Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meet on Oct. 12 during a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Russia and China's relationship is crucial to each country's competition with the United States and will continue to deepen in 2019.
The Russian-Chinese relationship is crucial in the evolution of the global order as the great power competition among the United States, Russia and China heats up. Assessing the relationship's path in the coming year involves analyzing its many facets: economic, political and military. Geoeconomic Misalignment Russia doubled down on its pivot to Asia in the wake of its military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 and the resultant U.S. and European sanctions. Its goals were to greatly increase bilateral trade and attract investment. With China, the pivot's greatest payoffs have been in the energy domain. A growing network of oil and gas pipelines has quickly cemented Russia as China's top energy supplier while China has greatly expanded its investments in Russia's explorative and extractive, or upstream, energy sector. A major natural gas pipeline to China, named Power of Siberia, will be completed by the end of 2019.
