United Russia and the Chinese Communist Party: Strange bedfellows?

A lot of developing countries look with admiration to China, and how quickly it’s developed over the past twenty years. Authoritarian governments, in particular, have become enamored of the China model, because it means they don’t have to sacrifice control over the reins of political power to gain economic success.

But Russia has not typically been one of those countries. Sinophilia has generally been the province of fringe movements, like the neo-Eurasianists (who argue that Russia is an Asian power destined to conflict against Europe) and the Communist Party, some of whom (the ones who haven’t actually been to China, I’m guessing) still see China as the world leader of the communist movement.

This could be changing: The United Russia party and the Chinese Communist Party held a conference last week in Suifenhe, on the Chinese-Russian border. And it looks like the Russians are trying to learn some lessons from China. Remarkably, one of those lessons appears to be an overt embrace of one-party rule. Kommersant reports:

The formal focus of a two-day forum between United Russia and China’s Communist Party is cooperation between the two countries’ borderline regions. However, the actual agenda of the inter-party Russian-Chinese forum in the Chinese town of Suifenhe is much broader. United Russia members will spend two days studying their Chinese counterparts’ experience in building a political system dominated by one political party. United Russia’s interest in the Chinese Communists’ experience has been triggered by the economic downturn.

The two parties have sponsored a series of closed-door conferences over the past few years, inviting economists and political analysts to exchange their experience in building regulated democracies. The essence of China’s experience is formulated in a white paper “China’s Political Party System” published by the State Council: “The CPC rules the country and the democratic parties participate in state affairs according to law, instead of ruling the country in turn. The multi-party cooperation system replaces confrontation and contention with cooperation and consultation, effectively avoiding political instability and frequent changes of regime resulting from discord among political parties, thus reducing internal frictions of the society to the maximum, and safeguarding social and political stability and solidarity.”

In fact, several points made by Hu Jintao in his speech at the 17th CPC congress were later reflected in Russia’s Strategy until 2020, and formed the foundation of United Russia’s parliamentary campaign in December 2007.

“China has continued growth even during the recession, remaining one of the world’s most dynamic economies,” said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs and head of the Russian delegation to PACE, adding that the country’s political system certainly contributed to this booming growth.

In his opinion, Chinese experience should be taken into account while drawing up bailout strategies: “Western examples of democracy should not be idealized; the Chinese model does have some obvious advantages.”

Analysts believe that Russia and China are indeed facing some similar problems due to the economic downturn, primarily social ones. Both countries have many single-industry towns, which developed around major industrial facilities currently unprofitable. As in Russia, Beijing began by issuing state loans to such companies, but social unrest continued.

Therefore, one of the latest anti-crisis policies approved by the September plenary of the CPC’s Central Committee was giving more powers to armed people’s police, such as “curbing riots and mass violence.”

I was in Suifenhe at the beginning of the month, just before the meeting, and a rumor was floating around that Vladimir Putin was going to be there for the meeting. As far as I can tell from the news reports about the meeting, he didn’t go. But I did notice this sign while I was in Suifenhe, which is a border town almost wholly given over to selling cheap Chinese goods to Russian tourists:

For non-Cyrillic readers, the white-on-black vertically oriented sign says “PUTIN.” What it is doing there in front of a shop selling Chinese knockoff CSKA Moscow gear to Russian daytrippers, I don’t know — an attempt to attract nationalist shoppers?