"The Year of Russia" in China marks a new phase of China-Russia relations. It will also exhibit to the Chinese public how Russia has managed to emerge from the abyss of decline in the wake of the Soviet Union's disintegration and embark on the road of revival. 

Russia has been on a trajectory of curing old maladies, chaos, order and then revival ever since the Soviet Union's disintegration in 1991.

During Boris Yeltsin's presidential terms, Russia underwent sharp fluctuations economic cave-in, political tumult, Chechen chaos, NATO's eastward expansion and so on.

Credit should be given to Yeltsin for his reform measures. Different political forces began to work together under the parliamentarian institution, which is based on multi-ownership market economy and multi-party infrastructure, seeking social stability and ethnic unity. Goodwill diplomacy was pushed in an all-round way. All this explains why major social turmoil was prevented.

In the latter part of the Yeltsin presidency, the country rediscovered where the vital interests of Russia lie, through learning historical lessons and summing up experiences. As a result, Russia's major domestic and foreign policies were overhauled, total privatization and "shock therapy" being brought to a halt, hostility towards the Russian Communist Party being ended and the diplomacy shifted from leaning exclusively towards the West to an all-round approaches.

It was against this backdrop that Vladimir Putin took the helm at the Kremlin in 2000 and has since shaped major policies to run the country, the road for development, the political lines and administrative means, all stamped with his own hallmark.

His domestic policies boil down to the following: Putting the national interests at the core, making economic revival the top priority, installing national spirit as a driving power, instituting powerful political mechanisms as the nation's political basis, engaging other political parties in conditional co-operation, using historical lessons as a mirror, taking into full account Russia's specific situations in charting the development road, creating a favorable international climate for the country and trying to reinstate Russia as a first-class world power.

Putin's road for development can be roughly summed up as maintaining political stability, keeping the Russian version of democracy in place to ensure social harmony, going in for a market economy that takes care of both efficiency and social justice and implementing all-round diplomacy geared to maintaining global and regional balance.

His political line can be defined as taking the so-called "third road," namely tilting neither left nor right. Backtracking to the Soviet mode is a blind alley, while indiscriminate copying of the Western model was not working out.

President Putin does not rave about ideology openly, but he cares about it deeply. He absorbs useful elements from the three ideologies popular in Russia today liberalism, socialism and nationalism and applies them to the Russian reality selectively, with liberalist principles more employed in economy, socialism in politics and nationalism more assertive in Russia's foreign policy.
 
All this explains why the president enjoys a high level of favorability among Russians.

The economy constitutes the base of a nation's comprehensive strength. In promoting the Russian economy, Putin resorts chiefly to economic leverage.

First, he has put a strong brake on the privatization process, which ran wild immediately after the Soviet Union's disintegration. He stood up against the financial and oil oligarchs in a bid to regain control of the nation's economic lifeline, reducing private capital's excessive interference in Russian political affairs.

Second, he is trying to bring Russia's advantages in energy resources into full play. The output value churned out by the energy sector makes up 30 percent of Russia's total industrial output value, bringing the Russian Government about 54 percent of its annual revenue and 45 percent of its total foreign exchange income. Russian energy resources not only have a significant influence on the world market but also win the country geo-political advantages.

Third, Russia has invested heavily in high-tech industries, aiming at boosting the country's competitiveness and building up a powerful economic entity with potential for long-term growth.

Fourth, the Russian Government is doing its best to propel the general consumption demand on the basis of improving Russian people's livelihoods. When ordinary people share the economic progress, social contradictions are automatically relieved. In recent years purchasing power has increased significantly, evidenced, for example, by the 120 million mobile phones owned by the 140 million Russian people.

President Putin sticks to the principle that national interests override everything else. This is mirrored in Russia's diplomacy of independence.

In the face of accelerating globalization and bearing the brunt of the United States' unilateralism, Russia is in a disadvantaged position. As a result, its diplomacy shows obvious tendency towards seeking compromise. But one can still sense toughness on occasion.

Russian diplomacy is rooted in helping implement the national development strategy. First, it is pragmatic in nature in view that the country's strength remains rather weak compared with Western powers. At the same time, however, it is emphasized that Russia's international prestige depends to a large degree on how effectively its diplomatic resources are used.

Balance is another prominent feature of the Russian diplomacy. With three quarters of its territory in Asia but its political and cultural center in Europe, Russia enjoys space for diplomatic maneuvers.

Russian diplomacy also prescribes refraining from confrontations and making enemies.

Maintaining a low profile is another feature of Russian diplomacy. What Russia wants is world-class power status, but it never makes a loud noise about its goal.

People look at the prospects of the Russian economy with guarded optimism. They are optimistic because Russia enjoys political stability now, the approaches for development are right, the potential is great and people share roughly the same aspirations. However, optimism remains guarded because a host of problems need to be addressed.

First and foremost is the Chechen chaos, which has been festering for years. Then there is corruption and social polarization. Also, economic structure rearrangement poses a thorny problem, with heavy industry ratio being still disproportionately large, agriculture lagging far behind and resources sectors becoming over-bloated. The country's over-dependence on energy industry could backfire and give rise to barriers checking economic development in the future.

In view of this, there is still a long way to go for Russian to claim the status of a world-class big power.

Fortunately, China-Russia relations have embarked on a healthy road, and an optimum mode for taking the interests of both countries into fullest consideration has been crafted.

(China Daily March 22, 2006)