Xi Jinping will meet Vladimir Putin this week at a regional summit in Uzbekistan. (File)
Beijing:
Russia may suffer heavy casualties on the battlefield in Ukraine and sanction Western sanctions, but China is steadfast in its support for President Vladimir Putin and a friendship without borders.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet Putin this week at a regional summit in Uzbekistan, in a public display of unity that runs counter to the United States-led campaign to isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine.
While Beijing has not explicitly supported the invasion of Moscow, it has steadily built economic and strategic ties with Russia over the six months of the war, and President Xi has assured his counterpart of his support for Russia’s “sovereignty and security.”
Analysts say that as relations between China and the US plummet, Beijing believes it should nurture ties with its giant northern neighbor.
“Regardless of whether Russia wins (in Ukraine), China will pursue a close alignment with Russia, which is decided more than anything else by the current state of US-China relations,” said Yun Sun, director of the China-China Commission. program from the Washington-Stimson Center, AFP told AFP.
As the world’s second-largest nuclear power, “Russia is not a geopolitical power that can be turned off,” Sun said.
China sees Russia as an important partner in pulling international institutions away from Washington’s dominance.
On Monday, senior diplomat Yang Jiechi told Russian ambassador to China Andrey Denisov that Xi and Putin could work together to “promote the development of the international order in a more just and rational direction”.
And on the trade side, China has been buying more oil from Russia in recent months, with Russia becoming China’s largest oil supplier for three months in a row from May to July, helping to offset Moscow’s losses.
Tensions between the US and China
Relations between China and the US have been fraught for years, with a trade war showing no signs of easing, as Washington accuses Beijing of human rights abuses.
In August, ties reached a dramatic new low when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited self-ruled Taiwan, angering Beijing, which considers the island part of its territory.
The Chinese government responded with massive military exercises and missile launches around Taiwan, canceling cooperation with the US in multiple areas, including key climate talks.
Last week, Xi sent his government’s top lawmaker, Li Zhanshu, to Russia, where he met Putin.
“Political mutual trust, strategic coordination and pragmatic cooperation between the two countries have reached an unprecedented level,” Li said, according to state media.
Li’s visit came as Russia endured a series of major military reversals in Ukraine, with Kiev’s forces retaking parts of the territory.
But if Russia is “weakened in the war, that’s not necessarily bad news for China, as it will become more dominant in bilateral relations,” analyst Sun said.
Russia ‘mainly hopeful’
A closer look at Li’s journey also reveals that China is still keen not to be hit by Western sanctions related to the war in Ukraine — even as Moscow portrays Beijing as a mainstay of its invasion.
Russia claimed in a parliamentary lecture that Li had said “we fully understand the need for all measures taken by Russia to protect its most important interests, we offer our assistance”.
The rule did not appear in China’s official reports of the interaction, suggesting a disconnect in both sides’ posts.
“As Russia’s position deteriorates, Putin will look for more Chinese support,” Hal Brands, a professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said in comments posted to Twitter last week.
Xi and Putin will meet this week on the sidelines of a summit of regional leaders.
It will be their first meeting since the Russian leader visited Beijing in February, where the two presidents declared that “the friendship between the two states knows no borders”.
The meeting is taking place “at a time of great fluidity on the battlefield, which may mean Russia is especially hopeful of Chinese aid,” said Joseph Torigian, a foreign policy expert at American University in Washington, DC.
“We don’t know how difficult the question will be and how much China thinks it can help without sacrificing its own economic interests,” he told AFP.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
