There are many ways to approach the trilateral relations of China, Russia and the United States. This essay focuses on their strategic interactions and exploring the scenarios against the backdrops of recent drastic changing co-relations in the wake of the Ukraine Crisis.

1. Positioning of Russia and the United States in China’s Foreign Policy. There are several dimensions to look at the so-called positioning of Russia and the United States in China’s foreign policy. In terms of country or region, China has four categories. They are major countries, neighboring countries, developing countries and multilateral diplomacy. Russia is both a major country and the neighboring one. China calls its relationship with Russia as the example or new model of major country relations. The United States is a major country and the most important outside factor in the neighborhood. However, the two countries have so far been unable to define their relationship fully and in long term. In terms of relationship natures, China and Russia have characterized theirs as comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination. China and the United States have always had indecisive terms such as engagement, neither friend nor enemy and stakeholders. In terms of overall strategic considerations, it has long been China’s foreign policy to develop omni-directional relations with all the major countries. As a matter of fact in the most of the past 20 plus years, all the three countries of China, Russia and the United States had been relatively independent variables in this trilateral relationship. China and Russia attached great importance to their respective relations with the United States. The United States even talked about quasi-alliance relation with Russia right after the 9/11 and tried to reset the U.S.-Russian relations several times. But now this situation is in the process of drastic changes. Moreover, China-Russia partnership based on win-win cooperation should not be interpreted as a new coalition aiming at the United States or other third party. It is in the interests of all the three as well as others if they could proceed on with new model of major country relations based on non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.

2. Strategic interactions among China, Russia and the United States at the bilateral, multilateral and multilateral levels. All the three countries are of global implication with the interaction over sub-national, national, tri-national and international affairs. At this defining time of new alignments of hard and soft powers of the world, these three countries have acquired some new features in their relations in the recent past years.

Firstly, the tri-pair of the bilateral relations is developing in an uneven way. Among the China-Russia-U.S. relations, the China-Russia relationship has become the politically best one. The Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin jointly announced the arrival of a new era for the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination at the CICA Shanghai Summit in May, 2014. The two countries have put developing their partnership high on the agenda. Regular top-level mutual visits over the past 20 plus years have generated deep mutual trust and close personal friendship between leaders of the two nations. The China-U.S. relationship is featured by the closest economic ties. According to the Chinese statistics, the two-way trade of 2013 was US$ 521 billion and by the end of 2013 the accumulated two-way investment surpassed the US$ 100 billion dollars. In the same period, the China-Russia trade was US$ 89.2 billion dollars and the Russia-U.S. trade was only US$ 30 billion dollars. The Russia-U.S. relationship is full of strategic frictions and confrontations. The past one and two years, this relationship saw such events of Snowden case, the Syrian crisis and most of all the Ukraine and Crimea crises.

Secondly, this trilateral relationship sees that China and Russia come closer but keep farther distances with the United States. In the most of the twenty plus years since the end of the Cold War, each of the three countries had been relatively independent variables in this trilateral relationship. China and Russia attached great importance to their respective relations with the United States. The United States even talked about quasi-alliance relation with Russia right after the 9/11 and tried to reset the U.S.-Russian relations several times. But now this situation is being changed mostly because of the U.S. strategies on the both sides of Eurasia. On the east side of Eurasia, the Obama administration has pushed the so-called Rebalancing in the Asian Pacific region mainly aiming at China. On the west side, the United States and its European allies are squeezing the strategic spaces of Russia. All these lead to the situation that all the three countries had tried to avoid in the past twenty years.

Thirdly, China, Russia and the United States are facing Europe Factor in their trilateral relationship. As a matter of course, this trilateral relationship must take into consideration other outside factors, for instance, the European one. On the one hand, the Transatlantic Alliance is facing a dual-challenge of concerted actions towards Russia and different interests among its members, such as those between the United States and Europe and those among the European countries. On the other hand, China is also confronting with how to balance its respective strategic partnerships with Russia and Europe. On March 27th, 2014, the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to lift bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership. On May 20th, 2014, President Xi held talks with the visiting Russian President Putin in Shanghai and they agreed to continuously expand and deepen practical cooperation so as to promote the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination to a higher level.

Finally, this difficult trilateral relationship has made the reforming international system even more difficult. Major powers are the most important factors in making, maintaining and reforming international system. However, with the widening gaps in understanding and shaping the international system, China, Russia and the United States have different sets of principles and movements in this respect. Unlike the most difficult days of the global financial crisis, nowadays the three countries seldom set for earnest discussions, let alone actions. China’s calling for a New Model of Major-country Relations is still a diplomatic term rather than a functioning concept. Russia temporary loss of its attendance at the G8 in March 2014 shows the difficulties between Russia and the other West major powers. The United States cares more about continuing its leadership this century rather than seeking more equal relations with other major powers.

3. Scenarios of the trilateral relations among China, Russia and the United States. As these trilateral relations are still in the process of unfolding and evolving, it is difficult to depict their full and exact pictures. However, with solid studies and balanced views, it is still possible to draw a sketch of the future trends of these trilateral relations. While leaving the worst and best scenarios aside, it looks likely that we will see the following three scenarios.

Scenario One. China, Russia and the United States with their allies or partners, they end up as two fronting blocs something similar during the Cold War years. In this situation, China and Russia will be led to an arms race, military friction and political confrontation with the United States. These would plunge the world in an era of the New Cold War with small and medium-sized scales of conflicts and wars, which would spread the chaos into other countries and fields.

Scenario Two. China, Russia and the United States would basically stay on the present track that is neither desirable nor uncontrollable. If China, Russia and the United States want to maintain the present status of their relations, they have to manage their differences in the way not to intensify but control them. Furthermore, the three countries should and could build up the positive elements by jointly combating massive infectious disease of Ebola, enhancing their consensus on meeting the challenges of the ISIS, continuing the international efforts on the nuclear issues of Iran and North Korea, and maintaining peace and stability of the world.

Scenario Three. China, Russia and the United States converge to the common understanding of joint efforts to meet the challenges of our times. Actually, in the past two decade and more, the three countries did show some commonalities in combating international terrorism after the 9/11 in 2001, coping with the global financial crisis in 2008 and averting U.S. direct involvement in Syria in 2013. Therefore, so long as the three countries could give top priority to the overall situation and seek for maximum common denominators, they still have the chance to reach agreed principles, set non-conflicting policies and conduct paralleled or joint efforts. If better still, they could even reach agreements on the relevant institution building, rule making and agenda setting.

Among the aforementioned three scenarios, we should avoid Scenario One, improve Scenario Two and strive for Scenario Three. Unlike some of the natural scientists who can prove their hypotheses in the laboratories, we social scientists could only debate ours and try to be to the real situation as closely as possible.

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