Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) signed the statements on the “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” and on “strengthening contemporary global strategic stability”, Moscow, June 5, 2019

The first part of the three-part essay is here. The second part is here. 

Discourse of shared legacies

The disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991 was a geopolitical disaster for Russia. But the watershed event, paradoxically, prompted Moscow and Beijing, erstwhile adversaries, to draw closer together, as they watched with disbelief the United States’ triumphalist narrative of the end of the Cold War, overturning the order they both had regarded, despite all their mutual differences and disputes, as crucial for their national status and identities.

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