World

The China-Russia border city of Heihe where harmony lies

Published

1 year ago

March 20, 2023

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If you want to understand the China-Russia relationship, the frozen border city of Heihe is a good place to start.

It is a bleak, bitterly cold place, even at this time of year.

Its most impressive feature by far is the sweeping, frozen Heilongjiang river that hugs it. On the other side is Russia.

It’s a place that’s much quieter than it used to be. COVID, a closed border and then a sanction-induced squeeze on Russia’s economy have stifled much of the previously booming tourist trade.

Prior to the pandemic, there was a lot of cross-border activity, with Chinese groups heading north to experience Siberia and Russians coming the other way.

Lots of people living in the border towns would regularly cross to go shopping, do business or socialise.

But despite the drop in traffic, signs of that close affinity are everywhere here, from the imposing Russian architecture to the Russian stores stacked with vodka, Russian dolls and (Vladimir) Lenin motif merchandise.

Mr Jia runs one such shop filled with faux and real fur hats and gloves.

The friendship is a good one, he says. He previously lived in Russia and Russians are his customers and his friends.

“They are nice and straightforward,” he remarks with a smile.

It’s a view that’s common here, as is his take on the war in Ukraine, the opinion that Russia isn’t entirely to blame.

“Wars have to be fought for a reason,” he says after pausing for thought.

“No one goes to war if they don’t have to. Some things are like having a ticking time bomb next to your pillow, and it’s not going to be easy to sleep.”

It is an opinion encouraged in China, the true horror of the war and who perpetrated it is largely censored here.

Indeed, China has trodden a very careful path throughout the conflict, never overtly condemning or condoning the invasion while insisting it is best placed to play peacemaker.

But it has quietly been providing Russia with finance, technology and diplomatic cover and the West now fears it could go further.

There are signs of that tacit support everywhere in Heihe and reminders of why China might want to maintain it.

The best example perhaps runs under our feet – the huge pipes that carry Russian gas into China.

Heihe is the entry point for the Power of Siberia 1 gas pipeline and China is now buying more of this gas than ever before, compensating Russia for much of the trade it has lost with Europe.

Further up the river, there is also an enormous bridge that facilitates the trade in commodities that still flows between the two.

It is also a reminder that this vast border is peaceful. It hasn’t always been the case and battles gone by destroyed communities around here. Maintaining today’s peace allows both sides to focus resources elsewhere.

‘No one else wants to be friends with us’

It is at this bridge we meet Slava, a Russian truck driver who lives just on the other side of the river.

He has driven to and from China for many years and spoke with unusual frankness about the position Russians are in.

“There is no one else,” he says about the incoming help from China. “No one else wants to be friends with us.

“Europe doesn’t want to work with us or be friends, so we have our neighbours left to work with. They give us work. We give them work. That’s it.”

“I hope they don’t send us to war,” he adds. “That’s the problem, Ukraine, you know? Ukraine.”

Indeed, while this relationship is nothing short of a lifeline to Russia, it offers huge value to China too that goes far beyond trade.

Crucially Russia offers China a like-minded ally in what it sees as a reshaping of the world order and its ever-increasing power struggle with America.

In short, a defeated Russia and a united, victorious West would be damaging to President Xi’s vision for an ascendant China.

That’s the bigger picture here, the standoff that’s pushing two neighbours closer.

China knows Xi’s visit to Moscow speaks volumes, it’s a big gesture he’s chosen to go regardless.

China is still treading its careful path, but be in no doubt, its number one interest is China.

World

Senegalese hoping for better lives wait as ‘impossible’ route to US shuts

Published

4 hours ago

May 16, 2024

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Senegalese hoping for better lives wait as 'impossible' route to US shuts

A popular passage used by thousands of Senegalese migrants to enter the US via flights to Nicaragua and a land route through Mexico has become practically “impossible”, a Senegalese man who made the trip has told Sky News.

Local authorities have banned travel agents from selling plane tickets from Dakar to Nicaragua. Airports in Casablanca and Madrid – key transit hubs for the route – imposed transit visas on Senegalese passport holders earlier this year.

The crackdown comes after US authorities arrested Senegalese migrants 20,231 times for crossing the border illegally from July to December.

That’s 10 times more arrests than in the last six months of 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

“There are some friends who ask how I did it, they were curious but didn’t have the money to make it,” a Senegalese man who made the journey in August 2023 tells us from his new home in the US.

“I put some of them in touch with the guy who helped me but some waited too long and now the route is closed.”

He says he spent 10 years’ worth of savings boosted by a loan from his sister to buy the £5,200 plane ticket to Nicaragua and pay £2,600 for smugglers taking them through Central America.

“It was very hard. I just got information from one of my friends that it was possible to attempt the US via Nicaragua and at that point I didn’t even have a passport,” he said.

He flew from Dakar to Casablanca to Madrid and after a 23-hour transit boarded a flight to Bogotá. From there, he flew to San Salvador and finally took a last flight to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.

After five flights, the difficult journey had only just begun.

‘Guys were celebrating… crying’

He boarded a bus from Nicaragua to Honduras and then to Mexico where smugglers transported them in pickup trucks and by foot to the US border.

He says he was robbed by gangsters multiple times as he traversed the tough terrain of rivers and mountains to make it to the fence.

“When they cut the fence and brought us across, guys were celebrating, crying and shouting. After that we had to walk for a long distance but we were too happy to feel it,” he said.

He spent two days at the border detention camp on the US-Mexico border before he was released.

It took him 18 days to make it and says that for others it can take a month. There is no doubt in his mind that he made the right choice, even as he waits for permanent status.

“Senegal is very hard – I went to university and have a masters degree. It is better [here in the US] than Senegal. What they pay here in one week is more than [what they pay] a month in Senegal,” he added.

Young men across Dakar are working to earn money in case a similar route to the US opens.

The journey through Nicaragua to the US is seen as a safer – albeit expensive – alternative to the deadly Atlantic route to the Canary Islands by fishing boat and the arduous land journey through North Africa to the Mediterranean Sea and then across to Italy.

For those who have survived those routes, the cost of trying and failing is much higher than the thousands of pounds needed to get to the US.

‘I thought slavery was finished’

Window-cleaner Issa, 32, says he was enslaved, tortured and detained in Libya before agreeing to return to Dakar.

He now organises a support group called Young Migrant Returnees that meet to work through the trauma they experienced in Libya and other corridor countries and raise awareness around the dangers.

“It was incredibly difficult – forced labour – we faced terrible things and we don’t want it to happen to friends and family,” he said.

“There were many of us and a lot of them died on the road. Some of them were imprisoned but we had a chance to come back to our country.”

He added: “I will never forget those memories. I thought that slavery was finished but from what I’ve experienced it’s still happening.”

Repelled from trying again via Libya and horrified by the hundreds of young men dying in the North Atlantic, they weigh up their options.

Issa’s brother was in Brazil when the Nicaragua route opened up and is now in the US.

“If someone presented us with an opportunity to leave, which is different to the Libya route, we will take it because we are living a hard life in Senegal,” he said.

“Even those who worked in factories – the pay cheque is not good.”

World

Slovakian PM critically ill in hospital after being shot several times

Published

4 hours ago

May 16, 2024

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Slovakian PM critically ill in hospital after being shot several times

Slovakia’s prime minister remains in hospital in a critical condition after being shot several times in an attempted assassination.

Robert Fico was reported to be fighting for his life after being hit in the stomach on Wednesday.

At least four shots were fired outside a cultural centre in the town of Handlova, around 85 miles northeast of the capital Bratislava, where the 59-year-old was meeting supporters, the government said.

A 71-year-old suspect is in custody, but the motive for the shooting is still unclear.

Who is Slovak prime minister Robert Fico?

A message posted to Mr Fico’s Facebook account said he was taken to a hospital in Banska Bystrica, 17 miles from Handlova, because it would take too long to get to Bratislava.

The attack comes as political campaigning heats up three weeks ahead of Europe-wide elections to choose members for the European Parliament.

Mr Fico’s return to power last year on a pro-Russian, anti-American ticket led to worries among fellow EU and NATO members that he would turn his country further away from the Western mainstream.

Under his stewardship, the government has halted arms deliveries to Ukraine, and his opponents worry he will lead Slovakia in the footsteps of Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

Thousands have repeatedly rallied in the capital and across Slovakia to protest against Mr Fico’s policies.

Concern is mounting that populist and nationalists similar to Mr Fico could make gains in the 27-member bloc.

“A physical attack on the prime minister is, first of all, an attack on a person, but it is also an attack on democracy,” outgoing president and political rival of Mr Fico, Zuzana Caputova, said in a statement.

“Any violence is unacceptable. The hateful rhetoric we’ve been witnessing in society leads to hateful actions. Please, let’s stop it.”

President-elect Peter Pellegrini, an ally of the new prime minister, called the shooting “an unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy.

“If we express other political opinions with pistols in squares, and not in polling stations, we are jeopardising everything that we have built together over 31 years of Slovak sovereignty.”

Joe Biden said he was alarmed, adding that the US “condemn this horrific act of violence”.

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg posted on X that he was “shocked and appalled” by the attempt on Mr Fico’s life.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it a “vile attack”.

Mr Fico, a third-time premier, and his left wing Smer, or Direction, party won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections in September.

But politics have been put aside in the wake of the shooting, with Slovakia’s parliament adjourned until further notice.

World

What will China want to talk about during Vladimir Putin’s state visit?

Published

4 hours ago

May 16, 2024

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What will China want to talk about during Vladimir Putin's state visit?

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to China is part of the great power politics currently being played out between the West and the global south.

In this arena, China’s President Xi Jinping is promoting his multipolar view of the world, a realignment of the world’s geopolitical centre away from the US and Europe, to Asia.

Xi sees China front and centre on the stage, with a coterie of countries to back him up.

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are at one end of the spectrum, but widen out the view and there is also Brazil, India and South Africa, who all see the world through a lens at odds with the West.

Added to that is the so-called “no-limits” friendship between Russia and China. It has been tested to the limit as Russia continues its war in Ukraine. But there is no sign China has any plan to abandon its neighbour.

So what will China want to talk about?

First, the Russia-Ukraine war. China is under growing pressure from the US and Europe to rein in exports of dual-use items like semiconductors and machinery tools that Russia can use on the battlefield.

But if China is feeling the heat, you wouldn’t know it. Its exports to Russia surged last year. The way Xi Jinping sees it, Russia is another market for China’s export driven economy, and with Western companies banned from doing business with Russia, China has stepped in to take advantage of it.

Why Putin may visit Vietnam next

There is a possibility, Vladimir Putin will visit Vietnam after his summit with Xi Jingping in Beijing, or later this month. It would be Putin’s first state visit to the country since 2017.

Vietnam is one of Russia’s three closest partners in Asia, alongside China and North Korea.

Experts suggest a visit from Putin would signal to the world that he’s committed to a “Turn to the East” policy and allow the Russian leader to show that Western efforts to isolate his government over its invasion of Ukraine have failed.

Maintaining a close connection to Moscow is a priority for the Vietnamese leadership. They have a tricky balancing act trying to juggle ties with both America and China.

Beijing’s encroachments into the South China Sea represents a potential territorial threat to Hanoi. Whilst America is an obvious counterweight to that, the US is also considered a threat to the ruling Communist Party.

Welcoming Putin to Hanoi, a leader the West has sought to cut off, is proof the Vietnam government wants close relationships with as many powerful nations as possible.

Russia is one of its seven so-called “strategic partners” and it would come as no surprise if Putin does touch down in Hanoi. Vietnam could also be expected to seek an arms deal with its historical ally and replenish its ageing Soviet-era military equipment.

China is also resisting pressure from the West to use its leverage to force Mr Putin to wind down the war.

While President Xi doesn’t want to see Russia in the grip of collapse, after all they share a 2,500-mile-long border, a long, grinding war in Ukraine has benefits for China.

It drains European energy and resources, distracts the US and allows China to get on with its territorial claims in Asia and its ambition to dominate international trade in EVs, solar panels and batteries.

In this Sino-Russian relationship, China has the upper hand. It’s receiving cheap raw materials from Russia and paying 30% less for natural gas than Europe did before the war. China is calling the shots.

While Mr Putin and Mr Xi have an enduring friendship, this alignment is a thorn in the side for the West. But there seems little Europe and the US can do about it. Threats aren’t working, sanctioning Chinese banks might.

For Beijing, it’s all about balance. China needs the US and Europe to remain open to its exports. So far, it has been able to have it all. However, it’s becoming increasingly untenable for the West to stand by while China stands with Russia.

A time may yet come when President Xi Jinping is forced to make a choice.