RUSSO-CHINESE RELATIONS:

Yeltsin and China’s President Jiang Zemin talked last week on the fringes of a Central Asian summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Though the Clinton administration has called both China and Russia “strategic partners,” their rapprochement has a distinctly anti-American tinge. Both fear the precedent that NATO support for the Kosovo Albanians sets for treatment of repressed minorities like the Chechens in Russia or the Tibetans or Uighurs in China. Both oppose the planned U.S.-Japan theater high-altitude area missile defense (THAAD), which could be extended to cover South Korea and Taiwan against North Korean and Chinese threats. Both hope to limit growing U.S. influence in energy-rich Central Asia. The Yeltsin-Jiang talks denounced “some nations” that seek “hegemony relying on force,” citing the bombing in Yugoslavia and Iraq. Backing up the rhetoric, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov had talks in Beijing to offer expanded cooperation in military technology, for which China is already Russia’s main customer.