China-Russia Strategic Partnership

China has been committed to creating a strategic partnership with Russia over the post-Cold War era, which demonstrates China’s foreign strategy of restoring its past glory as a great power with the partnership as the strategic fulcrum for its “peaceful” rise at the systemic (global) level. This strategy also reflects China’s desire for intensifying its economic and energy cooperation with its largest neighbor. By formulating the strategic partnership, China wishes to reshape the current global order more to its liking and counterattack its perceived US containment of its rise. By intensifying their economic and energy cooperation, China hopes to sustain its economic growth that the Chinese leadership and academics have long considered as underlying China’s overall power and the country’s rejuvenation. By expanding their military collaboration, China aspires to accelerate the PLA’s modernization and work together with Russia to contain US military unilateralism and hegemonism.