Rex
Tillerson, the 64-year-old Exxon Mobile CEO, is president-elect
Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of state. Tillerson has
worked at the oil giant for his entire 41-year career and has strong
links with Rosneft in Russia – and with the Kremlin. His
appointment now depends on finding majority support among Republicans
in the Senate
'Friends
forever'? China wary of Rex Tillerson wooing away Russia
The
Trump administration will have close ties to Moscow via its secretary
of state but relations with Beijing are frosty. Could Sino-Russian
ties be under threat?
Tom Phillips in
Beijing
Wednesday 14
December 2016 06.59 GMT
Rex Tillerson’s
controversial nomination as secretary of state has delighted Moscow
where the Texan oilman has deep and long-standing ties. Donald
Trump’s choice of the ExxonMobil chief was “100% good news” for
Vladimir Putin, one opposition politician claimed.
But in Beijing,
already reeling from Trump’s early forays into foreign policy, the
move has inspired no such celebration, instead fuelling fears that
the president-elect’s courtship of the Kremlin could be part of a
bold strategic bid to isolate China.
“He’s a very
adventurous strategist,” Shi Yinhong, a foreign policy specialist
from Renmin University, said of the incoming president who has
already enraged Beijing by threatening to upend decades of US policy
towards China.
“If Mr Putin and
Mr Trump become great friends then China can do nothing about it –
but China will be prepared for some degree of alienation between
Moscow and Beijing.”
Growing Chinese
angst that the Republican might take a harder line on China and seek
to drive a wedge between it and Russia was on display on Wednesday in
the editorial pages of the Global Times, a state-run tabloid.
The newspaper played
down what it said were public “concerns” that warmer ties between
Trump and Putin might harm the Sino-Russian relationship but admitted
such thinking was “not ridiculous”. “[China and Russia] will
keep going forward side by side,” the newspaper insisted.
John Delury, an
associate professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University, said
that within Chinese foreign policy circles Tillerson’s nomination
was seen as clear evidence of Trump’s “tilt to Russia”.
The oil industry
veteran has made at least five trips to China since 2008, most
recently in July when he met with Wang Yilin, a longtime Communist
party member who is the chairman of state-run energy giant China
National Petroleum Corp.
But Tillerson, who
has opposed US sanctions against Moscow, enjoys far deeper
connections to Russia.
The ExxonMobil chief
is reportedly a personal friend of Igor Sechin, a Russian official
considered the country’s second-most powerful man after Putin, and
was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship in 2013 after striking a
drilling deal with state-run oil giant Rosneft.
Delury said that
even before Tillerson’s nomination policy wonks in Beijing had
raised their eyebrows at how Trump was sending “loving signals to
Moscow” but showing no such tenderness to China’s President Xi
Jinping.
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“They are very
much aware of a double standard in how Trump seems to embrace Putin
and at best keep Xi Jinping at arms length, if not seem to want a
combative relationship.
“It does suggest
that there is geopolitics behind this. It is obviously not informed
by values: if Trump likes strongmen – as he was accused of – then
he should like Xi Jinping as much he likes Putin.”
China has offered a
tepid official response to Tillerson’s nomination.
“We have noted the
relevant reports,” foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told
reporters, adding that Beijing was “willing to work with the
secretary of state, whoever it is, to move China-US relations
forwards”.
However, some
observers say China’s leaders will be alarmed at the possibility
that Trump is seeking to play Richard Nixon’s “China card” in
reverse by wooing Moscow while treating Beijing mean.
In 1972, in an
audacious bid to isolate the Soviets, Nixon and Henry Kissinger
travelled to China to seal a historic rapprochement with Mao Zedong.
“I know that you
are one who sees when an opportunity comes, and then knows that you
must seize the hour and seize the day,” Nixon told Chairman Mao,
paraphrasing one of the revolutionary’s own poems.
Now, some believe
Trump may be hoping to do the exact opposite: cut an increasingly
assertive China down to size by luring Moscow away from its embrace.
“I think that is
Trump’s intention,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political
scientist professor from Hong Kong’s Baptist University who
believes the billionaire president-elect would like to “detach”
Moscow from Beijing.
Political and
economic ties between Beijing and Moscow have blossomed since Xi
became president in 2013 with the Chinese leader painting the two
countries as “friends forever”.
Last year Putin was
guest of honour at a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square,
appearing on the rostrum on Xi’s right.
Even so, Shi Yinhong
said he could see how the Russian leader might be tempted by the
carrot Trump was dangling before his nose: improved relations with
Washington, and possibly Brussels, an end to economic sanctions, and
the ability to reduce Moscow’s dependency on China. “Mr Putin
will be very pleased [by this],” he said.
Delury said he would
not be surprised if President Trump chose to visit Russia before
flying in to Beijing. “He’s looking for leverage with the Chinese
and he’s trying to needle them. He’s already getting under their
skin with Taiwan and I suppose he could try a Moscow trip too.”
It was even possible
Trump might use such a trip to further undermine Beijing by holding
talks with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on the sidelines of
a meeting in the Russian capital.
“That’s the kind
of brave new world we could be entering,” Delury said. “Beijing
would not like that. It would be a brash move and it would put
Beijing in a tough spot because they do want dialogue … and they
are always telling the Americans you’ve got to talk to Pyongyang.
But if it happened in Moscow without them there and with them kind of
in the dark … that could give them a little heartburn.”
But the American
scholar said he was unconvinced Trump would manage to break the bond
between Russia and China by pursuing an “upside-down Nixon
strategy”.
“Putin is going to
go along for the ride a little bit but Putin doesn’t want a
breakdown in relations with China,” he said.
“The reason it all
worked in the Seventies was the Sino-Soviet split. Nixon could do
what he did because China and the Soviets were enemies. They were
ready to go to war. That isn’t the situation at all today.”
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