Southeast Asia as a Prospective Area of China-Russia Cooperation: the Belt and Road Initiative Opportunity

Россия и АТР. 2019. No. 3. P. 125–137.

Lukonin S., Kanaev E., Efremova A.

While the Belt and Road Initiative (the BRI) offers its participants plenty of unique opportunities, the gap between promising economic feedback and disturbing security implications is growing, which undermines the BRI prospects. As the BRI further proceeds, given its global reach and strategic orientation, contradictions between China and its partners will multiply. A case to substantiate this assessment is the BRI implementation in Southeast Asia, which mirrors the challenges this project encounters globally and which can be used as a testing ground for elaborating on effective solutions to tackle the emerging problems. The research question is why cooperation between China and Russia in Southeast Asia can narrow the afore­mentioned gap, which specific directions are the most promising, and which limiting factors Beijing and Moscow will have to take into consideration. The authors argue that cooperation between China and Russia in Southeast Asia in the BRI context can narrow the spectrum of challenges as well as decrease apprehensions of the ASEAN member states, the BRI generates. Cooperation between China and Russia, in case the latter increases its economic profile in Southeast Asia, has sufficient potential to form the international context conducive to keeping the present and prospective contradictions manageable. This practice, or its components, can be expanded to other regions of Eurasia to the best advantage of China and its BRI partners. 

Keywords: belt and road initiative, Инициатива «Пояс и Путь»