The Duran Podcast - Russia-China partnership remains TOP priority

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Russia-China partnership remains TOP priority

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Shoygu's trip to China. Not much attention is being paid to this trip, obviously, given everything that's happened with Zelensky and Trump and the meeting in London. On Ukraine, we did have Shoygu traveling to China, and I'm sure that one of the main topics that they have been discussing does revolve around the negotiations between Russia and the United States and it's Russians keeping the Chinese up to date on what is happening with those negotiations. Absolutely. It's a very important trip, actually, and you can see that the Chinese attached a great deal of importance to it because Shui Gu went to Beijing. Remember, he is Putin's

national security advisor, but he's not a senior, he's a very senior person. But I mean, he's not the head of state or the head of government, he would normally be expected to hold talks with his opposite number, who happens to be Wang Yi, who is both China's foreign minister and Xi Jinping's national security advisor. But along with those talks with Wang Yi, Shuiu was also met by Xi Jinping. So Xi Jinping had a meeting with Shuiu, and it goes. got lots of attention in the Chinese media. So what's basically happening is this. The Russians are now conducting talks with the Americans. And I think it's again important to stress these are only talks at the moment. There's been some agreements about unblocking embassies,

appointing ambassadors, those sort of things. There's a process towards normalization between the United States and Russia underway. There's some talk eventually of reopening economic links of the Americans being able to establish joint efforts in Russia to develop mineral resources. They're that kind of thing. But the Russians are doing that. They're talking to the Americans. there are the first tentative signs that Russian-American relations are improving. Now, China's relations with the United States, by contrast, are, if anything, becoming rather more difficult. It's not, you know, a straight line. Sometimes you still get comments from the Americans, from Donald Trump especially, that he's interested in coming to some understanding with the Chinese.

But overall, and this has been a trend now for some years, relations between China and the United States are becoming more tense. There's talk about superpower rivalry between China and the United States and the Asia Pacific. There's talk about the Americans re-aligning, re-transferring their forces in Europe to the Asia-Pacific. So we have a world where there are three superpowers, Russia, China, the United States. China and Russia have become very close. They became very close during the time when Russia had very bad relations with the United States. China had better relations, but worsening relations with the United States.

Russia's relations with the United States are improving, China's relations with the United States are deteriorating. What the Russians are doing is they're going to Beijing. Putin has spoken to Xi Jinping. He sent Shui-gu to Beijing. The purpose of the trips is to inform the Chinese precisely as to what is going on and to reassure the Chinese that whatever happens in relations between America and Russia. It will not affect Russia's friendships, its strategic partnership with China. The Chinese do not need to be concerned, therefore, about this improvement in Russian-American relations.

It is not being done at their expense. That's what this is all about. So what do the Chinese say about all of this? Have they put out any statements, any readouts? or anything expressing their views of the negotiations and what's going on? Absolutely. They have. Both the Chinese media and Wang Yi when he met Lov, by the way, in South Africa about a week ago. They support him. They say they're absolutely fine about it. They think it's a good thing that steps are finally being taken to move forward with the normalization of relations between

Russia and the United States. China, as they like to say, never cause trouble in terms of the situation in Ukraine. If some kind of process to achieve peace can be found, they will be pleased. China and Brazil had a meeting with Russia about Ukraine just a couple of days ago, putting forward their own ideas about how the process of settlement of the conflict in Ukraine could be achieved, the Chinese have publicly said that they support it. And so at the moment, they claim and they say that they're not worried about it at all. I think that is true. I think that they are being reassured by the Russians. And Xi Jinping, of course, is coming to Moscow on the 9th of May to attend the Victory Day celebrations. And Lula will also be there. But I think one thing I would say is

this. From a Chinese point of view, a strong relationship with Russia is an overriding national interest. It's something that the Chinese have worked for decades to achieve, and they have achieved it. There is always, at some level in China, a worry that the Russians are ultimately a European country that if the Americans come along and offer them things, the Russians will agree and they will start to distance themselves from China. The ultimate underlying reason why there was the Sino-Soviet split between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1950s and early 1960s is because the Soviets at that time prioritise relations with the West, detent with the West, over the alliance with China.

So the Chinese are going to be a little nervous about this, not very much. But what that means is that if we see a swerve in American relations, if they start threatening the Russians again to bring the Russians into line with extra sanctions, sanctions on Russian oil exports and that kind of thing. The Chinese have been incentivized again to continue backing the Russians because they don't want the Russians to tilt in the other direction. So the Russians are handling this very carefully. They want to reassure the Chinese.

Our strategic partnership is not in jeopardy. It remains our priority. Xi Jinping is coming to Russia in memory. Putin is going to China in September. The friendship between our countries continues unchanging. The Chinese, happy with all of that, but absolutely wanting to be briefed in detail as to what exactly is going on between the Americans and the Russians

and probably prepared to give a little more to the Russians than they did previously, because it's now becoming more important that they should. Can you make the argument that the conflict in Ukraine for the Chinese has kept the United States bogged down in Ukraine, has kept them occupied with Ukraine? And we understand the plan was, you know, get to Russia first, destroy Russia, and then you have a direct path to China. It didn't work out.

No. And the United States has now been bogged down in Ukraine for three years fighting Russia and losing the collective West, absolutely losing this conflict. And therefore, they haven't been able to clear the path towards China. Can you make the argument that from a Chinese perspective, if Ukraine is negotiated and wrapped up, then it frees up the United States to fully focus on going after China? Granted, they go after China without. destroying Russia first, but they're still going after China, I guess, is the end result. The Chinese always benefit and always come out the winners from America's wars. They are the big beneficiaries of American wars. They benefited from the Vietnam War. They were the big winner out of the Vietnam War, because as a result of the Vietnam War, the Americans got tied down in Vietnam and all kinds of processes followed. And the result was that Nixon went to China and the United States and China established relations with each other. So the Chinese were

major beneficiaries of the Vietnam War. They became, again, major beneficiaries of the forever wars that George W. Bush launched in the Middle East, even as China rose and got stronger. stronger. The Americans were fighting in villages in Afghanistan and Iraq and giving up a huge amount of time and energy focusing on those. The Russian Chinese have been the major beneficiaries of the American obsession with Ukraine, the American investment in Ukraine. Again, the Americans have been obsessively focused on Russia. They've been sending arms to Ukraine. Ukraine, depleting their own arsenals, they've been failing to transfer their forces from Europe, all the things that they said that they would do. Instead of focusing on China, which is what they

say they want to do, they've been focusing on Russia instead and losing there. And in the meantime, China has moved forward and it's pursued the BRICS agenda successfully and it's built up the Belt and road, it's done all of those things, and it's achieved more advances in technology, you know, in AI and in chips and all that kind of thing. So China is always the winner out of all of these conflicts that the United States insists on getting itself bogged down into. Now, if the war in Ukraine ends, and by the way, there are lots of Americans who say this, there are lots of Americans who make the point that I've just made. If the Americans are able to finally wrap up the war in Ukraine and focus on China, then obviously it is not good for China. But the Chinese will say to themselves,

well, we've used those last three years successfully. We built up our position very successfully in the meantime. We've achieved much greater degree of resilience. We've got our trading system sorted out, we've developed this relationship with the Russians, we're not realistically at risk of being blockaded again. And so they've already gained something. And the other thing is that the Chinese will be saying something else to themselves. They will say, well, look, America always gets into these wars, always gets into these conflicts.

It always tells itself that it won't, that it will focus on us, but it always gets distracted. and get drawn into other things, and sooner or later, it will do so again. Because this is the United States. The neocons have never gone away sooner or later. They'll come back and they'll involve the Americans and some other problem somewhere else, maybe in the Middle East, at which point we will again benefit. That's probably what the Chinese are saying to themselves up in that. Yeah, it makes sense. Just to wrap up the video, I guess if you are China, you come to the conclusion that eventually the United States was going to move towards their direction, whether it was one year, three years, five years, however long the Ukraine conflict went.

Eventually, the conflict would wrap up and the United States would focus in on China. So if you're If you're China, you say the outcome has benefited us because at least the United States is not moving in on us via Russia, via a Russia that they defeated. Now they're going to have to come towards us with a Russia that is on our side that has won the conflict. So all in all, they're in a much better place than they would have been had Russia been defeated by. Well, absolutely. Oh, indeed, at the conflict in Ukraine. trade, it never happened. Right. The big beneficiaries from this, from their point of view, it has ended well. It was going to happen.

It was going to happen. So it's happened in a way for them to prepare. And then we go ahead. Exactly. I mean, they gained three extra years. They gained more time. And as I said, for them, it's worked. And they gained a much stronger friendship with Russia as well.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And they've used this time to prepare. And they've used that time to prepare. I mean, we saw that with all the, you know, the fighter jets that they're not rolling out and the aircraft carriers that they're rolling out. And, you know, the AI programs that they're developing and things of that kind.

So, you know, they've used the time and they've used the time well, as they always do. And they've received a lot of intel as well from Russia on everything. Of course, they have about everything. They know about American technology. They know about how the high Mars works and how the attackers works and how these things can be shalt down. and what the Abrams tank is really like and what you can do with the Bradley's. They've learned lots and lots and lots of things about the Americans, about how the Starling system operates.

They are in a far stronger position than they were three years ago. Thanks to Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, Tony Lincoln, Victoria Newlands, all of that crowd. They involved the United States and another Forever War, which is, well, the lost war in Ukraine. and we see who the real winner is. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitsch, Telegram, Rockfin, and X.

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