Beijing-Moscow joint declaration spells it out: we’re in a new Cold War

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on Friday. Picture: AFP

It’s a historic document and we are in danger of missing its significance.

The formal joint declaration between China and Russia, in combination with the personal meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, makes it official: the two great communist powers of the 20th century, now the two great nationalist dictatorships of the 21st century, see themselves embarked on a new cold war with the US and its allies.

It’s true the statement lacks the flamboyant rhetorical excesses and technicolour jargon of so many Cold War statements – a style now mostly practised only by North Korea.

But in substance, it laid out the lines of the new cold war and used classic Cold War formulations. Thus China and Russia fully commit themselves in this statement to “the universal human value” of democracy. Russia and China, the statement says, as global powers leading great cultures embody “longstanding traditions of democracy”.

This is the classic formulation of the Cold War. Remember that the official title of North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Indeed the statement implies that the USS and its allies are fraudulent democracies, and behave undemocratically on the world stage. In true George Orwell style, dictatorship is democracy.

Above all, the statement ­asserts, there can be no objective or universal standard of democracy. Each nation can form the democracy that suits it best. That means that any human rights criticism of China or Russia is, as the statement says, an unwarranted interference in their internal affairs.

But the statement’s geo-strategic content makes its Cold War aims clear. In short, Russia fully backs China on Taiwan, and China fully backs Russia on ­demanding that NATO must not expand its membership, even, presumably, to a nation such as Sweden.

This is a tremendous line in the sand that Beijing and Moscow have crossed. Beijing backs Moscow’s central arguments in ­Europe – against NATO, against the EU, against the US. And Moscow fully backs Beijing in Asia.

Both sides join explicitly to ­denounce the “negative impact of the US Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region”. The statement declares the contemporary partnership between China and Russia has “no limits”, acknowledges no “forbidden areas” and is closer and better than any alliance between the two nations during the Cold War.

Some analysts are taking comfort from there being no mention of Ukraine. This is mistaken. The Biden administration thinks ­Moscow may be days away from launching some military action against Ukraine. But presumably Moscow will offer some alleged pretext or cite some phony provocation to justify such action. It’s impossible even for the Chinese to support such a pretext before Moscow announces it, perhaps before it has even finally decided what the pretext will be.

The denunciation of the AUKUS pact between Australia, the US and Britain is explicit, ­severe and should give pause to all Australians. It suggests not that the pact is ill-advised but that it is long overdue and the dismal failure of Australia to acquire real military capacity is something Beijing would very much like to continue.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin know they are in a cold war with the West and they are pursuing it ruthlessly.

But in Western nations, ­including Australia, there is still a strong propensity, especially among those who make money from China, or whose institutions do, to deny reality.

These folks should read this historic declaration.