俄中西线对华供气合同成定局？

一个多月前提到俄中即将于11月签署俄西线对华供气合同，现在像是成了。这是《俄罗斯今日》报道的：

Putin: Russia, China close to reaching 2nd mega gas deal


尽管何悦还没有签，但普京亲自出来说，估计不会变卦，否则面子放不过去。时间和原来的报道相符，可见谈判没有意外。说是普京明天到北京亚太峰会会跟中国拍板。



不过，早些时候，有人说俄罗斯三心两意，比如刘植荣：买俄罗斯的气会气死人。

据说，东气这事儿还没了结，西气也就说不清了。这是最新的报道，基本上说刘植荣两国关于首期的争执时确有其事。总之，俄国内部意见不一致，纠纷多，小心眼，不能定下一个像国策之类的决定。

目前俄罗斯面临西方的巨大压力，卢布大幅贬值，经济一团糟，至少中国还帮着一把，现在能源价猛跌，俄国公司和老百姓也确实有个要赚钱的问题，价太低了，难办。不过你总得卖，要是老想着多赚一分钱，未必能成大事。

就看普京近日如何了断了。


【后记，11月10日】
普京和习近平在亚太峰会上签了备忘录，大家算是把大调子定了，但离合同差远了，希望谈判能顺利，不过经济利益，估计难题很多。长远看，俄汽卖中符合两国的利益，中国需要能源，天然气远比煤好，俄罗斯需要市场，短期内投资费用大，俄罗斯缺钱、受打击，而能源正好不景气，但是中国也有花了高价卖原油、天然气的时候，俄罗斯应当接受这个价钱。


【附】也许俄罗斯、普京不情愿”过分依赖于中国“。不过美国打击俄罗斯的政策确实将两国放在了一个特定的环境。“You are pivoting to Asia,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington said last week, “but we’re already there.”（见下面的纽约时报文）。俄国如何均衡地缘军政的利益和经济利益以及短期的利润，不容易决定，但是是大事。


纽约时报：
As Russia Draws Closer to China, U.S. Faces a New Challenge
PETER BAKERNOV. 8, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama flies to Beijing on Sunday to renew efforts to refocus American foreign policy toward Asia. But when he lands, he will find the man who has done so much to frustrate him lately, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “You are pivoting to Asia,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington said last week, “but we’re already there.”

Mr. Obama is returning to Asia as Russia pulls closer to China, presenting a profound challenge to the United States and Europe. Estranged from the West over Ukraine, Mr. Putin will also be in Beijing this week as he seeks economic and political support, trying to upend the international order by fashioning a coalition to resist what both countries view as American arrogance.

Whether that is more for show than for real has set off a vigorous debate in Washington, where some government officials and international specialists dismiss the prospect of a more meaningful alliance between Russia and China because of the fundamental differences between the countries. But others said the Obama administration should take the threat seriously as Moscow pursues energy, financing and military deals with Beijing.

“We are more and more interested in the region that is next to us in Asia,” said Sergei I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington. “They are good partners to us.” He added that a recent natural gas deal between Moscow and Beijing was a taste of the future. “It’s just the beginning,” he said, “and you will see more and more projects between us and China.”

The Russian pivot to China factors into a broader White House-led review of American policy toward Moscow now underway. The review has produced several drafts of a policy to counter what officials call Putinism over the long term while still seeking silos of cooperation, particularly on issues like Iran, terrorism and nuclear nonproliferation.

Though there is not a wide divergence of opinion inside the administration over how to view Mr. Putin, there is a debate about what to do. The review has pitted officials favoring more engagement against those favoring more containment, according to people involved. The main question is how the Ukraine dispute should define the relationship and affect other areas where the two countries share interests.

Within the administration, Mr. Putin’s efforts at accord with China are seen as a jab at Washington, but one fraught with a complicated history, mutual distrust and underlying economic disparity that ultimately makes it untenable. “They’ll use each other,” said one government official, who declined to be identified discussing the internal review. “And when one of them gets tired or sees a better deal, they’ll take it.”

But others warned against underestimating the potential. “There’s just so much evidence the relationship is getting stronger,” said Gilbert Rozman, a Princeton scholar who published a book, “The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order,” this year and an article in Foreign Affairs on the subject last month. The rapprochement began before Ukraine, he added, but now there is a “sense that there’s no turning back. They’re moving toward China.”

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Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, said Mr. Putin seemed to have forged a strong bond with President Xi Jinping of China. “There’s a personal chemistry you can see,” he said. “They like each other, and they can relate to each other. They talk with each other with a candor and a level of cooperation they don’t find with other partners.”

Mr. Xi made Russia his first foreign destination after taking office and attended the Sochi Olympics as Mr. Obama and European leaders were boycotting them. Each has cracked down on dissent at home, and they share a view of the United States as a meddling imperialist power whose mismanagement of the world economic order was exposed by the 2008 financial crisis.

While past Chinese leaders looked askance at the Kremlin leader, “Xi is not appalled by Putin,” said Douglas Paal, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The twin crises in Ukraine and Hong Kong have encouraged the alignment. State television in Russia portrays democracy protests in Hong Kong as an American-inspired effort to undermine China, much as it depicted the protests in Kiev as an American effort to peel away a Russian ally from Moscow. Chinese media present Mr. Putin as a strong leader standing up to foreign intervention.

In May, as the United States and Europe were imposing sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine, Mr. Putin sealed a $400 billion, 30-year deal providing natural gas to China. Last month, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, signed a package of 38 deals in Moscow, including a currency swap and tax treaty. Last week, Mr. Putin said the two countries had reached an understanding for another major gas deal.

The two had already bolstered economic ties. China surpassed Germany in 2010 to become Russia’s largest trading partner, with nearly $90 billion in trade last year, a figure surging this year as business with Europe shrinks.

“The campaign of economic sanctions against Russia and political pressure is alienating Russia from the West and pushing it closer to China,” said Sergei Rogov, director of Moscow’s Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies. “China is perceived in Russia as a substitute for Western credits and Western technology.”

Masha Lipman, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the pivot to China “is taken very seriously” in Moscow and that “commentators regard this shift as a given, a done and irreversible deal.”

Yet talk of a Russian-Chinese alignment has persisted for decades without becoming fully realized, given deep cultural differences and a Cold War competition for leadership of the communist world. And Beijing has long opposed separatist movements, making it uncomfortable with Moscow’s support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

In Moscow, some fear Russia, out of weakness, has made itself a junior partner to a rising China. While China is now Russia’s largest trading partner, Russia is only China’s 10th largest — and the United States remains its biggest. Moreover, big Russian state companies can make deals, but China will not replace Europe for most corporations and banks, as there is no developed commercial bond market for foreigners in China akin to Eurobonds.

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John Beyrle, a former American ambassador to Moscow, said discussions with Russian business leaders revealed nervousness, a sense that the turn to China was out of necessity as loans and investment from the West dry up. “One of them said that dependence on China worries the Russian elite much more than dependence on the West,” he said.

Lilia Shevtsova, a Moscow-based analyst with the Brookings Institution, said: “The pivot is artificial. And the pivot is to the disadvantage of Russia.”

Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin will cross paths twice this week, first in Beijing at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and then in Brisbane, Australia, at a meeting of the Group of 20 nations. Mr. Obama hopes to advance a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Russia and China are acutely aware they have been excluded from the proposed bloc, and Mr. Putin says it would be ineffective without them.

Such issues only fuel Russia’s move to China, Russian officials said. If the United States and Europe are less reliable, long-term partners, then China looks more attractive. “We trust them,” said Mr. Kislyak, “and we hope that China equally trusts us.”