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.
Both world leaders were welcomed by Xi with a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, with the Chinese President expressing delight at both Trump and Putin’s visits.
But beneath smiles and handshakes as Putin arrived in Beijing yesterday, neither the Chinese nor the Russian leader could ignore the elephant in the room – Trump’s flying state visit the week before.
The similarities between the two visits were hard to miss. Red carpets, dances, lavish dinners, and talks about world peace featured heavily in both.
Trump and Putin went to Beijing with different goals. It seems as though both have achieved some of them, but one thing is clear – China is the one holding the cards at the moment.
Rivalling state visits
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Trump and Putin’s visits to Beijing weren’t meant to come back-to-back initially.
The US president planned to visit China during the first week of April, but the visit was postponed as a result of the war in Iran.
It’s the proximity of the state visits that has led outsiders to compare them. Both the US and Russia strengthened ties with China during the visit, but Xi’s power on the international stage has set him apart as a winner.
Russia needs China. The two countries signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation back in 2001, and China 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 as the war in Ukraine wages on. Ultimately, China benefits from this relationship. It has leverage with Putin, having supplied the country for almost four years now.
Trump went to Beijing with different goals in mind. Rather than focusing on energy, the US and China are poised to form a ‘board of trade’ and ‘board of investment’ to help strengthen trade agreements.
There were subtle digs about 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 can all be read as criticism of the United States, but of course, Russia and China are claiming those same rights of unobstructed aggression and expansionism for themselves with Taiwan and Ukraine.
‘It’s hypocritical. The idea of a multipolar world implies that the disgruntlement Russia and China are expressing toward the United States isn’t because they disapprove of U.S. actions, but because the United States can do it and they can’t.’
China keeps growing stronger
The winner after both state visits appears to be China, however. Xi’s position hasn’t changed one bit, Giles added.
‘China can wait out the conflict between Russia and the wider world, and it can pick up the pieces when it’s over,’ he said.
‘For the time being, China can extract maximum value from the relationship by supplying Russia with the things it needs to prosecute its war — money, drone components, nitrocellulose, and so on.
‘Meanwhile, Russia grows weaker while China grows stronger. So the upper hand is definitely with Beijing, and China has the luxury of not needing to publicly demand anything from Russia that Moscow would find distinctly uncomfortable — at least not yet.’
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