Red carpet for Putin
A red carpet in China for Putin, Xi and Putin will remain friends. Xi Jinping for a trip and Vladimir Putin to Beijing laid out the wide red carpet. Let’s work together for a new global order. Anyone who thought the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping was on the verge of collapse should think again.
It is reiterated that they are great friends. It is a two-day trip in the Chinese capital where the Russian president was warmly welcomed by Xi in a grand hall filled with people and cameras.
The Chinese leader talked about the formalization of strategic relations between the two countries in a joint statement signed during an afternoon ceremony, adding that this agreement is a strong incentive for the development of their relationship.
This meeting is the 43rd meeting between the two countries and the first foreign trip since Putin’s inauguration for the new presidential term. It comes as Russian forces advance towards eastern Ukraine from the Kharkiv region, delayed due to the slow delivery of European and American aid to Kyiv, while Russia’s economy and defense system show significant resilience against Western sanctions.
A situation that many US officials attribute to China’s support, which Beijing denies.
During a joint press conference, Xi and Putin stated that their countries have reached an agreement on a political solution to the war in Ukraine, and Beijing hopes to witness a rapid revival of peace and stability in Europe. Xi Jinping said that the development of relations between the two countries contributes to peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and the world, and called for a two-country solution to conflicts in the Middle East.
Tit for tat.
But what is the basis of the friendship between the two countries that Chinese diplomats have repeatedly defined as cooperation, emphasizing that it is not an alliance? It is clear that although other countries have also supported Russia in the past two years, Beijing has been a lifeline for Putin, to the extent that its economy has increasingly become dependent on Beijing.
Today, with nearly 20% of oil imports going to China, Moscow has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest crude oil supplier to the country. Meanwhile, overall trade between the two countries has increased by 26% between 2022 and 2023.
The whole story is not just about their cooperation, their collaboration is comprehensive, involving military and defense sectors. The Russian and Chinese armies are increasingly conducting joint exercises, and Beijing has rapidly become the main supplier of essential dual-use technologies for the Russian defense industries.
The Financial Times reports that between 2021 and 2023, China’s exports to Russia of semiconductors nearly doubled, and exports of chip production machinery and cannons also increased. Officially, Beijing continues to maintain neutrality in the Ukraine conflict and seems significantly reluctant to invest in new pipelines to deliver gas that Moscow can no longer sell to Europe to the East.
However, the figures speak for themselves. Since March 2023, the date of the last direct meeting between Xi and Putin, more than one important military component has been imported by the Russians from China.
An imbalanced relationship
If trade data confirm US claims that China is actually supporting Russia’s military machinery and its economy, it would attest to the fact that the relationship between Beijing and Moscow is completely asymmetric, and the dependency on Beijing exposes Putin’s vulnerability to growth.
Although both countries are effectively governed by autocratic regimes deeply tied to the historical grandeur myth and have allied against the United States, Russia’s economy is one-tenth of China’s and needs Beijing more than it lets on.
China is a crucial export market for Russia, vital for its industry, and allows Moscow to counter the Western narrative of its isolation on the international stage. Additionally, China and Russia share a border over 4,000 kilometers long, the longest border in the world, making jeopardizing good neighborly relations impossible. However, Xi does not want to be drawn into confrontation with NATO by Putin and fears being pressured by secondary sanctions from the United States and the European Union.
In short, the Chinese leader knows he must tread carefully with Moscow and maintain the upper hand, as he is guided by caution rather than necessity.
The differences in today’s media reports show this starkly, as while Russians celebrate the friendship enthusiastically, the news is subtly absent in Chinese media.
Heralds of a new order
However, it is wrong to assume that the bond between two countries is solely based on economic conditions or temporary factors.
Moscow and Beijing see each other as partners who do not threaten their internal stability and share a similar worldview. Most importantly, they agree on the need to establish a new international order to replace the current one, which they believe is built on Western interests and deprives them of their roles as major global powers.
President Putin reiterated this clearly today in Tiananmen Square after warm talks with his host. Russia and China cooperate with each other to create a fairer global order based on international laws and a balance of interests of all countries. According to the Russian president, this new order should be based on the central role of the United Nations and the Security Council, following international laws, culture, and civilization, ensuring a balance of interests for all members of the international community.
Putin emphasized that the cooperation between Russia and China is not directed against any other power and is a stabilizing factor for the world.
According to Philipp Ivanov, deliberately and through the convergence of Moscow and Beijing’s conditions, they are seeking to create a multipolar world where power is dispersed, and the main feature is the reduction of US power.
In the end, it seems that Xi Jinping will host Putin in Beijing after his presence in Europe last week, clarifying that China’s preferred relations today are friendship without limits, announced in 2022 shortly before the attack on Ukraine, leaning towards questioning the current international system centered on the US and the West in favor of more centrality for BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The concern of the two leaders is to maintain economic relations due to Western sanctions on Chinese products during the US tariffs era. Overall, there is pressure towards reforming the international system, ending the unilateralism created after the end of the Cold War. The goal is to keep Russia and China united despite existing differences, and due to the economic imbalance between the two and Moscow’s increasing dependence on Beijing, this imbalance will intensify in the future.