Why has the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, whose 25th anniversary was celebrated on July 16 brought so many benefits to those two nations? Chinese scholar Cui Heng, from the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, reviewed those benefits for China’s Global Times daily on the day of the anniversary, including that “the back-to-back strategic coordination between China and Russia” has proven “immune to attempts by external powers to undermine the core of their ties.”
Cui emphasized that the treaty’s importance for overall international relations lies in how it “has allowed China and Russia to break away from the age-old binary logic that confines major powers to either alliance or confrontation.” That model, in turn, offers “a valuable reference for countries striving to break free from unipolar hegemony and pursue independent development, said the expert,” Global Times added.
The core concept which made the treaty so successful, is that a commitment to “ever-lasting friendship” between the two countries was spelled out in the text of the legal treaty, Cui pointed out.
Although Cui did not himself say so, their commitment to “ever-lasting friendship” echoes the “mutual benefit” principle spelled out in the text of the Treaty of Westphalia, which freed Europe from over a century of war and laid the foundation for the development of Western civilization.
This concept, of everlasting friendship and mutual benefit between nations, is what the majority of the world is looking towards. Just the day before, Pew Research released the results of its latest global poll comparing the views of China and the United States in 36 countries. This year, for the first time in 20 years, it found that “China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most of 36 countries surveyed,” all but nine, in fact. The poll of more than 45,000 people was done from Feb. 8-May 13, a period dominated by the U.S. relaunching war against Iran.
Global Times recognized today that the poll does not show that China “won.” Rather, it is “the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, along with the principles of an equal and orderly multipolar world and universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization” to which people around the world are turning.
