President Xi Comes to Town
... trying to serve as a balancing actor in the North East Asia, Moscow is explicitly tilting toward Beijing and Pyongyang. The prime challenge for the Russian foreign policy is not about how to forge an inclusive great power multilateral understanding on North Korea, but rather how to make sure that the ongoing Russia-DPRK rapprochement is not looked at with suspicions or discontent from Beijing. In the South East Asia this shift has been so far less articulated, but Moscow’s attempts to reach out to ASEAN have had only limited success (for instance, the Russia-ASEAN trade turnout over last couple of years amounted to only USD 20–25 billion). At the same time, Russia has become more supportive of China on the issue of Taiwan. An important task for ...
