How China upstaged Russia to become a global powerhouse

We rarely heard of Russia till we approved their new Covid-19 vaccine code-named, Sputnik V. The name Sputnik holds a special place in the Russian national psyche.

It was the world’s first artificial satellite launched in 1957.

The launch took the US, the then Soviet Union’s great rival, by surprise. To the younger generation, the Soviet Union or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a superpower after America.

It broke up in 1991 into 15 republics with Russia as the most influential republic.

Sputnik launch led to great changes in the education system, particularly in the US - to make students more creative and innovative. The US was determined to catch up with the Soviet Union. It did by landing on the moon 12 years later.

When are we having our Sputnik moment in education?

We used to have another link to Russia or the Soviet Union beyond Covid-19 vaccine, scholarships. Several Kenyan dons who taught me in undergraduate schooled in the Soviet Union, mostly in economics, maths and sciences, including engineering.

They had communication difficulties. I am told they studied in Russian. Most brought home wives from the Soviet Union. It was rare for those who schooled in the West to bring wives from there. Why?

Russia was in the news in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. After that, it was eclipsed by China. Before that, it had been embroiled in Afghanistan, a country no one seems to have successfully conquered. Ask Britons and Americans.

Why did Russia decline while China rose? One, there was no disintegration into republics in China as in the Soviet Union.

The small political units with names from Moldova to Uzbekistan had to start afresh as new nations. Building a nation is not a walk in the park.

Some started by sorting historical grudges. Remember Azerbaijan and Armenia?

More poignantly, the new nations’ economic and political models were borrowed from the defunct Soviet Union.

Two, the shift to a market economy was painful after 70 years. It was more of shock therapy. It seems to me that the use of advisers mostly schooled in the West made matters worse. They probably did not understand the facts on the ground. The shift mirrored the coming of uhuru in Kenya with power and money shifting to a tight elite. In Russia, it was the oligarchs. In Kenya?

Dismantling the command economy and replacing it with a market system was not easy. When I visited Poland in 2008, a former Soviet satellite, I could smell communism in the air.

It’s probably worse in the former Soviet republics. Remember the republics had to shift to the market economy and change the political system from communism to democracy, simultaneously.

We were in the same situation; multipartism and economic liberalisation run parallel in the early 1990s. Those old enough recall the aftermath. We hear echoes of the “good old days” as the State tries to control interest rates and now rents. In China, the Cold War winds never blew that hard.

One, China was wary of western influence in the aftermath of the Cold War. The memories of opium wars were still fresh. China probably had deeper cultural roots than Russia.

As Samuel Huntington observed, China is a civilisation masquerading as a nation.

That gives her a deep cultural anchor that is hard to shake. Russia shares a border with Europe and has historical ties since Peter the Great. Is that why she was so receptive to western ideas after Cold War?

Two, and this could be debated, the Cultural Revolution shock China into a reality of economic and political turmoil. Before that was their civil war.

Three, the Chinese economy by the 1990s was growing fast. It was the best bulwark against the end of the Cold War. Russia and the other republics suffered economic stagnation.

Some argue the death of Leonid Brezhnev after 18 years and successors who lasted for a few years gnawed at the core of the State. Then came glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) under Mikhael Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

We could argue that by the end of the Cold War, China was already open to the West’s market system under communism. Remember the opening up of China in 1978 and the pouring of foreign investment?

Perhaps by the end of the Cold War, China was keenly aware of the excesses of the market system. Russian embraced it with open arms.

From 1992, the two countries have drifted apart economically. China has become the factory of the world with global outreach. Russia is focused on neighbours as her market.

Are you aware of anything made in Russia? The fast growth of China has catapulted it into the world’s second-biggest economy and is poised to overtake America in the next ten years. Both nations lag the US in soft power and associated services; ever watched China or Russian movies or TV?

Who are their star actors and musicians? Both countries are making inroads into Africa.

Russians, mostly through military channels like guarding minerals in Central Africa.

Chinese are developing infrastructure as part of the one belt one road initiative.

Through their Confucius institutes, they are exporting Chinese influence. Any effort to export Russian culture abroad?

Russia, unlike China has upended relationships with the West by annexing Crimea from Ukraine. She has denied involvement in the civil war in parts of Ukraine. Her hand is felt in Caucasian strives too.

Remember Ossetia? Chechnya? She is focused too on controlling the Arctic sea route which could open up because of global warming. Her focus on building hypersonic weapons is another projection of power.

Beyond claiming islands in the South China Sea, China has not been keen on projecting its power. The two nations might use the Covid-19 vaccine as the route to soft power, giving the vaccine to poor countries. Both have presidents not so bothered by election term limits. 

In the next decade or so, China will become a leading economic power and maybe, military power. Covid-19 has accelerated its rise. Will Russia move close to her as a counterweight to the US and European Union? How will China use its new global leadership? 

-The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi