Transcription
Well, it's a small sentence, a very small sentence Amélie, that caught our attention in a long article from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. This sentence, here it is. China is discreetly weaving ties in Russia that go far beyond Putin cultivating relationships with the officials and elites who will shape the country after his departure. You read that correctly, China is indeed preparing for the post-Putin era, and according to specialists, Beijing is weaving a spiderweb to consider all four figures. Chinese spies and diplomats have reportedly been holding meetings for several months, in the utmost secrecy, with Russian security officials, technocrats, oligarchs, and leaders of state-owned companies who could play a role in the coming years, and perhaps even with the one who will succeed the Kremlin chief of 27 years. Among the names that come up most often is Dmitri Patrushev, the current Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. He is known as one of the hardliners in Vladimir Putin's lineage. He is also the son of Nikolai Patrushev, one of Vladimir Putin's most loyal companions, whose special advisor he is today. The name Sergey Kiriyenko is also mentioned, a former Russian Prime Minister. He is Vladimir Putin's jack-of-all-trades, the one who shapes Russian propaganda, the one who administers the occupied territories in Donbas, and who also orchestrates Russian interference operations abroad. They would also be getting closer to Mikhail Mishustin, the current Russian Prime Minister, or Alexey Dyumin, Putin's former bodyguard who has now become governor of the Tula Oblast and who was tasked with stopping the Ukrainian breakthrough in Kursk. In short, China is advancing its pawns slowly but surely, without a palace revolution. All profiles are moreover closer to Vladimir Putin, thus in the hard line of the regime rather than candidates for democracy. And yet, Quentin, at first glance, nothing suggests any doubt from Xi Jinping regarding Putin's ability to remain the strongman of Russia. It's true that when we look at the images of Putin's last visit to Beijing two months ago, when we see the smiles, the warm handshakes, we tell ourselves that everything is going well between the two allies. But as is often the case in diplomacy, one must look beyond the images. First, let's recall that this visit took place a few days after another, that of Donald Trump. The American president had indeed used this phrase to describe the meeting. A G2 for the two largest world powers. Which Beijing did not contest. So Xi Jinping acknowledges having surpassed his Russian neighbor in the hierarchy, whom he still considered a model not long ago. A photo widely disseminated by Chinese state media also caused a lot of discussion in Russia. That of the two presidents in front of a giant portrait showing them side by side. We see Xi Jinping dominating Vladimir Putin, who looks at him with admiration. In diplomacy, is the message a little clearer? But can we really say that it is Beijing that dictates the tone to the Russians? In any case, Xi is no longer hesitant to say no to Vladimir Putin, and no later than during this last visit of the Russian president to Beijing, Vladimir Putin had arrived with a mega-contract in his luggage for a second gas pipeline between the two countries, named Power of Siberia 2, and which Moscow urgently needs. Everything seemed finalized and awaited the signature of the Chinese president. But at the last moment, a plot twist, Beijing changed its mind and conditioned its green light on a significant reduction in the price of its gas purchased in Russia. Moscow takes the blow, and Vladimir Putin returns empty-handed. Not long ago, Russia had also discovered more and more Chinese espionage operations among Kremlin officials. Moscow had then remained silent for fear of deteriorating relations between the two countries. For experts, this is a symbol of the power balance that has reversed between the two powers. Xi Jinping admired Vladimir Putin coldly. Today, he leads him. Summarizes the Wall [throat clearing] Street Journal. Thank you very much Quentin Berichel, and thank you to the teams behind this work, as every day. Thank you Quentin. To what extent does China control Russia today? To what extent is it infiltrated? To what extent has it created links with all the most important Russian circles? I think we must exercise the greatest caution. We know very little about what is happening. What seems clear to me is that there is a reversal of the balance that has traditionally existed since the Cold War between Russia, the USSR, and China. Yesterday, China was the junior partner of the USSR. Today, it is clear that Russia has replaced China in this role. When we talk about Xi Jinping's admiration for Putin, I think we are touching on an important point. It consisted of saying for Xi Jinping, who had replaced Deng Xiaoping's collective power with his personal power, here is a man who leads alone. That's very good, that's my model. Now, he sees the weakening of his neighbor, his vassal, and the one who leads this country. And with the realism that characterizes him, he is preparing for the long term, for the future. And the future may be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, given the acceleration of history in Russia itself, and given what we sense in the Kremlin around Putin. And so the Chinese, with the greatest realism, say, "Well, this is my vassal, I want to ensure that the succession happens under good conditions." So, under good conditions, that's not the same as it poses the question to you because here, the paper rather rather says "under our conditions." That's a phrase that seems probably excessive to me. But I would be very cautious, I don't know. Under good conditions, meaning I absolutely do not want disorder. There are men around Putin who were chosen by Putin and who are now more acceptable than Putin himself, given the failure. I will still push the logic much further. Can we imagine Xi Jinping seeking to bring down Putin well before his time to ensure his interests? He has no interest in bringing him down. He has an interest in seeing the situation degenerate on its own. He has an interest in seeing the circles around Vladimir Putin tighten more and more around the FSB and therefore the intelligence services, to which Vladimir Putin is both, how to say, close and a hostage. That is to say, Vladimir Putin knows that he has a clan of maximalists around him, but maximalists who can also remove him himself. Facing him, he has Xi Jinping who, in addition to everything Dominique Moisi just said, has time. Xi Jinping will be in power until around 2040, certainly much longer than Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is in the midst of a war. Xi Jinping is at war with no one. And then we must remember that there have been events that the Chinese did not like and that convinced Xi Jinping that he needed to monitor Moscow much more closely. This is notably the rapprochement between Russia and North Korea. When Vladimir Putin went to meet the North Korean leaders and establish a sort of military partnership, meaning we provide food aid to North Korea, and in exchange, not only do you manufacture shells for us, but you send North Koreans to the factories and the front lines in Ukraine. The Chinese were the protector, they are still the protector of North Korea, and they took very badly the fact that Vladimir Putin was doing this without them, bypassing them. And from that moment on, the Chinese said, "Okay, we need to put Putin under a bit more surveillance." Similarly, and I'll finish with this, when you were talking about nuclear weapons earlier, when in 2024 there were rumors of possible use by Vladimir Putin of a so-called tactical nuclear weapon in the area around Kharkiv, the Chinese learned about it, and via the Americans, the American intelligence services had intercepted a number of communications between Russian generals who themselves were not convinced that nuclear weapons should be used. The Americans spoke to the Chinese, and it was the Chinese who picked up their phones and said to Vladimir Putin, "Never in a million years. You are not going to trigger a nuclear conflict for us right now." So these small events, which may seem like small events, were seen from Beijing as the need to take control, or at least to monitor more closely, to take control, the term is not at all accurate, sorry, but to better monitor what was happening in Moscow. Jeaner, I saw an expert who said that, in essence, Xi Jinping wants to transform Russia into a giant Laos or Pakistan, but no, that is to say, a country more than dependent on the Chinese economy. Does it boil down to that, or does it go a bit further in terms of power and influence, etc.? We attribute things to the rich. Well, we attribute a lot to China, remember the Silk Roads. We were told for a long time, for 10 years, we were told that they were taking over part of Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, and so on. Well, in Africa, they continue, but in Europe, these Silk Roads have completely collapsed. So the idea was to buy ports, to buy major transport hubs to move their goods and sell them to Europe. They succeeded with Piraeus. They were counting heavily on Orbán and Hungary, but now there is a change of regime. Orbán was almost in the hands of the Chinese, yes, that's what was clearly happening. He even had Chinese advisors at home. That's the reality. Now they are in trouble because, well, these are the vagaries of democracy, which our Chinese friends are not very accustomed to. So we need to be a bit careful about this idea of Chinese omnipotence because it's very frightening. It's true, they have gone from nothing to everything in the space of 20 years, and that is indeed extremely frightening. They emerged from nowhere. We must remember where China was in 1986 and where it is today. It's the 22nd century. So I am always wary of this idea. Nations do not let themselves be guided like that, and especially an old nation, an old country like Russia, does not let itself be guided like that. It's very dangerous. So who is placing their pawns, who is trying to anticipate moves, to be one step ahead, etc., that's normal. We French do the same thing. We do exactly the same thing. We are everywhere, we are present everywhere. The Americans are also doing the same thing. Not under Trump. They are a bit more foolish today, less intelligent than the Chinese. So again, it doesn't surprise me. They are present as they are present in France, as they are present everywhere. We saw it. I would like to recall a very significant anecdote during the Covid period. Present, sorry, but present like anywhere else. There are links there. And again, you have certainly read the revelations from Insider, Der Spiegel, or Le Monde this week, they managed to access documents showing that the military link between China and Russia is certainly much more significant than we thought over the last six years. And we are not talking about minor links, we are talking about meetings between general staffs with PowerPoint presentations, and exchanges of experience for technological exchange, potentially leading to new generation weapons. They don't do that with all countries either. When we go to a country, we don't directly talk about creating new weapons. We talked a lot about it during the war with Iran. We saw that Russia was providing intelligence to Iran to enable it to bomb American installations located in the Gulf Emirates. So we know that there are exchanges between all these powers, which aim at only one thing: bringing the West to its knees. Because China's ultimate goal is not to have Russia on its knees. China's ultimate goal is to have the West on its knees. It is to break our backs, to turn us into a kind of Chinese Disneyland that is fed by Chinese industrial products, Chinese software. It is we who are in danger more than Russia, I think. I am speaking, moreover, the documents I am talking about from Le Monde and Der Spiegel clearly state that Russia and China are forming an alliance to bring down the West. That is especially the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter. It is we who are in peril today. It is an alliance of convenience. We must not forget that China and Russia have been disputing their respective spheres of influence for decades. Any country that shares borders, especially when you are facing autocracies, has border conflicts that persist. And then the battle for power in that region of the world is also very competitive. As you said, China has arrived, so to speak, in the last 20-25 years, whereas Russia was largely established in that zone, which it claims as its exclusive sphere of influence. And then China came and completely disrupted everything. So, we are facing an alliance of convenience that is very useful for Beijing and for Moscow. It is very useful for Beijing because, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Beijing has been observing what is happening and especially the Western and American reaction. And from there, China is placing its pawns little by little. What is interesting is to see that with not a reversal of the situation, because we are not there yet, but in any case with the weakening of Russia in a long war, which was not foreseen at the beginning by either Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, China is trying, as it always has done, in a pragmatic way, to not put all its eggs in one basket. And so, if Vladimir Putin were to fall in one year or in ten years, Xi Jinping must be certain that his successor will not create disorder, as has been said, because he needs a stable but not too powerful Russia. And secondly, will not create a new Vladimir Putin who would want to resume the old conflict of spheres of influence in the Asian region. For China, this is a cost for 10, 20, 30, 50 years, because China, as you said, has time to plan and therefore really needs to control the future of its relationship with Russia. Go ahead, Dominique. Two things. One, China did not come from nowhere. It is fully aware that until the end of the 18th century, it was the world's leading power. This is not an emerging power as we have called it. It is a re-emergent power. Second common point between Putin and Xi Jinping, their primary objective is to retain power. But in Putin's case, retaining power means not recognizing a defeat for Russia in Ukraine. In Xi Jinping's case, conversely, it means not provoking or accelerating a global economic crisis, because he needs a stable, powerful economy to remain in power himself. He sees that China's growth has been halved in recent years. It is 50% of India's. So there is a kind of very long-term vision but a bit of panic on the Russian side, a lot of calculation and rather a vision, I wouldn't say serene because that's not the case at all, but it's about moderating the game on the Chinese side.