Ukraine: cramped in a strategic triangle
On July 23 in Brussels, Ukraine managed to successfully complete the difficult process of approval by European partners of the next step in the simplification of visa regime for its nationals. Thousands of media people, members of nongovernmental and religious organizations, trade union activists will shortly be able to receive multiple-entry, long-term, and free visas using simplified procedures. Several years ago, Ukrainian diplomats succeeded in having business invitation visa procedures simplified. These days business people with such visas increasingly often board flights not to Europe but China where Ukrainian products have been in a growing demand over the past several years, along with a steadily increasing number of Chinese investments in Ukraine. Not coincidentally, I flew to the EU administrative center, together with my European colleagues, almost immediately after my visit (the third one in the past two years) to the People’s Republic of China. Given the unprecedented importance attached to European integration as a strategic goal, Ukraine has been receiving an increasing amount of resources that allow to keep it moving in the direction of the EU from its new partners, the world’s economic leaders such as Turkey, Israel, Brazil, India, Vietnam, and above all China.
In June 2011, President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine and Chairman Hu Jintao of the PRC signed a joint declaration establishing strategic partnership in Kyiv. As a result, China has been confidently acting as one of Ukraine’s key economic partners. For example, commodity turnover between the two countries rose by some 20 percent in six months in 2012.
Our partnership with China is especially important in an effort to lower Ukraine’s dependence on a sole energy supplier, which is vitally significant for our national independence. Last week the China Development Bank confirmed a credit line of 3.66 billion dollars for the implementation of technologies aimed at replacing Russian gas by Ukrainian gasified coal. An extensive involvement of US and European companies in the production of hydrocarbon on Ukrainian territory will secure this country’s energy independence in the medium term. Without it Ukraine was not completely free to wage its foreign and foreign economic policy in all previous years.
In other words, there is no overstatement in referring to the partnership with the PRC as a strategic one, proceeding from the obvious fact that this partnership is helping Ukraine solve strategic issues in the sphere of national development. I discussed this in Beijing with He Guoqiang, member of the Politburo Standing Committee; Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi; Minister of Agriculture Han Chanfu; Governor of the China Development Bank Chen Yuan, and President of the Export-Import Bank Li Zhohu.
Characteristically, a large-scale economic cooperation with China is possible only in close conjunction with a dynamic political dialog. To uphold this dialog, President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, plans to pay an official visit to the PRC before the end of the year. This will mean the beginning of an annual exchange of top-level visits, the kind of relationships China maintains only with countries regarded as the most important and promising partners across the world.
To prepare economic grounds for the top-level meeting, the Ukrainian foreign ministry arranged for a large group of business people representing Ukrainian companies and members of the ministry’s board of experts to accompany me to Beijing. Among them were CEOs of Ukrlandfarming, Nibulon, Astarta, Frunze Sumy NPO, Zaporizhia’s transformer plant, and so on.
Businessmen and members of the official Ukrainian delegation had a number of meetings and talks with the CEOs of the leading Chinese corporations, among them CAMCE, China National Nuclear Corporation, SINOPEC, China Petroleum, pertinent producers and importers’ associations, and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).
I see the key target of Ukrainian diplomacy today in providing convenient access to foreign markets and loans for Ukrainian business. My last visit to China (preceded by visits to India, countries in the Middle East and Latin America, in company with [Ukrainian] business people) was proof that in the two and a half years since the president assigned the foreign ministry the task of focusing on the economizing of foreign policy, the Ukrainian diplomats had on the whole found a model that could be useful for domestic business.
I am convinced that we are only beginning to realize the advantages of a comprehensive cooperation (enhanced by an intensive political dialog) with China and other new world economic and political centers. Today, this means a contribution to the stability of the national currency, increased exports, better trade balance; tomorrow, this will mean billions’ worth of investments in infrastructure upgrades, new jobs, prospects for the modernization of high-tech enterprises and industries. The traditional EU-US-Russia triangle, given the importance of maintaining relations with each angle, has become too narrow for Ukraine. Modernization must be stepped up.
Kostiantyn HRYSHCHENKO is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
