Russia and China, two years into the new era of multipolarity.

Dilermando Toni (*) - This February 4th marked exactly two years since the release of the Joint Communiqué of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. The lengthy and comprehensive document, carefully and thoroughly prepared, emerged during President Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, held in China.

It was no coincidence that respected names in the international relations scene elevated this document to historical and structural status. Ambassador Celso Amorim wrote in Carta Capital magazine: “The joint declaration by Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, and Xi Jinping, Chinese leader, crystallizes a process of immense geopolitical significance and constitutes, in itself, the most important single event since the events that marked the end of the Cold War, in particular, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, above all, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Even without the legal force of a treaty, the declaration expresses, with a clarity never before achieved, a reality hitherto seen only as a possibility: the end of the era of the almost absolute hegemony of the United States over the destinies of the world.”[i]

The document reaffirms the strategic, unwavering, and boundless alliance between the two powers through closer cooperation in a wide range of fields, including economic and financial, military, cultural, scientific, and technological. This is not exactly new. It appears when the two countries recognize each other as world powers and assess the international situation and their responsibilities on a different level, as follows: “Today, the world is undergoing important changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation. It sees the development of processes and phenomena such as multipolarity, economic globalization, the advent of the information society, cultural diversity, the transformation of the global governance architecture and world order; there is increasing interrelation and interdependence between States; a trend towards the redistribution of power in the world has emerged; and the international community shows a growing demand for leadership aimed at peaceful and gradual development.” (emphasis mine, DT).[ii]

In this way, the document formally enshrines the advent of a new world order, a multipolar order whose central pillar is the strategic alliance between counter-hegemonic Russia and socialist China, which becomes the main characteristic of the current international situation.

It didn't take long for attacks on the Declaration from the so-called collective West to appear in large numbers and with a high degree of virulence. This fact in itself is not surprising because the US and its allies, committed to regaining their status as a hegemonic power, have made the containment of China and Russia by all possible means their foreign policy strategy. More clearly, the immediate objective of isolating, weakening, dividing, and destroying Russia has been insistently declared by the highest authorities in the US government. This took concrete form with the expansion of NATO towards the Russian border, with the coup d'état and the encouragement of Nazism in Ukraine, and with the war unleashed by this regime against the ethnic Russian population of the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine, bordering Russia.

However, even among some sectors of the Brazilian academic left, this document has not elicited sympathetic reviews, from its emergence to the present. Some disagree with its content, interpreting it as a mere tactical alliance and suggesting that the conflicts, wars, and tensions currently present in the "international system" could result in a unipolar world with an even stronger US hegemony. This opinion undeniably implies the possibility of a victory for the US strategy of containing Russia and China.

Another, more sophisticated perspective insists that multipolarity is not yet a reality but rather a trend of the "international system," which is indeed marked by a long transition, because the replacement of a hegemony would be a lengthy process, according to what can be inferred from the law of uneven development among capitalist powers formulated by Lenin in the second decade of the 20th century. In such a situation, they say, the socialist perspective would become more distant.

In any of their forms, these opinions do not accurately interpret Lenin, nor do they accurately assess the current balance of power. In this way, they distance themselves from much of the Brazilian and global left. They do not help progressive forces to devise the appropriate strategy, tactics, and program for the struggle of the Brazilian people. Above all, the program, since the advent of multipolarity, the growing affirmation of socialism in the world through Chinese achievements, the glaring inequalities in Brazilian society, and the very advent of a progressive government in Brazil, reaffirm the need for a socialist alternative. By not seeing this, they risk slipping into reformist opportunism.

Indeed, Lenin, observing the different rates of development of the main imperialist countries, formulated the law of the unequal economic and political development of capitalist countries in the era of imperialism. This observation is set out in a number of passages in his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism of 1916 and in several other works from this period. But, in the eyes of Lenin and later Stalin, these changes in the correlation of forces occurred rapidly, sometimes in leaps and bounds, and not slowly. In the era of imperialism, the dynamism of capitalist development is exacerbated despite the tendency towards stagnation. Speaking on this issue, Stalin started from Lenin's synthesis that "the unequal economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism"[iii] to conclude that "it is determined by the possibility that some imperialist groups have to rapidly increase their technical equipment, to cheapen goods and to seize markets, to the detriment of other imperialist groups."[iv]

To arrive at a twofold conclusion: 1) that due to monopolistic competition, inter-imperialist wars were inevitable, and 2) that it was possible for the imperialist chain to break at its weakest link, and therefore, that it would be possible for socialism to triumph in a group or even in a single country.

In 1953, analyzing the experience of World War II, Stalin wrote: “After the First World War, it was also considered that Germany had been definitively put out of the fight, just as some comrades currently think that Japan and Germany have been definitively put out of the fight. At that time, it was also said and proclaimed in the press that the United States had placed Europe under a tutelage regime, that Germany could no longer rise up, that from then on there would be no more war between capitalist countries. Despite this, Germany rose up and became a great power 15-20 years after its defeat, freed itself from captivity and took the path of independent development.”[v] Obviously, here Stalin was not dealing with the more prolonged transitions from one historical epoch to another, but rather with the changes in the correlation of forces between powers within the same historical epoch. In this specific case, within the historical epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions that we are currently experiencing.

In the current situation, although US dominance over Europe has been greatly reinforced, it is possible that, in perspective, due to the shrinking of the global single market and the gradual emergence of another market and other forms of payment alternative to the US dollar among the so-called Global South, greater contradictions will arise between the countries of the so-called Collective West. This perspective cannot be ignored.

Lenin did not live to see the rapid development of the USSR before World War II, just as Stalin did not witness the current fabulous Chinese development. And history practically confirms that socialism, due to its advantages, can develop incomparably faster than capitalism and, therefore, is always an alternative to be crushed by imperialism. Thus, the law of uneven development is also extended between the great imperialist countries and the great socialist countries.

But the pace of development is also uneven between the capitalist/imperialist center and a number of countries in the so-called periphery. Lenin wrote at the time that: “The export of capital has repercussions on the development of capitalism within the countries in which it is invested, accelerating it extraordinarily. If, as a consequence, the said export can, to a certain extent, cause a stagnation of development in the exporting countries, this can only take place in exchange for a greater broadening and deepening of the development of capitalism throughout the world.”[vi] And he insisted in another text: “One of the most essential properties of imperialism consists precisely in that it accelerates the development of capitalism in the most backward countries...”[vii]

IMF statistics from the last half-century show exactly that.[viii] For several decades, the annual GDP growth rates of so-called developing countries have been much higher than those of rich countries, a group that includes imperialist countries. As a result, for the year 2024, the IMF expects the sum of GDP/PPP of Emerging Market and Developing Economies to reach $109,34 trillion, approximately 60% of world GDP/PPP, while the sum of Advanced Economies will reach $74,61 trillion, approximately 40% of world GDP/PPP, according to IMF terminology. In part, this is explained by the emergence of the new wave of globalization and the corresponding neoliberal orientation, starting in the 1980s, when capital exports intensified greatly since one of its central orientations is the breaking down of barriers and borders so that capital can circulate as freely as possible.

If we add to this economic phenomenon the sovereign stance and developmental orientation of several governments in these types of countries, then a new scenario is created. There are Iran, India, Brazil, and several other countries that are becoming regional middle powers, the basis for the emergence and development of the BRICS alliance.

The overall result of these three levels of contradictions generated by the different rhythms of development is the isolation of the Collective West, particularly the USA, its imperialist core, mired in parasitic rent-seeking, elevated to great heights in times of neoliberal globalization, and the consequent growth of its aggressiveness. In contrast, we have the advent of a multipolar world.

A brief retrospective of this new era can be summarized as follows: After the end of World War II, during the Cold War, between 1947 and 1991, the US and the USSR formed a bipolar system. The dollar became the currency of exchange and reserve for the entire West following the Bretton Woods agreements, which established the rules of operation for the Western financial system in 1944. During this period, with the balance of power characteristic of bipolarity, the Chinese Revolution took place in 1949, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba emerged, and significant strides were made in overcoming colonialism in Africa. It was also during this time that several countries managed to forge their industrial parks.

With the Soviet collapse in 1991, the situation underwent a profound shift. A unipolar world emerged under US hegemony. It was a time when the US established total war on terror as the central tenet of its foreign policy, particularly after the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. A time of invasion of Iraq and Libya, of destruction of Yugoslavia. A period of neoliberal flourishing, of capitalist expansion over Eastern Europe and of the reunification of a single world market. The advanced forces, including communist ones, some resisted in the new conditions of difficult strategic defense, others capitulated shamefully to the pressures and civilizational setbacks. Socialism, however, continued to live on in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea and other countries like Brazil, through the PCdoB.[ix]

However, the law of uneven development continued to have its effects, and by around 2007/2008, with the great systemic crisis of capitalism centered in the USA, but also profoundly affecting Europe, with the already significant rise of China, and with the progress of the Russian reconstruction that had begun in 2001, a period of transition[x] from unipolarity began.

for multipolarity. [xi]

Around 2015, this picture continued to change rapidly with two almost simultaneous events that expressed the rise of Russian power: 1) Russia's military involvement in the Syrian conflict, preventing the defeat of Bashar al-Assad's government, and 2) Crimea's accession to the Russian Federation after the pro-Western coup in Ukraine and the subsequent Russian intervention. Alongside these events, the dizzying and continuous economic, scientific, and technological rise of socialist China prominently positioned it as a first-rate world power.

Conversely, feeling their hegemony waning, the US put into practice their new foreign strategy of containing major threats, namely China and Russia, by whatever means necessary. Around 2018, the US launched a veritable trade war with China, which later expanded into the field of science and technology. They also remained firm in their policy of NATO expansion, in successive waves, towards Russia. And, no less importantly, they withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran, marking a new stage in tensions in the Middle East.[xii] This situation evolved into a new scenario in the Middle East where Iran stands out and resumes relations with Saudi Arabia.

Thus, by around 2020/2021, the geopolitical landscape of the world was already different. The transition from a unipolar world dominated by US imperialism to a multipolar world had already been completed. The center of gravity of modern world history was no longer exclusively the West, but now included, on an equal footing, a rising part of Eurasia. Socialist China and the Russian Federation also became protagonists in practically everything that happens in the world. The BRICS consolidated and expanded, becoming a strong pole of attraction for other countries, whose GDP already surpasses that of the G-7.

China and Russia seek to shape, through this Joint Declaration, the main characteristics of multipolarity, already established as an objective phenomenon, for a shared future for humanity, according to the Chinese. The world proletariat thus achieves a strategic victory, gathering better conditions to fight for its interests.

A few words about Russia and Putin are necessary because there are many reservations about them, partly from the European left and elsewhere, which tremble before the enormous Russophobic wave unleashed by the West in unison. Russia is a capitalist country that adopts a counter-hegemonic stance on the international stage, frontally opposing the US and being a fundamental ally of the most developed and strongest socialist country. It also has close relations with North Korea. It maintains an economic structure where the main sectors of the economy are in the hands of the State, after several clashes with the Russian oligarchy, which allows for constructive boldness, as the country has the largest natural resources in the world. Among these projects, the reconstruction of its powerful military-industrial complex stands out. Putin enjoys great domestic prestige and arouses growing external interest, as can be seen from the repercussions of his recent interview with Tucker Carlson. He has good relations with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which lends him support on the foreign front. Furthermore, he makes highly complimentary references to and preserves symbols from the USSR era, severely criticizes Gorbachev's destruction, and respectfully celebrates the great achievement of the victory in the patriotic war against the Nazis. He strives to rid Ukraine of its modern version. For all these reasons, Putin is hated and demonized by the Western elite, who do everything to isolate and overthrow him. When speaking of Russia, one should not belittle it, but take these facts and arguments into account.

Everywhere you look, there are signs of the decline of the US, the rise of China and Russia, as well as a series of other medium-sized countries, which together make up a multipolar system. In the economic sphere, China's GDP, according to the IMF, equaled that of the US in 2016 and, since then, has begun to diverge, expected to reach US$35,04 trillion by the end of 2024, compared to US$27,97 trillion. Russia, even suffering thousands of sanctions from the West, has returned to growth. Its GDP/PPP for 2024 is expected to reach US$5,23 trillion, the second largest in Europe. The US current account deficit in the balance of payments reached US$795,15 billion in 2023, while China had a surplus of US$271,439 billion, according to the IMF. According to the US Treasury, the country's current total national debt amounts to US$34,23 trillion.[xiii] In its favor, the US has recovered its status as a major oil and gas producer.

China is far ahead of the US in terms of technology and innovation. A report by the Australian think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), published by the Wall Street Journal in 2023, places Chinese researchers ahead of Americans in 37 out of 44 technologies examined in the sectors of defense, space, robotics, energy, environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and quantum technology. It concluded that "China has established an impressive lead in high-impact research under government programs."

Beyond this relative decline in various areas, there are also very serious elements of absolute decay, such as the tragic number of over one hundred thousand deaths of young people per year caused by Fentanyl overdose. The same could be said of the fratricidal political polarization that is wearing down and consuming the ruling elite of the USA, fracturing the country.

But the main argument of academics who do not accept the advent of multipolarity is that the US military force is far superior to that of its main opponents. Here, misinformation, stemming from the siege by the Western media, is strongly felt. The basic argument used is the high number of military bases abroad, around 750 of varying sizes and specifications, the seven US naval fleets roaming the world's seas, ready to intervene in any situation where they deem the "security of the United States" to be in danger, and also the fact that the US military budget is much larger than the sum of the military budgets of all other countries. The problem is that this enormous budget, which serious research indicates is actually at least double the officially reported figure, becomes an extremely heavy burden that has to be continuously financed, which can only be achieved at the cost of brutal public debt.

The US has more aircraft carriers, but in the ranking of the world's largest navies, the US appears in fourth place, preceded by China, Russia, and North Korea. The number of nuclear warheads of the US and Russia are equivalent, with an advantage for the Russians. Until recently, the US army was considered the strongest in the world. However, after the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian army has come to be considered the most powerful and numerous due to the large number of combatants that have recently joined it.[xiv] Russia has demonstrated a much greater capacity to produce weaponry than the West, which seems to have difficulties in replenishing weapons for Ukraine. Sergey Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister, assessed the current situation as follows: "Today, the Russian army is the most trained and capable of fighting in the world, with advanced weaponry that has been tested in combat conditions."[xv]

The Global Firepower website produces an annual survey called the Global Military Ranking System, which, based on the analysis of more than 60 different factors covering various aspects of a nation's military power, generates a numerical score called the PowerIndex, capable of comparing it to that of another nation. The 2023 results place the USA (0,0712), Russia (0,0714), and China (0,0722) practically on the same level, in that order because a lower number is considered to represent greater power.

Taking into account the opinions expressed and others, what seems to exist is a certain balance of power in many traditional aspects. However, everything suggests that the great differentiating factor in modern combat capability lies in the extremely advanced hypersonic missiles, with speeds of up to Mach 27, that is, 27 times the speed of sound or 32.200 km/h, manipulable, long-range, which can be launched by air, land or sea, developed by Russia, announced by Putin a few years ago, which make aircraft carriers and military bases vulnerable and have proven extremely effective when used offensively or defensively, since weapons capable of intercepting them have not yet been developed. Alongside these, satellite location systems, various types of ultra-sophisticated sensors, electronic warfare mechanisms capable of interfering with the trajectory and diverting the route of unmanned flying objects of the most varied types... and troops, in abundance and highly prepared from a technological point of view, mark current combat.

A few days after the release of the Joint Declaration, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine to stop the war that the Ukrainian regime was waging against the population of Donbass, aiming to protect its inhabitants, denazify the country, and prevent it from joining NATO—pretensions and practical events that took place with the supervision and full support of the Western world.

Once the conflict began, the US, the European Union countries, and some others had already poured approximately US$250 billion into military and financial aid, sponsoring a failed counter-offensive with the intention of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Furthermore, they imposed around 15 sanctions against Russia, aiming to economically and financially suffocate it and thus create a climate of internal discontent against the government. They achieved nothing but the death and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. They may prolong the conflict by denying the possibility of any peace agreement, as they have been doing, but they are already inexorably defeated. This fact proves that the US can no longer decide the fate of other nations at its whim, a reflection of multipolar reality. Just as is happening in Syria.

On the other hand, another wave of conflict has erupted in the Middle East. Although inflicting unprecedented suffering on the Palestinian people, especially massacring children and women, the Zionist and terrorist State of Israel, a proxy of US imperialism, is this time facing much greater resistance, which is spreading across several fronts, in a conflict that tends to be prolonged and resolved in the medium term. A new world situation, as representatives of political resistance forces have said, creates a favorable environment for resistance to develop and achieve victory. The same reasoning can be applied to the new wave of decolonization that has emerged in Africa through military-popular uprisings.

An important part of this new world configuration is the construction of a new financial architecture alternative to the dollar, a necessity arising from the use and abuse of the imperialist pressure tactic of economic sanctions. However, as is well known, the strength of any currency depends on the health of the economy of the country that issues it. It so happens that China today has the largest production and trade of goods in the world. Similarly, other countries no longer consider the US as a trading hub. Trade flows between countries of the Global South and between them and Europe, which is currently shaken, are growing and voluminous. In a situation of strategic balance of military power, the US can no longer impose the dictatorship of the dollar at any cost. Hence, particularly within the BRICS framework, new forms of payment and financial compensation are being adopted, whether for goods, investments, or loans. This is still an initial process, but it is advancing, including the purchase of gold and the gradual abandonment of dollar reserves by countries of the Global South.[xvi]

The revolutionary construction of the emerging multipolar world continues to take shape. For consistent communists, it is the way in which the struggle to overcome imperialist capitalism, or the struggle for socialism, is expressed today. Xi Jinping, leader of the Communist Party of China and president of Socialist China, was entirely right when he warmly bid farewell to Vladimir Putin in Moscow during his last trip in 2023, saying: "Right now there are changes like we haven't seen in 100 years – and it is we who together are leading these changes."

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*Dilermando Toni is a journalist, former editor of the newspaper A Classe Operária, member of the Central Committee of the PCdoB, and currently a member of the Advisory Council of Cebrapaz.

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Bibliography and notes

[i] Celso Amorim, Joint declaration by Putin and Xi projects an alternative world leadership, Carta Capital, 11/02/2022.

[ii] Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on International Relations in the New Era and Sustainable Development, 04 February 2022.

[iii] VI Lenin, The Slogan of the United States of Europe, 1915.

[iv] JV Stalin quotes Lenin in the article Summary of the Discussion on the Report on the Social-Democratic Deviation in our Party, chapter 3 On the Uneven Development of Capitalist Countries, 1926.

[v] JV Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, 1953, chapter 6, The inevitability of war between capitalist countries.

[vi] VI Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916, Chapter IV The Export of Capital, Book I.

[vii] VI Lenin, The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution, 1916, OC vol. 30.

[viii] See on the website imf.org the DataMapper, World Economic Outlook, both the Purchasing Power Parity, Trend 1980-2028, the Real GDP Growth, Trend 1980-2028, or even the GDP based on PPP, share of world.

[ix] In this regard, see João Amazonas's report to the 8th Congress of the PCdoB in 1992, which met under the slogan "Socialism Lives".

[x] Dilermando Toni, A World in Transition: Slow Decline of the USA and Rapid Rise of China, 2007. Text presented at the seminar Contemporary Capitalism and the New Struggle for Socialism.

[xi] The Political Economy Manual of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the then USSR, in the chapter The Historical Place of Imperialism, describes these changes in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century as follows: “In 1860, England occupied first place in world industrial production, followed by France, Germany, and the USA, which had just appeared on the world stage. Ten years later, the country of young capitalism – the USA – rapidly overtook France and took its place. After another ten years, the USA had surpassed England and firmly established itself in first place in world industrial production, while Germany overtook France and took third place, after the USA and England. At the beginning of the 20th century, Germany had left England behind, placing itself in second place, after the USA. As a result of the changes in the correlation of forces between capitalist countries, the capitalist world was divided into two hostile imperialist camps, and the world wars began.

[xii] The facts of this turbulent process are described in an interesting way in Helen Thompson's book, Disorder Hard Times in the 21st Century, part I Geopolitics, 2022.

[xiii] See FiscalData on the U.S. Government Treasury website.

[xiv] This was the conclusion reached by a recent publication in the American magazine US News and World Report in a survey that considered 73 attributes.

[xv] Sergey Shoigu at an expanded meeting of the Russian Ministry of Defense council, 19/12/2023.

[xvi] The forced trajectory of the dollar as the dominant currency in the world is described in a humorous and richly detailed way by Michael Hudson in his The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, chapter 10 Dollar Hegemony; The Privilege of Creating 'Paper Gold', 2022. Special attention should be paid to the explanation of how the US, even after ceasing to be a creditor nation and becoming the largest debtor on the planet, managed to maintain and expand the dominance of the dollar.