Russia, China Sign Declaration of Unity

Seeking solace from the East for the snubs it believes the West is dealing it, Russia signed an agreement with its former Communist rival China on Wednesday to prevent world domination by a single superpower.

Kremlin officials denied that the declaration was Russia’s touchy answer to U.S. claims to world leadership in the aftermath of the Cold War. But Russia is smarting over U.S.-led NATO plans to expand into the former Soviet sphere of influence and over its own inability to stop onetime Western enemies from moving right up to its border.

Yeltsin, shown on television next to visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin, hinted darkly that he has had enough of being bossed around on the international stage.

“Someone is longing for a single-polar world. He wants to decide things himself. . . . But we want the world to be multipolar. Those poles will form the basis of the new world order,” the 66-year-old Russian leader said.

The declaration itself spoke of opposition to a “Cold War mentality . . . and the policy of blocs,” a clear reference to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

With characteristic showmanship, Yeltsin talked up the significance of the Russian-Chinese agreement, made on the second day of Jiang’s five-day visit. He said it was of “tremendous, perhaps even historic, importance because we are determining the fate of the 21st century.”

Russian and Chinese officials said their proposed “partnership, aimed at constructive cooperation in the 21st century,” is not targeted at any other country.

“The new type of Russian-Chinese relations has no other meaning than bilateral cooperation and friendship,” Jiang told the lower house of parliament, the Duma. “These relations are not an alliance. They are not aimed against any third party.”

Russia and China have an interest in limiting U.S. influence. They also share a long border that makes them natural trading partners.

China is Russia’s third-largest trading partner, with last year’s trade figures up 25% to $7 billion. Russia is also China’s biggest arms supplier.

The centerpiece of Jiang’s visit comes today. Leaders of three former Soviet republics bordering China will join the two presidents to sign an agreement controlling troop numbers along the 4,300-mile border.

Despite the warmth of Jiang’s welcome, neither Russia nor China is expected to turn its back on the West in the near future because both still need Western help to complete their economic reform programs.

Any formal alliance between the two old rivals is also perceived to be a long way off.

An ideological tiff kept the two Communist superpowers at loggerheads for three decades. Relations began to thaw at a breakthrough 1989 summit, with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Beijing, and Jiang’s visit is his fifth summit with Yeltsin since 1991.

But old suspicions linger. Russia continues to worry that China is looking greedily at its own territories in the Far East; while China fears Russia might recover its strength and assert itself in Asia.