Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, March 21, 2023. Sputnik/Mikhail Tereshchenko/Pool via Portal/File Photo acquire license rights
- Putin travels to China to meet Xi
- Putin takes part in the Belt and Road Forum
- Putin’s second visit outside the former USSR since the war
MOSCOW/BEIJING, Oct 15 (Portal) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Xi Jinping in China this week to deepen the partnership between the U.S.’s two biggest strategic rivals.
Putin will attend the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on October 17 and 18, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.
China and Russia declared a “borderless” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War II.
The United States portrays China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat, while US President Joe Biden argues that this century will be marked by an existential competition between democracies and autocracies.
“Over the last decade, Xi has built the world’s most consequential undeclared alliance with Putin’s Russia,” Graham Allison, a Harvard University professor and former deputy defense secretary under Bill Clinton, told Portal.
“The US will have to grapple with the uncomfortable fact that a rapidly growing systemic rival and a revanchist one-dimensional superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world are closely aligned to oppose the US.”
Biden called Xi a “dictator” and said Putin is a “murderer” and a leader who cannot stay in power. Beijing and Moscow have scolded Biden for the comments.
Since the Ukraine war, Putin has spent most of his time in the former Soviet Union, although he visited Iran last year for talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
‘NO LIMITS’?
Once the senior partner in the global communist hierarchy, three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is now seen as the junior partner of a resurgent communist China under Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Putin and Xi share a broad worldview that sees the West as decadent and declining, while China challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
But Xi, leading an $18 trillion economy, must balance close personal ties with Putin with the realities of dealing with the $27 trillion economy of the United States – still the world’s strongest and richest military power .
The United States has warned China against supplying Putin with weapons as Russia, a $2 trillion economy, battles Ukrainian forces backed by the United States and the European Union.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the optics of the Ukraine war make large public deals unlikely at the moment.
“Putin is definitely the guest of honor,” Gabuev said, adding that military and nuclear cooperation would be discussed.
“At the same time, I think that China, at least publicly, has no interest in signing more agreements, because anything that can be presented as additional cash flow for Putin’s war chest and Putin’s war machine is not good at this point.”
Adding to the complexity of military cooperation is the uncertainty over the fate of Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who has not been seen in public for more than six weeks.
The heads of Russian energy giants Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and Rosneft (ROSN.MM), Alexei Miller and Igor Sechin, will join Putin’s entourage during his visit, sources familiar with the plans told Portal.
Russia wants to secure a deal to sell more natural gas to China and plans to build the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which will run through Mongolia and have an annual capacity of 50 billion cubic meters (bcm).
It is unclear whether the gas contract – particularly the price and construction costs – will be agreed.
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams
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