It was as if the deindustrialization that had devastated the blue-collar workers of the American Rust Belt over many years had suddenly been forced on the entire nation and most social classes. Real earnings and the country’s GDP both fell to half their 1990 levels by 1995. Only mining and the production of energy were left standing after entire industries collapsed. As the new oligarchs, who had amassed the wealth of the state for themselves, transferred billions of dollars into foreign banks and real estate, domestic investment plummeted. According to estimates, 6.6 million premature fatalities occurred between 1991 and 2004 due to despair-related mortality and an increase in violent crime as a result of these upheavals that led to a loss of livelihood, security, and meaning.
Russian politics were tainted by the 1990s’ social and cultural destruction. The association of democracy, liberal values, and Western influence with kleptocracy, widespread suffering, crime, and decadence tarnished these concepts. Faith in the common good and civic purposes was stifled by cynicism.
Vladimir Putin was given the position of authority by Yeltsin and the oligarchs with the intention of maintaining the current order. In doing so, he managed to successfully sideline both nationalist and social democratic competitors while stabilising and cementing the primacy of neoliberal economic policy, the domination of the extractive industry, and the rule of a predatory and nihilistic elite.
But in order to restore the government’s damaged legitimacy, the Yeltsin oligarchy had to be selectively rejected in order to stabilise the system. Putin was able to do this merely by locking up some of the most despised oligarchs, taking control of much of the energy sector from them to fund the state (now little more than a corrupt patronage system itself), and squeezing critics out of the mainstream media due to the trauma of the 1990s on the body politic. A disillusioned and disorganised society cheered when growth finally picked up thanks to a global spike in energy and mineral prices and the appearance of restored law and order. At the conclusion of his second term in office in 2008, Putin had an approval rating of 88 percent.
Showboating strongmen: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (left) and President Vladimir Putin (centre) meet with the cabinet. (Handout/Anadolu Agency/Kremlin Press Office via Getty Images)
The two countries had thus finished their transition from collectivist state-led societies with a high degree of national autonomy to individualist market-organized societies that were deeply ingrained in the global system and experiencing rapid economic growth fueled by exports and foreign investment by the middle of the 2000s. Both nations had governmental involvement that went beyond what is authorised by liberal philosophy, which caused many Western critics to bemoan the putative survival of communist. Actually, in both instances, the elite’s response to the unrest and instability that market-led prosperity instigated in the present was what led to the state’s authoritarianism. The political and cultural economies of the two nations were a result of, not a critique of, the liberal international order.
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By lecturing the leaders of China and Russia on their misdeeds, the self-declared architects of the liberal international order in Washington fueled animosity against Western hypocrisy rather than reform. In Moscow and Beijing, the United States encouraged instability and rebellion rather than acquiescence by enlarging NATO, aiding the colour revolutions that toppled governments in the former Soviet Union, and using military force to enforce the liberal international order. The shared experience of carving out a position for their nation within globalisation and dealing with criticism and armed threat as a result of doing so drew Chinese and Russian leaders closer together.
The expansion of the two economies in recent decades provides the most striking example of the profound structural differences hiding behind these similarities and sending the two nations on separate trajectories.
Three significant discrepancies on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis hinted to the divergent routes that China and Russia would take throughout the upheaval that followed. The first was how the elite operated and what kind of state it could dominate. An uneasy alliance of free market technocrats and staunch security service veterans controlled political power in Russia. They presided over a state that appeared to be centralised but was actually just an unreliable patronage system where regional potentates frequently disregarded directives from the centre and economic conventional wisdom forbade the implementation of developmental measures. The only oligarchs that demonstrated economic dynamism were the predatory but domesticated ones in the mining industry and the military-industrial complex, which is now disproportionately made up of Putin’s own men.
The governing elite in China, in contrast, was presided over by engineers, whose thought was more focused on supply lines than on market exchange or military power. Similar to how liberalisation divided the Russian state, market forces in China grew along with corruption and patronage. However, market reform did not weaken the organisational ability of the Chinese state rather it strengthened it, and Chinese leaders were still able and ready to bend market forces to achieve their economic objectives. Success for government officials depended not just on their ability to please their clientele but also on their track record of fostering social stability and economic progress.
The activity at the grassroots level constituted a second crucial contrast. Even while Russia’s formal limits on free speech and protest were much weaker than China’s, in actuality, the 1990s’ experience left few Russians wanting to exercise those freedoms. In contrast, protests were widespread and increasing in China despite frequent and severe suppression. Fear of this popular uprising forced Chinese leaders, most notably Hu Jintao, to make a slow but significant shift away from simply enforcing the market’s blatant brutality and toward measures to improve social security, safeguard the environment, combat poverty, and reduce the level of labour exploitation. In turn, this increased wages, spread the benefits of economic progress, and improved state legitimacy.
Their perspectives on the rest of the world were the third significant difference between China and Russia. As export demand, international investment, and development financing increased, China’s rise became more and more intertwined with nations on every continent. These connections were driven by the need to safeguard raw material supplies and identify lucrative markets for China’s excess production capacity and foreign exchange reserves. However, the narratives that Chinese leaders told themselves about their actions—a desire to aid in the development of the Global South, a belief in democratising the international order, and China’s purported 5,000-year tradition of peaceful interstate coexistence—started to shape a new vision for China’s place in the world. In order for other nations to flourish, China grew to see itself as a model of development and as playing a role in bridging states, markets, and cultures.
Whereas Russian growth was narrowly focused on exports of fossil fuels and minerals, which made Russia dependent on the markets of NATO countries—the same countries that were ignoring Russian calls for a more balanced European security system—Chinese growth drove a widening set of foreign connections that reinforced widening wealth within the country. Whereas China was expanding its horizons and creating a vision that would be appealing to a wide audience, Russia felt under pressure and resorted to local nationalism and a longing for great power status.
These divisions were sparked by the global financial crisis of 2008, which widened them considerably. Both Chinese and Russian authorities were confronted with the urgent need for a new strategy for growth as export demand from the affluent countries—the driver of growth in both China and Russia—suddenly dried up and neoliberal economic policy fell into disrepute. They saw there was a huge gap in how well they could handle the challenge.
As long as oil earnings continued to sustain growing consumerism in major cities and maintained the patronage networks, the Russian system appeared to be functional. But among the G20 nations, Russia saw the biggest economic downturn in 2009, exposing a frail political and economic system. We believed we were advancing with China, but as one government-affiliated analyst put it, “Now we know we are declining with Europe.”
When Dmitri Medvedev was elected president in 2008, he scrambled for an answer and demanded reforms that he had no authority to enact. In the eyes of Putin and his supporters, Medvedev’s failure culminated in a wave of nationwide protests that lasted for months and started in December 2011. The largest protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they represented a powerful political danger as well as the eroding of support among the prosperous middle class in the backdrop of the still-evolving Arab Spring.
Putin and his cronies came to the conclusion that a fresh course was required. Potential routes including economic developmentalism, internationalism, and left or liberal politics were blocked by the 1990s’ legacy. The strong political currents outside of Putin’s law-and-order statism, however—social conservatism and chauvinist nationalism—were strengthened as a result. When he took office again, Putin seized upon these currents to mobilise populist forces and to marginalise the demonstrators by painting them as tools of liberal Western forces.
Although this redefining of Putin’s politics was well underway by 2012, the Ukraine crisis and the significant economic downturn that year, driven on by falling energy prices and Western sanctions, solidified it. The Russian leadership started reinterpreting great power tensions as an existential battle of civilizations as a result of feeling increasingly alone and offended.
Russia was an extreme case due to its extraordinarily destructive neoliberal transformation, but after 2008, as global social conditions began to resemble those in Russia, reactionary populism and the scapegoating of people deemed foreign became frequent responses in democracies and autocracies alike. The attack on liberal and progressive Chinese activists, the repression of the Hong Kong democracy movement, the policy of coercive assimilation against ethnic minorities that has devastated Xinjiang, and the belligerent rhetoric of the Xi government’s foreign policy all show that it was not an exception.
China’s course, however, also departs from Russia’s in significant respects. The Chinese programme also places other projects with a completely different focus in the foreground of the reactionary trend. Because of its state capability, China was able to follow the most aggressive state-led development policy in the world in the face of the 2008 export crisis. The grassroots uprising of the 2000s and the elite’s selective receptivity to popular demands enabled the Chinese leadership to conduct a massive and successful campaign against elite corruption, to lessen economic inequality under the pretexts of eradicating poverty and establishing “common prosperity,” and to jumpstart the transition to green growth.
Foreign policy is similar to domestic policy. With the country becoming more and more isolated from the West, China is similar to Russia in several aspects. Contrary to Russia’s escalating armed interventions in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine or its more overt meddling in the domestic politics of Western nations, Chinese military policy has been much more circumspect, employing carefully calibrated responses (referred to as “grey zone tactics” in Pentagon parlance). The Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and development financing through state policy banks like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank are just a few of the impressively funded nonmilitary international initiatives that China has pursued. These initiatives have received strong support from the developing world.
It is not appropriate to romanticise these programmes. The results have been conflicting, frequently promoting growth and development in underdeveloped nations while, equally frequently, causing issues with excessive debt and environmental damage. Although Chinese leaders have shown a willingness to listen to criticism and are implementing significant reforms aimed at achieving financial and environmental sustainability, they have little regard for factors that are crucial for successful development, such as robust labour rights, technology transfer, and open government.
However, it is misguided for US authorities to portray these activities as being a part of China’s global dominance strategy. Debunking “debt-trap diplomacy” has become commonplace. Although great power war threatens to change this by militarising international relations, domestic economic constraints and opportunities continue to be the main drivers of Chinese endeavours.
China’s international initiatives ultimately highlight the stark disparities between Russia and China. Traumatized by its disastrous integration into the global economy, Russia discovered that its political culture had been corrupted by cynicism and resentment, and that its institutions had been severely undermined, making it hard to pursue constructive remedy. The politics of reactionary nationalism gained widespread support in both elite and common communities as Russia faced Western aggression.
Reactionary nationalism is a real threat because China has gone through a lot of the same processes. However, China’s very different experience with globalisation has given rise to strong ideologies and constituencies that urge for positive interaction with the outside world while curbing the leadership’s more aggressive tendencies. It is yet unclear which of these competing initiatives will direct China’s future course.
Because of their respective histories, China and Russia present the US with quite distinct problems today. Russian leadership is providing little to the rest of the world but volatility, in contrast to Chinese leaders who see their future as dependent on the success of the billions of people in the Global South for whom the liberal international system has never provided a good existence.
The only risky options that the United States has faced with Russia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. With a run of military setbacks, ineffective domestic propaganda campaigns, and pressure from China and India over the invasion, Putin may be in a weaker political position than at any other point in his lengthy rule. Despite the hollowing out of Russian politics since the 1990s, which puts hard-line nationalists in a stronger position than any other group to succeed Putin, this may encourage the US to strive for Russia’s complete destruction. Changing the bigger geopolitical framework is the only way to get out of this pickle.
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Unfortunately, US animosity toward China poses a threat to prevent that. Because China appears to be endangering all of these, US politicians, who are prone to equating sustaining the world’s current political and economic hierarchy with preserving democracy, human rights, and the prosperity of the American people, have embraced China as a unifying force. Without regard to whether they are progressive or reactionary and without making any concessions to Beijing that any Chinese goals could ever be acceptable, the only area of agreement between the two political parties in Washington right now seems to be the desire to frustrate and discredit all of China’s efforts. Predictably, China replies with belligerent defences. China will align with and resemble Russia more and more as the two sides continue this vicious cycle of hostility and aggression, and the globe will descend into devastating conflict.
Concerns about the global erosion of democracy can be easily focused on China as the most powerful authoritarian nation in the world. But as the recent history of Russia particularly well demonstrates, it is not hostile foreign forces that threaten democracy. Instead, free market globalization’s association of political liberalism with oligarchic wealth concentration, populist unrest, and Western dominance is the primary cause of democratic collapse. When the system collapsed in 2008, this prepared illiberal nationalist demagogues to position themselves as the clear alternative. A global trend, not China’s reactionary turn under Xi Jinping, is what it is: another symptom. Great power confrontation will feed the influence of nationalists and militarists in all countries, rather than combating the causes of authoritarianism.
However, there is another way: critical engagement with China to reform a broken global order. The Chinese government has proposed that the US join China’s efforts in public health, international development, and climate change, and that China would be open to doing the same for the US. Accepting Beijing’s offer would lead to a stabilising set of cooperative initiatives that would direct great power resources toward the truly existential dangers to humanity. Achieving those goals would increase the benefits of the global economy, boost resilience, and lessen the appeal of populists.
This kind of interaction would also enable Washington to exert positive pressure on Beijing to enhance its global endeavours. Unless it stems from a vision of the two nations flourishing together, US criticism of China—whether the topic is debt restructuring, human rights violations, or greenhouse gas emissions—will be unproductive.
Analysis by: Advocacy Unified Network
