Frustrated by the West, Russia turned its hopes eastward Tuesday as Chinese President Jiang Zemin began a five-day state visit intended to cement friendlier ties between Moscow and Beijing.
Jiang stepped off his plane to a warm welcome by Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and then sped by motorcade to the Kremlin, where he was to meet with President Boris Yeltsin on Wednesday.
Jiang’s visit was well-scripted, leaving little room for suspense. But interest was focused on the trip’s undercurrent of opposition to NATO expansion and the United States’ role as the world’s lone superpower.
In a statement distributed after his arrival, Jiang spoke of “the establishment of a new type of relations between the Russian and Chinese states, aimed at long-term neighborliness and friendship.”
Yeltsin’s spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said Monday that the two presidents would issue a joint statement Wednesday opposing “anyone’s attempts to play the role of an absolute leader in international affairs.”
Moscow and Beijing have made clear they want to set an example for other countries on how to maintain security and build bilateral ties.
“This new type of relationship includes a refusal to take part in military blocs, ruling out confrontation and any menace to third parties,” Interfax news agency quoted the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, Li Fenglin, as saying Tuesday.
Jiang is expected to address the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday.
After decades of bitter hostility, Russia and China have cautiously established warmer relations in the past few years. Russia, in particular, looked to Jiang’s visit as a respite from its troubling relations with the West.
NATO’s plans to include some European nations once within Moscow’s sphere “is leaving us with no other choice” but to turn eastward, said Mikhail Titarenko, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far East Studies.
Yeltsin halted a vacation at Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi to return to Moscow for the summit.
The Russian leader visited China last year and signed a breakthrough cooperation agreement with Jiang, though neither side has publicly raised the possibility of any formal alliance.
Jiang and Yeltsin will meet in Yeltsin’s refurbished Kremlin residence. On Thursday they will be joined by leaders of the Central Asian nations of Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to sign an agreement to reduce troops along their borders.
Jiang told the ITAR-Tass news agency that the agreement would have “far-reaching importance” for the five countries.
Jiang brings a unique perspective to Chinese-Russian relations: As a young electrical engineer in the mid-1950s, he spent two years in Moscow training at what is now the Zil automobile plant.
Not long after, the two communist giants had an ideological falling-out that chilled relations for three decades. The Sino-Soviet border was a scene of constant tension and occasional clashes. Relations have grown warmer since a May 1989 summit in Beijing. China and Russia already are drawing down troops along their frontier.
Irina Kobrinskaya, a foreign affairs analyst at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, said the demise of communism in Russia freed the two countries to focus on “real national interests,” not ideological hairsplitting.
Two-way trade rose 25 percent last year, reaching $7 billion as China became a major customer for Russian weapons.
