How significant is President Putin's visit to China?

CGTN Europe spoke to Anton Fedyashin, Associate Professor, History Department at American University

Transcript

00:00 That's Leo Jashin there. So let's bring in our guest Anton Fedyashin, is

00:05 associate professor in the history department at American University.

00:09 Professor, thank you very much for joining us. How significant is this visit

00:14 and would you say it's more of a political statement or a serious

00:18 economic moment? Sally, good to be with you. No, this is a very serious economic

00:25 moment but it's also part of a much broader historical trend. It is another

00:29 plot point on a graph that is pointing towards de-westernization. As an

00:35 historian, for me what's fascinating about the Sino-Russian relationship is

00:40 that we are all witnessing through it the end of a period of history, global

00:48 history, that has stretched for over 500 years. We're going into the post-Columbian

00:53 period where the West is no longer the single reference point geopolitically

00:59 and economically for the whole planet but other actors are stepping up to

01:03 articulate the rules of the global economic, political, military and in a

01:08 sense even social game. And so what we're seeing in Beijing is part of that

01:14 process but it's only part of a larger trend. And where do you think it's

01:19 heading? Do you think that we're likely to see an increasing polarization in the

01:24 world or do you think it's just a general opening up in terms of

01:29 geopolitics? It seems to be a general opening up. It seems to be a transition

01:36 towards a multilateral, multipolar international system which of course

01:42 will affect everything, not just military conflicts as we're seeing

01:46 already but even more importantly economics. For me one of the most

01:52 interesting things watching this from Washington DC is that the United States

01:59 unwillingly to the best of my understanding seems to be the biggest

02:03 champion of de-westernization and de-dollarization because with every set

02:09 of sanctions that are leveled against Russia, that are leveled against Chinese

02:14 products or industries or that are threatened against other countries,

02:17 Georgia for example has recently been threatened with American sanctions if it

02:22 actually implements the foreign agent law that has become so controversial

02:27 there. With every step that the United States and its European partners take

02:32 they seem to be communicating to the rest of the world that Western financial

02:37 systems and the dollar and the euro cannot be fully trusted and what we're

02:42 seeing the Chinese and the Russians doing now is creating alternative

02:47 financial systems. This by the way will be much more impactful and much more

02:51 important than the specifics of trade. Gas, oil, microchips, cars, all of that is

02:57 is part of the global economy but the de-dollarization of the global economy

03:02 is going to have profound effects on the United States, on the West and on the

03:07 rest of the world. Incidentally Putin arrived in Beijing with an enormous

03:10 delegation and the Russian finance minister and the head of the Central

03:14 Bank were with him and so I think there are very serious conversations about

03:20 trading in national currencies which is already a trend that is developing

03:25 across the planet so we'll see how this turns out. Very interesting indeed, thank

03:29 you so much. Anton Fedyashin is associate professor in the history

03:32 department at American University.