate.”
This move comes on the back
of months of Russian gas flooding European markets, keeping gas prices low,
exacerbating an already-existing gas glut in the continent, and at least
partially edging the United States out of the European natural gas market. As
reported by Bloomberg, experts at Citigroup surmise that Russia’s increased
shipments of natural gas to Europe are a kind of stress test for the United
States. A Citigroup report says that Russia is intentionally keeping gas prices
low because Moscow is likely “testing the response of the global gas market in
a low price environment, especially U.S. LNG export elasticity.”
Now that Russia is strengthening its natural gas trade with China
on top of its aggressive flooding of European markets with its cheap liquefied
natural gas, the United States has more cause for concern than ever. Especially
when taking into consideration that China’s thirst for natural gas is “almost infinite” as it tries to move away
from its long legacy of dirty coal-based power and its middle class continues
to boom, along with its demand for energy.