China-Russia relations & China’s reform ideas for global order

China’s leadership has proposed to lead reforms of global governance. It claims the resulting order will deliver greater security, prosperity and respect for developing countries. How does it aim to achieve that? What are its concrete suggestions? And what is Russia’s role in and impact on China’s strategy? This lecture will delve into diplomatic, economic and security ties between China and Russia. It will discuss what China gains and further hopes to gain from its strategic partner, and how this relationship at the same time creates economic, security, normative and narrative risks for China as it sets out to outcompete the US and attain sustainable great power status by 2049.

Dr. Thomas Eder is a Research Fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP) with a focus on China's foreign, security and international law policy. He has published widely on China-Russia relations including in Foreign Affairs and a monography with Springer (China-Russia Relations in Central Asia). He co-organizes an annual China-Russia roundtable at the International Studies Association (ISA) conference with Elizabeth Wishnick (Columbia University). He teaches at the University of Vienna and previously worked at MERICS (Mercator Institute for China Studies) in Berlin and the Austrian Foreign Ministry. He studied at the University of Vienna, Peking University and the University of Hong Kong, was a guest scholar at Academia Sinica in Taipei and at the NYU US-Asia Law Institute and held fellowships with the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna and the CHOICE network in Prague.