546 { China’s Quest
and Development Research Center very frankly laid out the logic of that new
relationship:
As regards China, American and the other Western nations are imple-
menting a strategy of “engagement” plus “containment,” utilizing
“comprehensive engagement” to promote cooperation with China and
advance “Westernization.” At the same time, propagating the “China
threat theory” will mean setting up endless obstacles [for China] on
human rights, arms sales, economics, Taiwan, Tibet, etc., [and carrying
out] policies of “division” and “soft containment.” China and Russia
both need a stable neighborhood environment and international en-
vironment for them to achieve the strategic objectives of development,
increasing comprehensive national strength, raising their interna-
tional status. Both countries oppose hegemonism and power politics
and advocate the establishment of a new international political order of
reason and justice. America and the Western countries are implement-
ing a policy of “containment” toward China and Russia to coerce rel-
atively weak China and Russia, which have common interests and can
strengthen their mutual position [by cooperating] and for this reason
concluded a strategic cooperative partnership facing the twenty-first
cent u r y.^39
Declaration of common principles, usually in opposition to US moves
and issued at Sino-Russian summit meetings, became a key modality of the
Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Such declarations are listed in Figure
20-1. The statement of April 1997, issued at still another Jiang-Yeltsin summit
and titled “On the Multipolarization of the World and the Establishment of
a New International Order,” provides a good example of these statements. It
constituted a point-by-point rebuttal of US diplomatic efforts since the end
of the Cold War. Point one rejected “hegemony and power politics ... con-
frontation and conflict.” That would be overwhelming US military power
and its application, for example, in the Taiwan Strait in 1996. Point two of
the declaration called for the elimination of “discriminatory policies and
practices in economic relations.” That would be US insistence on hard terms
for entry into GATT and WTO. Point three opposed “bloc politics” and
“enlarging and strengthening military blocs.” That referred to the “east-
ward expansion of NATO” (as Chinese and Russian propaganda dubbed the
process) and to the reconfiguration of the Japan-US alliance that was then
underway. Point four called for strengthening the role of the UN Security
Council, where both Beijing and Moscow could veto US proposed actions.
“Peacekeeping operations can be undertaken only by the decision of the
UN Security Council ... and in strict compliance with the Security Council
mandate and its supervision.” This was an implicit criticism of UNPKO in
Yugoslavia, which Beijing and Moscow felt deviated from previous principles