Xi, Putin Rapport Showcased

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin paid his second trip to Beijing in seven months last week for a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The two-day visit marked his first foreign trip after being sworn in for the fifth term in office. Emphasis was on food, energy and cooperation between the two superpower neighbours. Moscow and Beijing describe their bilateral relations as based on equality, reciprocity, “ironclad” friendship and cooperation for mutual benefits. Xi and Putin signed a “no-limits” partnership agreement three weeks before the Ukraine war broke out in February 2022. On the eve of his May 16-17 Beijing visit, Putin announced that he was ready for peace talks on the war in Ukraine, provided Russia was also involved. This was about the time Dominic Cummings, former Advisor Dominic to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, lamented that Zelensky “conned us all” into the war.

Likewise, former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who also served as NATO’s general secretary, attacked China ahead of Putin’s visit, terming it the main source enabling Moscow “to run its war of aggression”. He named Iran and North Korea for providing Moscow with missiles without mentioning that more than 50 countries supplying arms to Ukraine. The Xi-Putin meetings showcased an accelerated scale of Sino-Russian rapport. The rest of the world monitored the obvious and engaged in decoding the nuances involved in the visit. Europe is still at a loss as to how it could effectively resist products from China at competitive prices, and to offset the losses borne by the oil taps from Russia turned off after Nord Stream pipeline was sabotaged by yet to be identified sources. The pipeline passed through Russia and Germany. A Pulitzer Prize winning American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh asserted that the US, with Norwegian support, did the damage. 

Common interests 

Compulsion more than anything else have brought the two neighbouring superpowers closer than at any time since the mid-1950s. They are making a virtue out of a necessity, considering the existential issue for their superpower status regained, or gained, since the 2010s. In fact, the two sides announced in 2023 that their relations had reached “the highest level in history.” Geo-political realities that surfaced in the past five years have prodded the two to jointly confront the traditional hegemons that acquired a grudging acceptance of their roles in the post-World War II decades. Hegemony has come under increasing criticisms in the recent times. This was underscored by the sanctions and currency freeze the US and its allies took against Russia and its supporters after the Ukraine war broke out in February 2022. 

China shows no signs of willingly abandoning its emergence as a superpower while Russia, too, is not giving in to playing second fiddle to the West. After getting lost in the 1990s when the Soviet Union, world’s first communist state, disintegrated and introduced a multiparty system and capitalist economy. The resultant oligarchy created chaos and millions of people lost their lifetime’s earnings amidst a long spell of galloping inflation. On the eve of the new millennium in December 1999, Putin, as vice-president, took over after Boris Yeltsin stepped down a year ahead of presidential election. Confronting diplomatic and trade sanctions imposed by the mainstream West in the 2020s, Beijing and Moscow have found themselves as natural allies. The lines between the US-led grouping and Sino-Russian plank have been drawn clearly. They are expected to get sharper, as the new world order begins to gather momentum. China and Russia are now graded higher in the international community’s esteem than a decade ago. 

Power equations are changing at a fast pace. The international political and economic landscape is in for political and economic situations distinctly different from what people were used to witnessing in the post-World War II decades. Iran and North Korea stand actively supportive of Sino-Russian tie-up. Venezuela along with a lineup of others from Asia, Africa and Latin America are warming up to the prospects of mutual cooperation on the basis of equality that Moscow and Beijing advocate. On the other hand, the 27-member European Union just about maintains a façade of cohesion, contradicted by divergent views on issues like weapons supply to Ukraine, security, staggering hike in energy costs and consequent inflation. With Britain’s exit, the economic grouping, also pushing for political agendas, suffered a dent amidst speculation that France might one day decide to call it quits.   

New thinking

Worried of the West, an angry Africa is getting actively assertive to be heard and make its presence felt in the international landscape. Many independent views and political analyst conclude that the time has come for Europe to not be overdependent on the US for its security and economic prosperity. They are against relying too heavily on their first cousins on the other side of the Atlantic to set major international agendas that have a direct bearing on Europe. Xi and Putin are bent on pushing for a multipolar world. They oppose hegemonism and power politics. The Moscow-Beijing approach to non-Western world in general is: If today it’s us, tomorrow, it’s you. BRICS and an accelerated pace for the Sanghai Cooperation Organisation are outcomes of Beijing’s initiatives endorsed by an increasing number of countries keen on a change in the existing world order.

Xi and Putin have already met 39 times. A year ago, Moscow and Beijing renewed a 20-year treaty on “friendly cooperation”. Bilateral trade accounts for some $240 billion. Given Russia’s vast wealth of natural resources and China’s ever-increasing demand for the same, the two neighbours are natural allies. They realise that the West, fearing competitions and decline in their international influence, are desperate to stem the fall. Russians, who fled home when the war in Ukraine started, are beginning to return in what could be an inkling of events to unfold for Putin to feel confident, and Washington to shift gear for new tactics to stall Moscow-Beijing thrust. The Putin-Xi latest visit meeting underline the extent and breadth of the Sino-Russian relations. It creates a more congenial atmosphere for other non-Western countries to be receptive to the duo’s proposals and initiatives in the days ahead.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)