Recently the students from AUK’s Global Management program participated in a keynote discussion with Theresa Fallon, the founder and director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies (CREAS) in Brussels, on the topic “Chinese Foreign and Security Policy under Xi, and the Future of China-russian Relations”.
Theresa Fallon is a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, a member of the CEPS Task Force on AI and Cybersecurity, a member of the Loisach Group on transatlantic relations, and a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Describing the relations between China and russia and China’s position towards Ukraine, Theresa Fallon noticed:
“I think that China determined in 2014, with The Belt and Road Initiative. Ukraine was one of the key anchors on this end of the initiative in Europe and so Ukraine also served as a place for food security. So China-Ukraine relations were actually quite close and mutually beneficial to a certain extent. And now it's not. The Chinese made a decision after what happened with Crimea. If you look at the original maps of The Belt and Road Initiative before 2014, they all went around russia. After 2014, Beijing decided that it is better to have russia with it than against it because they're gonna block China at every step of the way.
China is very strategic and their approach is that they never want to become overly dependent on any one country, especially in energy. So they diversify, they have a lot of countries that they use for supplying their energy. Now there is a good deal with russia as they're getting steeply discounted energy. But on the other hand, they've just signed a huge, the largest LNG deal in history with Qatar. China thinks strategically and don’t want to become so over-reliant on russia”.
We are highly thankful to Theresa Fallon for her insightful discussion with AUK students, as well as to Mark Voyger, Program Director for the MSc in Global Management at AUK for organizing this meeting.
Dnipro
