As predicted, China and Russia renewed their alliance against the US-led West during the first meeting between leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin since the Russian invaded Ukraine, 20 days after the Feb. of Moscow in the Cold War 2.0 between Beijing and Washington.
Significantly, it was the pressured Putin who named the horse in the open part of the meeting: he thanked the “balanced position of our Chinese friends when it comes to the crisis in Ukraine and we understand their questions and concerns on the subject”.
The Russian also repeated what he had already said after the visit of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan. Putin said the US is provoking Beijing and that Russia supports the “one China” principle — that is, that the island must be absorbed into the mainland dictatorship.
He stated that the navies of the two countries should deepen their coordination in the Pacific, as they have already been doing in opposition to the US articulations with allies such as Japan and Australia. No word in front of cameras about Putin’s second current callus, the renewed conflict between his ally Armenia and Azerbaijan, backed by ambiguous Turkey, which threatens another strategic Russian border.
Xi, clearly pleased, responded by playing music for Putin. “China is willing to make efforts with Russia to assume its responsibility as great powers, and assume the role of guide to inject stability and positive energy into a chaotic world,” he said.
Music, but with meticulously chosen chords. That had been two weeks ago, when Putin met with the Chinese regime’s number 3, Li Zhanshu, in Vladivostok. The politician spoke of China’s “coordinated assistance” to the Russians in the war, only to see that part of the speech omitted from the Beijing foreign ministry communiqué.
Such care expresses Xi’s dilemma, which in any case has opened up a line of economic oxygen by increasing Russian energy imports. He may have economic advantages with the plentiful and cheaper hydrocarbons Putin offers, as the European market is shutting down due to the war. In addition, the Russians have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
But the protracted war, which now exposes Putin to criticism over the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv, makes life difficult for the Chinese, who depends on his relationship with the West. On the verge of crystallizing his personal power with an unprecedented third term in October, Xi has a massive economic crisis to deal with, courtesy of a bump in his housing market and the lockdowns of his Covid zero policy.
Thus, measuring public words and leaving the drums of war in the hands that are already sunk in conflict is the possible balance. Of course, some detail of what was said behind closed doors has yet to emerge.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an entity created in 2001 to discuss mutual interests in Eurasia — at this meeting, in Uzbekistan, another US adversary, Iran, announced that it would be the ninth full member of the group.
The meeting place, the mythical Samarkand that marked the center of the ancient Silk Road between China and the West, was symbolic of Xi’s ambitions. Its Belt and Road Initiative is the world’s largest multinational infrastructure project, despite having lost momentum.
And Beijing seeks greater dialogue and influence in Central Asia, a geopolitical territory that used to be Russian, due to its Soviet heritage. With an economy ten times the size of Russia’s, it has the muscle to do so, but it does it with a knack: Putin and Xi met with the Mongolian leader to announce plans for joint energy projects, with the Russian praising the union with China to global security.
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