China and Russia: united in opposition

Joint statements by China and Russia have over the last three decades shifted from an emphasis on rapprochement and economic development to employ a globalized and revisionist vocabulary under China’s party and state leader Xi Jinping.

Our analysis shows China-Russia communiqués have since 2013 put global issues center stage and increasingly opposed the Western-dominated status quo, culminating in February’s declaration of a “friendship without limits” as “a new form of inter-state relations.”

As Russia wages war against Ukraine, the world is looking to Beijing to see whether it might continue to support Russia. Our analysis suggests it will.

In February 1972, the United States and China signed the Shanghai Communiqué, reinforcing Beijing’s split from Moscow and altering the Cold War balance of power. But the 50th anniversary of the US-China rapprochement was this February overshadowed by another event. On the inaugural day of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on 4 February, China and Russia released a joint statement challenging the existing global order and proclaiming the beginning of a new era. Bilateral relations had entered “a new historical period,” Xi Jinping announced.

We used textual and semantic network analysis software to look back at three phases of recent Chinese history — the leadership of…