According to prudent concern to the predictions of the Doomsday, the United States Security and Revision Commission (USCC) heard the testimony on February 20 which largely answered a question: is China a partner in an “axis of autocracy”, alongside other major autocratic countries in Iran, North Korea and Russia?
Interestingly, the scope of the commission’s audience has limited itself to attacking relations between only four of the world’s autocracies. However, several sources indicate that, in fact, the population of the world is much more governed by autocracies than otherwise. Indeed, a Map of autocracies in the world Shows that the nations of the African continent are led much more by autocrats than by any other political system – but none of these governments were included in the “axis” of the USCC.
By not encouraging comments and debate on the rest of the autocratic world, largely found in Africa and the Middle East, an opportunity is missed. By plunging more deep into the links of other autocracies with the “Big Four” and between them, we would acquire a deeper understanding of the power of autocratic societies and their consecutive and complex relations.
However, as several testimonies at the USCC hearing have revealed it, the activities and dependencies between China, Iran, North Korea and Russia have increased and deepened to the point that relations can be characterized loose as a single unit – an axis of autocracy – while retaining a lot of individual sovereignty.
It is difficult to find positive common points among these four countries, but very simple to find negative. Among these are the lack of freedom or seriously of freedoms in the main areas of speech, religion, press, assembly, petition, research and unreasonable seizure and freedom of movement.
The Chinese-Russian relationship
The Chinese -Russia part of the axis – if it can indeed be considered existing in such a concrete conceptual form – is made up of a certain number of components, according to Dr. Elizabeth Wishnick of the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA).
“China and Russia claim that they are priority partners and not allies,” Wishnick told the USCC, According to his written testimony“But military and technical cooperation has been an important aspect of their relationships since the creation of their strategic partnership in 1996.” She then appointed concrete examples of such cooperation: “Bilateral and multilateral military exercises … Sales of arms and weapons components, as well as joint production and systems development. Collaboration by Chinese and Russian actors in hybrid maritime actions has been a new field of activity since 2023. ”
Wishnick also mentioned that Chinese forces “seek to learn” from the Russian combat experience. The Chinese people’s liberation army (PLA) has not been in a battlefield for 46 years, since China initiated for the first time and then lost a war with Vietnam in 1979.
However, it is unlikely that the APP will consider itself a lower partner in any military exercise. In fact, Chinese officials generally refuse to characterize any interaction with foreign people or entities as an opportunity to be “taught”; They have too much pride to admit that they do not already know something. If this concept is true in joint exercises with the Russians, it therefore suggests a scenario which could lead to a real resentment between the Chinese and Russian forces.
In fact, there are a dozen or more “divergence zones” between China and Russia, which Wishnick identifies. Mistrust dates back to the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, while ultimately, the Soviet Union withdrew thousands of advisers and the material support of China on the ideological abyss created by the Mao accusation of “revisionism” (and years of tension before). This story is still classified with an older generation – ask any 80 -year -old man in Beijing.
Wishnick stressed, however, that “[a]This stage of Chinese and Russian officials has made the political decision to underline their areas of agreement – all their joint statements do so, omitting areas of discord. The care of China and Russia take to publicly maintain a united and positive front could be considered as an indication of the political will behind their relationship – but also a tacit admission of the potential for public dissatisfaction.
Which really unites the axis: sanctions the escape
In one of the most convincing testimonies, the former intelligence chief of the financial network of the financial crimes of the American Treasury (Fincen) addressed the economic ties between the four autocracies and their techniques of escape from Western sanctions. Kimberly Donovan of the Atlantic Council describe The “sophisticated money laundering techniques … used by American opponents, such as China, Iran, Russia and North Korea”, who “work together to take advantage of the global financial system and escape American sanctions which are intended to dissuade and disrupt their harmful activity”.
“The sanction by the West is one of the few things that these stories have in common,” said Donovan. Sanctions severely restrict access to these countries to the global financial system led by the United States, limit its ability to negotiate basic products, generate income and import sophisticated technology. »»
A large part of Donovan’s testimony reads like a Ken Follett spying thriller. According to the case studies it presented, Donovan proposed three fundamental conclusions:
First, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea built systems developed to bypass and escape American sanctions;
Second, third -party supply networks allow these sanction escape systems; And
Third, these sanctions escape systems have limits and vulnerabilities that may present opportunities for American action.
China is motivated by sanctions, by its competition with the United States, and by its inexpensive need for energy, to work with three other autocratic nations to bypass the sanctions, said Donovan.
“China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have developed commercial systems that bypass Western financial systems and shipping services. In this system, payments are denominated in Chinese currency and treated through the opaque financial system of China, “she said. Russia has adopted the Chinese yuan and is trying to link the Chinese payment system to the Russian alternative to Swift. Donovan has warned that Hong Kong in particular works as “a hub for the escape of sanctions” and money laundering, largely because, as it noted, “many international banks always treat Hong Kong as a global financial center.
In addition, Donovan noted that “goods and raw materials, such as petroleum, are transported by” fleet shadow “oilmen who operate outside of maritime regulations and take measures to mask their operations.” Its testimony continues to detail these commercial routes and cargoes of the ghost fleet, including the transport of luxury products in North Korea. Among the examples it has cited are “Chinese independent refineries called” teaters “, which absorb 90% of Iranian oil”.
Donovan has also described a barter system among nations, such as the improbable organization of 2021 between a Chinese company selling automobile parts in Iran in exchange for $ 2 million in pistachios.
Conclusion
The fact that China, Iran, North Korea and Russia cooperate and get along to escape old and new sanctions are not in question. The testimonies of the USCC hearing showed that the actors on both sides of the equation were agile to find ways to get around the other.
Regarding China, he has clearly returned to a greater degree of autocracy and therefore to the autocratic “friends” because there is really no other place to go. China aspired to admiration and respectability of Western nations in the world, a price that has remained elusive mainly due to Beijing’s own actions and the friends he now chooses to keep.
Xi Jinping needs safety and energy and is increasingly turning to other autocracies to meet these needs. However, these same partners in “the axis” are countries with which most Chinese would prefer not to be identified. The Chinese wish to be respected as a nation and as a people. They wish the status. Most of what they do in the world is defensive, born from a feeling of vulnerability and secular paranoia.
The USCC clearly indicated that “the axis of autocracy” is at heart a set of transactional relationships. Of the four autocratic nations, China is best to break with the other three.