Russia Looks to China as an Ally Amid West’s Ire

MOSCOW — Faced with mounting criticism from the West over the war in Chechnya, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin will head to Beijing today for talks with Chinese leaders aimed at balancing what both countries see as global domination by the United States.

As Moscow’s brutal campaign in the separatist southern republic increasingly alienates Yeltsin’s Western friends, the Russian president is scheduled to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, on Thursday and Friday before returning home.

The frequently ailing Yeltsin was released from the hospital Monday after what the Kremlin said was a bout with pneumonia. The two-day journey to China will be his longest trip outside Russia in more than a year.

The talks scheduled this week--the eighth time the two leaders will have met--provide further evidence of a growing rapprochement, at least symbolically, between their two nations in recent years. Alarmed by U.S. political and military might worldwide, both Moscow and Beijing have called for increased cooperation to check American power and to pave the way for a “multipolar” world.

With Russia heading into parliamentary elections Dec. 19, the trip will give Yeltsin the opportunity to turn his back on the West and secure China’s support for Moscow’s right to carry out its war against rebels in the Chechen republic.

“The president’s trip to Communist China is a political maneuver, an act of protest against the pressure the West is exerting on Russia,” said Pavel I. Voshchanov, a former Yeltsin press secretary. “By going to China, Yeltsin takes advantage of the resentment against the West so deeply rooted in the Russian people. All this can be defined in one word: cheap electioneering.”

Leaders in Moscow and Beijing watched with dismay last spring as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened in Yugoslavia over their vociferous objections. The two capitals fear that the U.S. might apply the same reasoning to step into conflicts in their own backyards, such as the one over Chechnya or, in China’s case, over Tibet or the restless western province of Xinjiang.

Accordingly, Beijing on Tuesday firmly reiterated its stand that Chechnya is “purely Russia’s internal affair,” to be resolved as Moscow sees fit.

“The Chinese side understands and supports the efforts made by Russia to maintain its national unification and territorial integrity,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters.

Chinese and Russian complaints of U.S. meddling were only aggravated by remarks from President Clinton on Monday criticizing Moscow’s actions in Chechnya and Beijing’s heavy-handed crackdown on followers of Falun Gong, a quasi-religious sect.

In Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin suggested Tuesday that Western leaders who want to end the conflict in Chechnya put pressure on the rebels there, who in recent years have made a lucrative business of seizing hostages for ransom.

“If some representatives of foreign states are indeed so much concerned about the situation in the North Caucasus, let them use their influence not only for putting pressure on the Russian leadership but also to force the terrorists to release their hostages,” Putin said.

In parallel remarks in Beijing, Zhang said the Clinton administration is ignoring dangers posed by the multimillion-member Falun Gong spiritual movement.

“The U.S. government has adopted a double standard on the cult, and also turned a deaf ear to the adverse effect and the damage of Falun Gong to the Chinese people and society, and even tried to beautify this cult and interfere in China’s internal affairs,” the spokeswoman said when asked about Clinton’s remarks.

For all the shared resentment against Washington, however, both Moscow and Beijing know that they cannot afford to spurn the United States. Their slumping economies mean that Russia depends in some measure on Washington’s goodwill and the receipt of loans from the International Monetary Fund, while China has just closed a deal with the U.S. to speed its accession to the World Trade Organization.

What Russian and Chinese officials have termed a strategic partnership remains mostly rhetorical, limited to pronouncements of warm feelings.

Nevertheless, U.S. foreign policy watchers are monitoring increased Russian arms sales to China, including advanced jet fighters, as well as friendly military exchanges. Sino-Russian ties began to thaw several years ago after a deep freeze that lasted three decades. Previous talks between Moscow and Beijing have focused largely on resolving border disputes.

Yeltsin and Jiang met this summer at a summit of regional leaders in Kyrgyzstan. Their last one-on-one meeting occurred in November 1998, when the Kremlin chief, suffering from pneumonia, received the Chinese leader at a hospital in Moscow.

The surprise announcement Monday that Yeltsin would go to China coincided with word that he was postponing a planned Dec. 21 visit to Paris, where he was to meet with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

In another signal of discontent with the West, Yeltsin is scheduled to sign a union treaty today with authoritarian Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko before departing for Beijing. The pact, similar to agreements signed by the two in previous years, is seen by some as a step toward reuniting Russia and Belarus, which until 1991 were both part of the Soviet Union.

For Russia, attempting to strengthen ties with China is a logical move to counter Western leaders who oppose the Chechen war on humanitarian grounds and Muslim leaders who sympathize with their brethren in Chechnya.

Apart from certain former Soviet republics, said Voshchanov, the former Yeltsin press secretary, “China is the only one of Russia’s neighbors that has not clearly oriented itself either toward the West or toward the Muslim world. In order to be able to ignore both these opponents, Russia needs to have a third force, and China is a perfect candidate for this mission.”

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Chu reported from Beijing and Paddock from Moscow.