James Kynge

China also gets a huge amount of liquefied natural gas from Russia through pipelines, which are actual fixed infrastructure.

So that's another reason why Russia is so important.

But also, Russia...

provides China's access to crucial other supply lines, such as the Arctic.

Shipping through the Arctic goes ahead in the summer months, and it's possible that in the future, it could also do so in some of the winter months if global warming continues.

I do also think, and this slightly goes against the argument that I was trying to make, that Xi Jinping and President Putin have a bit of a personal relationship.

I said that I thought China was mainly transactional and it focuses on its periphery diplomacy.

And you can see that Russia falls into those categories.

Russia's vital for China's supply lines, vital for China's LNG supplies.

but there is a little bit of an emotional content, I think, between Putin and Xi.

So perhaps that goes against my sort of framing argument of what I think motivates Chinese diplomacy.

Chinese game theory in this regard

actually is rather similar to something that goes right back into China's ancient history.

There are principles of diplomacy set out in Chinese canons from about 2,500 years ago.

They're called the 36 Stratagems.

And they're all about how one state can use psychological warfare, ruses, deception to gain the advantage over your rivals.

And I was looking through this list of these 36 stratagems.

I would definitely recommend this to any listeners that don't know about these.

You can find them anywhere on the internet.

And they are really colorful and really interesting.