Just days after Donald Trump visited Beijing in a lavish state visit, Vladimir Putin paid a visit to his dear friend Xi Jinping and bragged about their friendship.
Each world leaders were welcomed by Xi with a ceremony on the Great Hall of the People, with the Chinese President expressing delight at each Trump and Putin for visiting him.
But below the grins and handshakes, each China and Russia were addressing the elephant within the room – the recent state visit from Trump.
The similarities between the 2 visits were hard to miss. Red carpets, dances in honour of the visit, lavish dinners and talks about world peace.
Trump and Putin each went to Beijing with different goals. Each appear to have achieved some, if not all of them, but China is the one holding the cards in the intervening time.
Rivalling state visits
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The ironic thing about Trump and Putin’s visits to Beijing being so close together is that they weren’t initially meant to be.
Trump planned to go to China in the course of the first week of April, but due to war in Iran, the visit was postponed.
The proximity of the state visits has led many to match them and declare a winner. Each the US and Russia strengthened ties with China in the course of the visit, but Xi is the one on top.
Russia needs China. The country became Russia’s top trading partner after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Putin is heavily reliant on Xi for energy and trade, especially because the war in Ukraine wages on. Ultimately, China advantages from this relationship. It has leverage with Putin, having supplied the country for nearly 4 years now.
Trump went to Beijing with different goals in mind. Reasonably than specializing in energy, the US and China are poised to form a ‘board of trade’ and ‘board of investment’ to assist strengthen trade agreements.
There have been subtle digs in regards to the United States when Putin was visiting, Russian expert Keir Giles, from Chatham House, told Metro.
‘The international situation is marked by intertwined turbulence and transformation, while unilateral hegemonic currents are running rampant,’ Xi said, criticising what China sees as American foreign policy overreach.
Giles points out: ‘This will all be read as criticism of america, but in fact, Russia and China are claiming those self same rights of unobstructed aggression and expansionism for themselves with Taiwan and Ukraine.
‘It’s hypocritical. The concept of a multipolar world implies that the disappointment Russia and China are expressing toward america isn’t because they disapprove of U.S. actions, but because america can do it and so they can’t.’
China keeps growing stronger
The winner after each state visits appears to be China, nevertheless. Xi’s position hasn’t modified one bit, Giles added.
‘China can wait out the conflict between Russia and the broader world, and it will probably pick up the pieces when it’s over,’ he said.
‘In the intervening time, China can extract maximum value from the connection by supplying Russia with the things it must prosecute its war — money, drone components, nitrocellulose, and so forth.
‘Meanwhile, Russia grows weaker while China grows stronger. So the upper hand is certainly with Beijing, and China has the posh of not needing to publicly demand anything from Russia that Moscow would find distinctly uncomfortable — at the very least not yet.’
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