ABSTRACT
Only a few days after becoming Acting President in August 1999, Putin met Chi Haotian (the Chinese Defence Minister) in Moscow and announced that a solid foundation had been laid for carrying expanded cooperation over into the twenty-first century. He teased Beijing by hinting that his first trip as elected president would be to China: in fact, it was to the UK. Initially, the Chinese were somewhat wary of Putin, as he appeared not to pay much attention to his eastern neighbour, preferring to emphasise the Europeanness of his outlook as someone who had lived and worked in Europe in Soviet times. However, Putin did make a point of citing China as a model to emulate in economic terms, telling Russians they should look to China for lessons on how to attract foreign investment and increase economic growth.1 One of Putin’s first tasks after his election as president in Spring 2000, was to tackle the US bid to build a National Missile Defence Programme and its proposed abrogation of the ABM treaty: for China this raised the spectre of Japan being drawn into plans for defence of Taiwan, in violation of Chinese sovereignty. China was unhappy with Putin’s suggestions for a pan-European missile defence system as an alternative scheme: this implied the exclusion of China. However, after their first summit, Putin and Jiang Zemin issued a strong condemnation of US plans for missile defence shields stating that the US plan was to ‘achieve unilateral superiority in military and security matters’.2 In a particularly forceful statement they also insisted that the USA would be ‘held totally responsible for undermining international stability and security and for all the consequences arising therefrom’.3 The intervention in Kosovo revealed the similarity of views on international issues that would bring Russia and China closer, despite the initial lack of enthusiasm.
