[特輯]러시아의 對중국 정책: 동인, 성과, 한계

Russia's Post-Cold War Foreign Policy towards China: Motives, Achievements, and Limitations

The purpose of this paper is to explore the basis of Russia's emerging strategic relations with China in the post-Cold War, period. The paper first offers an overview of Russia's evolving foreign policy toward China since the early 1990s based on the joint declarations adopted at eight summit meetings between the two countries, which ,show a trend from initial estrangement to estabiishing basic relations to building a constructive partnership to seeking strategic partnership. The paper then seeks to explain Russia's motives for reaching out to China, namely to obtain leverage vis-a-vis the United States, to gain economic benefits, and to stabilize the China-Russia border. So far, Russia has achieved some measure of success in each of these areas. First, although difficult to measure, on many occasions Russia has used its emerging strategic relationship with China as leverage in negotiating with the United States and other Western countries. Second, Russia's defense industry, which faced a crisis with the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, has experienced something of a rebound in large part due to hard currency sales of weapons to China. Third, a number of persistent border issues, which have long been the major obstacle to China-Russia reconciliation, have been solved, while various confidence-building measures along the border have been established and put into practice. At the same time, however, there are limitations in China-Russia relations that effectively prevent the two countries from entering into a closer alliance. First, both countries heavily depend on good relations with Japan and the United States for essential financial resources for economic reform. Second, China and Russia have significantly different geopolitical and strategic interests, and neither is in a position to intervene militarily in a potential conflict for the other side's sake. Third, because both countries are in the process of undertaking major economic and political reforms, it is difficult for either to find solid ground for closer economic cooperation. Indeed, even Russia's weapons exports to China, which is the only flourishing area in China-Russia economic relations, are seen by critics both in and outside Russia as potentially de-stabilizing. Fourth, although Russia's perception of the "China threat" has diminished considerably throughout the 1990s, China is still perceived by many Russians as a country that needs to be carefully watched, particularly given past territorial conflicts and recent immigration of Chinese into the Russian Far East. The paper concludes with an evaluation of likely developments in China-Russia strategic relations, where U.S. policy toward both countries will invariably be a major factor, along with competing territorial claims, economic and ideological conflict, the Taiwan issue, and regional rivalry over countries, particularly Mongolia and the states of Central Asia.