(Tung-chieh Tsai, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung Hsing University)
Xi Jinping ended his visit to Hungary, the last stop of his European tour, and returned to China on May 11. He met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing on May 16, pushing bilateral relations to its peak in history. Then, Putin first visited North Korea in 24 years on June 19 and signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement” with Kim Jong-un, which is akin to a defensive alliance. Two days later, he continued the first official visit to Vietnam in seven years.
The 24th Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held in Kazakhstan on July 4. During which, the most significant resolution was to approve Belarus as the 8th member of SCO and also its first European member, marking a highly symbolic significance.
During his attendance at the summit of the SCO in Central Asia, Xi Jinping reached consensus of building a third trans-border railway with Kazakhstan and witnessed the first direct arrival of Chinese vehicles at a port of Caspian Sea through highway. Xi then transferred to Tajikistan for a visit, during which the two sides stressed, aside from establishing a “comprehensive strategic partnership in a new era,” the importance of building a “China-Tajikistan-Afghanistan transportation corridor,” and gradual rebuilding a “China-Tajikistan- Uzbekistan highway.” They focus on jointly building a multi-modal transport corridor of “China-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan- Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey,” thus fulfilling the vision of developing and building a close and intensive European-Asian land network.
When the engagements of China and Russia continue to rise, and at the same day when Xi Jinping concluded his visit to Central Asia and returned to Beijing on July 6, Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Mihály Orbán visited Moscow right after his visit to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Orbán takes a different stance from other European Union (EU) countries in the issue of Ukraine and has just assumed the rotating President of EU. He described his visit to Moscow as a “Peace Mission,” but has been under strong criticisms from the US and European countries. Despite of that, Orbán continued his tour to Beijing on July 8, during which Xi Jinping met with him again after their meeting two months ago and both sides exchanged views on how to promote peace in Ukraine. Notably, at the same day as Xi Jinping met with Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi, always neutral in Ukraine issue, visited Moscow and met with Putin that has caused widespread concerns from the West.
From the above, in just two months, a series of developments including Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe, China-Russia exchange, Russia-North Korea signing alliance agreement, the expansion of SCO, Orban’s sudden visits to Ukraine, Russia, and China, and Modi’s visit to Russia, have brought numerous variables to the Eurasian geopolitical framework. From certain perspective, they have also paved ways for this framework’s shifting to a “post-Americanization.”
However, from another perspective, the abovementioned developments also conceal potential contradictions. First, while Russia is getting closer to China, it is also trying to win over North Korea and Vietnam, suggesting a balanced tactics. Second, the SCO has approved the memberships of Iran and Belarus from 2023-24, which demonstrates its rising influence, but it’s intriguing that India Prime Minster Modi, being the only absent leader of the 2024 SCO summit, chose to visit Russia instead. Third, China and Russia appeared to reach an implicit consensus of “jointly managing” Central Asia through the SCO, but the fact that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan elevated and renamed “Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (CCTS)” to “Organization of Turkic States (OTS)” in 2021 makes it difficult for China and Russia to exclusively benefit from this region. Not only did Kazakhstan propose the establishment of a “Council of Turkic Central Bank" at the 2024 OTS summit, but Hungary, one of the three observers of the OTS, managed to attend the summit during the gap in its visits to Russia and China as mentioned above.
In summary, the current Eurasian geopolitical framework is highly complicated. On one hand, this region is surrounded by the US-led NATO and island chain alliance; on the other hand, the implicit China-Russia interaction reveals cooperative competition. Though the SCO has kept a striking expansion in recent years, India always keeps an ambiguous distance from it. In addition, the intervention of OTS and the potential powder keg by Israel-Hamas Conflict have contributed to the complexity of geopolitics in this region. The future developments in this region are hard to predict but certainly cannot be ignored.
（Translated to English by Tracy Chou）
