Assessing the Unity of the Autocratic Alliance Against the West

By Antoni Slodkowski, Ju-min Park and David Brunnstrom

BEIJING/SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Beyond the bonhomie of Xi Jinping's unprecedented meeting with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un last week, there are limits to what the European Union described as an "autocratic alliance" defying the West, diplomats, lawmakers and analysts said.

While the gathering at China's Sept. 3 military parade sparked concern among some world leaders that they were bearing witness to an important geopolitical shift, Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang are far from forming a cohesive bloc, the sources said.

They pointed to the lack of an official trilateral summit during the event and uncertainty over marquee economic deals like a pipeline project. Vague pledges of closer cooperation may be aimed more at gaining leverage in mooted talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, they added.  

"I don't see this as a declaration of a new order," said Victor Cha, head of the geopolitics and foreign policy department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC-based think tank.  

"It is a declaration of disorder and opportunism based on myopic self-interest," said Cha, who formerly served as the Director for Asian Affairs at the White House National Security Council.

Even so, "optics do matter," said a long-serving U.S. diplomat in Asia, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. 

"While China, Russia, and the DPRK will no doubt continue to have differences on specific policy areas, all three have made clear they are united in their antipathy for the U.S.-led international system," the diplomat said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name. 

Japan's outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba used his resignation speech on Sunday to note that the image of its nuclear-armed neighbours standing side-by-side underscored a severe security risk. The EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas earlier described the gathering as a burgeoning "autocratic alliance". 

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Xi, Putin and Kim were conspiring against him, a comment the Kremlin suggested was ironic. A U.S. official said Trump is "disappointed to see some countries siding with the Chinese" and that "America is going to re-evaluate" the situation, but gave no details. 

STICKING POINTS 

The parade capped a diplomatic tour de force for Xi, helped Putin combat Western narratives about his international isolation over the Ukraine war, and gave Kim implicit support for his banned nuclear weapons, analysts said.

But while Xi hosted one-to-one talks with both Putin and Kim, the trio did not sit down together for a formal summit.  

"China did not seem to be signalling that formal trilateral cooperation is starting," said Jenny Town, director of 38 North, a Washington-based project that monitors North Korea.

That suggests a more direct show of force like three-way joint military drills remains a distant prospect, analysts said. 

It also stands in contrast to rival superpower, the United States, which relies on security alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and multilateral summits with Japan and South Korea, and the 'Quad' group with Japan, Australia and India, to project its global power.

On the economic front, there appeared to be more tangible results, headlined by a "binding memorandum" between Russia and China on a vast gas pipeline announced during the summit.

However, despite its promotion by Putin, China did not mention the pipeline in any of its official readouts and deflected questions on the subject at a regular press briefing.

Sticking points on the long-stalled project to ship gas some 3,000 km (1,860 miles) through Siberia to China, like price and terms, remain. 

Beijing is also refusing to open its winter wheat market, according to agriculture minister Oksana Lut, who travelled with Putin to Beijing in the hope of securing access to China.  

Since the summit, there have been signs that China is moving to open its domestic bond markets to Russian companies shut out from Western capital. Russia's finance ministry, however, has cautioned they would prefer bonds be issued locally.

TRUMP FACTOR

The ensemble of senior Chinese economic officials that participated in Xi's first in-person meeting with Kim in six years suggests trade was likely also on the agenda, said one senior foreign diplomat in Beijing, requesting anonymity.

Beijing's official readout of those talks also made no mention of "denuclearisation" for the first time in years, in what some analysts said was a major concession to Kim. 

In response, South Korea's foreign ministry urged Beijing to play a constructive role in bringing Pyongyang to dialogue over its nuclear programme.

Xi told Kim in a letter after the summit that China was also ready to enhance strategic communications with North Korea, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.

But as thorny issues like the status of North Korean workers in China remains unresolved, the friendly language may be as much aimed at gaining leverage with Washington as Trump seeks meetings with both leaders, officials said.

Trump is expected to make a trip to the region for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in South Korea in late October, setting up possible talks with Xi amid fraught trade negotiations between the world's top two economies.

While the reclusive Kim has shown no signs of wanting to restart talks with Trump that collapsed in 2019, South Korea's spies are monitoring the possibility that this flurry of diplomacy could lead to an opening, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun said.

(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski, Mei Mei Chu and Lewis Jackson in Beijing, Sumeet Chatterjee in Hong Kong, Ju-min Park and Josh Smith in Seoul, Tim Kelly in Tokyo, and David Brunnstrom and Steve Holland in Washington DC; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)