Sino-Soviet Split 2.0

Could views on separatism destroy the Russia-China alliance?

Late last year we partnered with Manifold Markets on an essay contest to make a bold prediction about the future of China. Our first prize winner with a spicy take on the future of Russia-China relations is Lily Ottinger. She’s a political science researcher and recreational mathematician living in Taipei, Taiwan who will be joining ChinaTalk as an editor.

There is a 75% chance that the emerging Sino-Russian friendship will crash and burn by 2030. 

Russia and China are forging new ties. Their “No-Limits” partnership announcement left the world wondering, had Xi known about Russia’s plan to invade Ukraine when the agreement was signed? Or did Putin leave China in the dark, hoping to use the agreement to extract support for the invasion? 

The partnership is certainly convenient, as the two authoritarian countries mutually resent the US-led international order. The question currently facing the West is whether this partnership of convenience will become a lasting Russia-China axis. 

Substantial empirical research indicates authoritarian countries make poor allies due to a lack of institutional accountability (Gaubatz 1996; Choi 2003). The history between Russia and China arguably supports this conclusion – the Soviets reneged on their promise to give China a prototype nuclear weapon, which helped to kick off the Sino-Soviet split (Gerson 2010). Eventually, disagreements over communist ideology caused hurt feelings to spiral into alliance collapse. 

But as of 2024, Russia and China appear less committed than ever to ideological purity — see the Chinese Communist Party decrying the trap of “welfarism.” If the autocracies of today have truly forsaken all principles other than self-interest, is a new “Axis of Evil” inevitable?

I argue that there is a foundational crack in the Russia-China partnership that makes meaningful cooperation extremely untenable, if not impossible. That crack —incompatible views on separatism. 

Irreconcilable Irredentism

It’s easy to say that Russia and China are the same – irredentists trying to reshape borders based on historical grievances. But their justifications for upheavals are wildly different. Let’s compare:

China

China’s narrative on Taiwan relies on an appeal to international law. This is the CCP’s argument:

• Premise 1: There is one China and Taiwan is a province of China.

• Premise 2: Everyone, including the government of Taiwan, agrees that the One-China policy is the true description of the borders of the status quo.

• Conclusion: Any party aiding Taiwan’s autonomy is encouraging separatism and instigating warfare. 

To be clear, this is nonsense, but it is the structuring nonsense of Chinese decision-making. The strategic trick is that this position allows China to reframe aggression towards Taiwan as defensive. In fact, China’s 2005 “Anti-Secession” law explicitly cites territorial integrity to justify unilateral violence against Taiwan (Mainland Affairs Council, 2005). So, by choosing "One China” as the basis of their Taiwan policy, the CCP has painted itself into a corner on the issue of separatism. 

The CCP crafted this defensive framing and cannot abandon it. Generally, Chinese people do not want to be aggressors due to a long history of subjugation by external powers. Apart from Taiwan, China has spent a great deal of resources battling separatism in Xinjiang and Tibet, and appeals to the sacredness of treaties are the basis of their claims in the South China Sea (Tung 2018, Hoskin 2019).

Thus, the CCP can't abandon “One China” and the corollary anti-separatism stance. However, this directly contradicts Russia’s position on separatism.

Russia

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” - Óscar Benavides

Russia’s narrative on borders is far less principled – “The borders that benefit us are sacred, the ones we don’t like are illegitimate.” Modern Russia delights in supporting the independence of client quasi-states in former Soviet republics, under the pretext that residents of these areas desire independence. Responses to Russian-engineered separatism are then used as justification to intervene formally.

In Ukraine, Russia paid residents of the Donbas to engage in indiscriminate destruction. Once Ukraine sent troops to respond, Russia gave these clients tanks and instructed them to declare independence as the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (RAND 2017). Until the 2022 invasion, Russia pretended that these were indigenously supported independence movements, with goals that were separate from (if parallel to) those of Russia. 

Of course, this narrative was a sham all along. Not only did Russia forcibly conscript unwilling residents of these supposedly autonomous republics, but Russia abandoned this narrative altogether in 2022 by annexing the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk, alongside the additional Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. 

Before Ukraine, Russia perfected these techniques in Georgia and Moldova. The story is always the same – Russia engineers, upholds, and encourages separatist movements in order to desecrate the borders of former Soviet republics. Residents who oppose separatism in these regions are slaughtered or forcibly displaced. Russia then imports loyalists to live in newly emptied houses and vote in sham elections. Russian propagandists use the dog-and-pony-show elections to tell domestic audiences that Russia is supporting legitimately popular uprisings (Kuzio and D’anieri 2018). 

The façade of democracy promotion positions Russian military excursions as righteous, and gives plausible deniability that soaks up the resources of fake-news debunking journalists. The amount of payoff Russia has gotten from these separatist client states is substantial – this strategy appears to have indefinitely blocked Georgia’s bid to join NATO (Lanoszka 2020). Thus, Russia’s support for separatism is likely to continue.

Game theory and audience objections

Let’s categorize China's options for dealing with Russia. Note that the table below is not really a payoff matrix, because it only considers payoffs for China. There’s a reason for this — Putin’s conception of a “win” is governed by personalistic factors that we largely cannot know. The double down in Ukraine demonstrates that lives lost matter little; a decade of stagnant real incomes demonstrates that economic well-being is no object (Gould-Davies, 2023).

What matters to Putin is some combination of national prestige, personal grievances, and commitments to inner-circle oligarchs. The relative importance of these factors is for all intents and purposes, a black box. China’s strategic decision-making is aware that Russia is self-interested and unprincipled, and I predict they will try to make a decision that prices in potential erratic behavior from Russia.

Okay with that disclaimer in mind, China has six strategic options. Here’s the rundown: 

Consistent principles, passive 

• No meaningful increase in coop.

• China waits, hoping to capitalize on Russian-induced chaos in the future.

• Unstable equilibrium — Russia pressures China to aid adventurism and demonstrate loyalty, while Xi bears reputational costs from passivity.

Consistent principles, active 

• China bets that they can leverage their economic prowess in negotiations, and conditions cooperation on Russian support for Taiwan/SCS goals.

• China might attempt to “mediate” Russia's territorial disputes, possibly pressuring them to compromise on border changes (imagine China’s “peace plan for Ukraine,” except this time China asks Russia to withdraw troops from South Ossetia).

• Russia refuses, reducing the alliance to nothing more than an occasional flashy press conference.

Hypocrisy, passive

• China cooperates with Russia and ignores contradictions.

• China censors criticisms of Russia on Chinese social media.

• Xi attempts to purge or flip inner-circle Russia skeptics. Purging means losing Russia experts. Flipping puts pressure on Xi to demonstrate rapid, substantial gains from deals with Russia. Both weaken Xi's negotiating position with Putin.

• Trends towards reneging on commitments or abandoning principles.

Hypocrisy, active

• China cooperates with Russia and manipulates contradictions to maximize gains.

• Condition coop on support for Chinese claims to territory disputed with Japan, India, Vietnam, etc.

• If Russia refuses (e.g. to avoid alienating India), China will post maps of Chinese territory that include Russian territory, up to and including Vladivostok. Chinese negotiators will probe Russian willingness to acquiesce to such claims.

• Xi hopes that reputational gains from defacing Russia outweigh reputational costs among principled Taiwan believers.

• CCP dedicates resources to creating propaganda attempting to rectify the contradiction with its stance on Taiwan.

• Russia refuses coop and abandons alliance, or acquiesces and quietly plots revenge.

Abandon principles, passive 

• China subsidizes the Russian conquest of Europe, including recognizing Russian annexations and offering diplomatic support for breakaway Russian client states. 

• Xi waits to reap the serendipitous long-term effects of Russian chaos (war fatigue and depleted weapon stockpiles in Western democracies; opportunities to probe for intelligence).

• CCP reshapes the information ecosystem to undermine the inviolability of borders. Reframe Taiwan as a nationalist conquest. 

• Xi gains diplomatic capital (foreign policy IOUs) with Russia to be cashed in for support of future goals.

• Xi risks domestic loss of face from kowtowing to Putin, or humiliation in the event that Russia refuses to acknowledge diplomatic capital accrued by China.

• Xi risks displeasing the domestic audience by forsaking the borders-based moral high ground of the party’s previous Taiwan position. This potentially reduces or collapses domestic willingness to fight a war over Taiwan.

• Xi risks energizing domestic separatism (e.g. Xinjiang) by abandoning respect for territorial integrity. 

• The above risks make this position an unstable equilibrium.

Abandon principles, active
(Axis of Evil)

• China embraces a new vision of the international order centered around confrontation with the West.

• China subsidizes the Russian conquest of Europe in the short term.

• Xi eschews diplomatic capital and instead aims to extract maximal concessions from Russia as dependence on China increases.

• CCP disciplines Russian disobedience by posting maps of China that claim Russian territory, up to and including Vladivostok. The CCP bets that Russia will fold when threatened.

• China and Russia coordinate a confrontation with the West, beginning with joint hybrid warfare and culminating in a two-front great power war. China invades Taiwan as Russia simultaneously attempts a high-intensity wildcard offensive in Europe.

• The CCP swiftly crushes domestic separatism that emerges from abandoning the façade of territorial integrity. 

To address some questions you might be asking:

1. “But Lily, hypocrisy is a stable equilibrium! China can just ignore contradictions and censor anyone who hints at their existence. Chinese people are too politically disenfranchised to care, right?” 

This option seems easy and desirable. It would require crackdowns on netizens criticizing Russia, but the CCP’s dystopian censorship apparatus makes that a small barrier.

“If we’re all cheering on Russia and supporting them now, what’s the difference between us and the people who supported Japan’s invasion of our country in the past?” Rest in peace to this brave Weibo post.

However, crackdowns within the inner circle are more difficult and resource-intensive. Foreign policy strategists might just be willing to take a stand — private interviews inside China revealed brewing sentiment that “the growing Sino-Russian relationship is against China’s national interests,” (Sun 2022). If tangible cooperation between the two countries increases, the costs of purging, censoring, and consolidating dissent on the Russia issue will increase as well. Xi will be pressured to show gains from partnering with Russia, which paradoxically reduces his leverage when negotiating with Putin.

Xi’s fanboy status is a liability in negotiations. Like a dog with a bone, Putin pathologically exploits weakness and appears incapable of quitting while he is ahead.    

This brings me to a second potential question:

2. “But Lily, Russia is completely reliant on China, so Putin cannot afford to manipulate or betray Xi. Russian submission is a stable equilibrium!” 

Astute observation, dear reader. This would be the outcome if Russia were willing to capitulate, but 500 years of Russian cultural chauvinism makes me bet that this is a non-starter. For relevant background, Professor Viktor Dyatlov writes the following on the topic of Russian racism at the turn of the twentieth century:

An important part of Russian tradition was the attitude towards the Chinese as an undifferentiated mass into which individuality dissolved. Epithets such as “crowd”, “ants”, “locusts” or “midges” were used to describe the Chinese.

Dyatlov continues, describing that racist legacy in the modern era:

The image of Chinese immigrants formed anew [...] the Chinese are hardworking, simple and adaptable, with a sense of entrepreneurship. However, these qualities, positive ones in principle, are often painted negatively: hardworking (but at the expense of us patriots); self-reliant (but clannish and, again, detrimental to us).

Despite the massive presence of Chinese migrants in Russia, locals have not yet formed daily routine relationships with them. There is no familiar neighbourly and professional interaction, and no common work activity. […] There is no interest in the individual person, his life or his destiny. 

His chapter goes on to describe the “widespread notion” in Russian society that China has a plan to weaponize Chinese migrants in order to annex the Russian Far East (Dyatlov, 2012).

Ok, so Russia does not want to capitulate, but can they be forced to submit due to their position of weakness?

Remember, Russia is not powerless when negotiating with Xi, because of domestic pressure on Xi to justify the decision to align with Russia. Putin can exploit this, and Xi knows it. Yun Sun argues that Xi Jinping has a deep-seated admiration of Russian culture, which she terms “A Russia Complex.” 

“In the Chinese popular culture, Putin is nicknamed, “the Great Emperor” (大帝), who is intelligent, decisive, manipulative, and powerful. This is a status that Xi deeply desires.”

This fanboy status is a liability in negotiations. Like a dog with a bone, Putin pathologically exploits weakness and appears incapable of quitting while he is ahead.

3. “But Lily, you said that China can punish Russian misbehavior by advancing territorial claims in Siberia! If China can force compliance, doesn’t that constitute a stable alliance environment?”

Good point. One could argue that tit-for-tat nose-thumbing might constitute a “checks and balances system” that keeps the autocrats aligned. The first problem with this is that, instead of trending to equilibrium, this would likely trend toward alliance breakdown as grievances accumulate. A relationship structured by disrespect cannot easily be transformed into trust-based alignment. So even if Xi and Putin find some kind of equilibrium of mutual understanding, the cost will be a payoff cap on both countries. Put another way, a lack of trust likely precludes the possibility of the Axis of Evil scenario. 

The second problem is that this equilibrium is still probably unstable. Escalating the level of disrespect yields a juicy payoff. Russia extracted one million square kilometers of Chinese territory via an unequal treaty at the end of the Second Opium War (Sun 2022). This territory includes modern-day Vladivostok and a huge swathe of strategic coastline along the Sea of Japan. If China adopts Russia’s “separatism for thee but not for me” stance and uses it against Russia, all of that territory is potentially up for grabs.

Unsurprisingly, China is already probing this strategy of disrespect, releasing a “Standard map of China” that claims an island that was formally ceded to Russia in 2004 (Ma 2023). This island is ultimately pretty inconsequential, but it could kick off a cycle of irredentism that is difficult to stop.

Mental Gymnastics

Thus far, it seems the Chinese press has been instructed to dance around this issue and refrain from reporting on Russian annexations. However, in a rare article acknowledging the tension, the dean of a Chinese college interviews infamous Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin. The conversation implies that the issue of territorial integrity is easily resolved because Chinese society is more comfortable with evil than Russian society, which is good, because, uhh, yin and yang? Just to demonstrate that I am not making this up:

Dugin: […] China is very particular about prioritizing things. China will not intensify conflicts, but moderate and resolve conflicts through the experience of building civilization. This culture is not entirely from Confucianism, but also from Daoism. Western political culture, including Russia, is too radical, too obsessed with absolute black and white, good, and evil. For us, evil is evil, and we will never give in to evil.

Wang Wen: Yes, the theory of Yin and Yang in Chinese culture does originate from another school of philosophy. We hope to be able to transform between negative and positive, good and evil, good and bad. In the eyes of the Chinese, good things are not entirely good, and bad things are not entirely bad. There is a relationship of attachment and transformation between the two. It's complicated.

Reader, it is not complicated. The fact remains that these two autocracies hold incontrovertible positions on borders. Georgia denies entry to Taiwanese citizens out of a desire to be consistent about separatism, while Russia gladly welcomes tourists wielding Taiwanese passports (IATA). If Chinese people begin to view Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria as European Taiwan-analogues, excitement about cooperating with Russia will evaporate.

Parsing details of which irredentist claims are legitimate and illegitimate is a moot point, because changing any border by force is a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN charter. 

75% chance of alliance failure

The title of this article claims that there is a 75% chance of the partnership collapsing. That is probably enraging to any statisticians reading this article, and for that, I apologize. I’m not going to try and justify the percentage concretely – It’s impossible to calculate the probability of any outcome in the table above.

The real conclusion I would like to forward is twofold:

1. The appearance of cooperation between Russia and China does not necessarily translate to meaningful alignment. The phrase “crash and burn” in the title is also arguably misleading, because their friendship could just as well end not with a bang but a whimper. 

2. Democracies can reduce the likelihood of the Axis of Evil outcome. Ideological cracks in the Sino-Russian partnership can be probed and eventually split open by smart political maneuvering. This kind of diplomacy can constrain China’s ability to sustain hypocrisy. 

Premier Zhou Enlai and Zhang Chunqiao (张春桥) help President Richard Nixon dish out food with chopsticks, 1972. Source: Bettmann/Corbis Archive

China and Russia love to play the whataboutism game to discredit American commitment to democracy, pointing out foreign policy contradictions to divide the US and potential partners. If China truly believed their citizens had forsaken all ideological consistency, they would see no reason to shell out cash to white influencers who are willing to trash-talk American ethics. 

Just to reiterate — acknowledging that Taiwan is already independent in no way constitutes separatism. History should make that clear. But as long as China uses separatism to delegitimize Taiwan's democracy, support for separatism can be used against the CCP.

Will Russia and China form a new Axis of Evil? Or will the world’s most powerful autocracies stab each other in the back? Place your bets on Manifold!

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