Days after US President Donald Trump’s visit framed around managing risks, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached a raft of agreements and pledged deeper cooperation as they met in Beijing.
An analyst in China captured the stark contrast between the two visits as a clear choice between pomp and pragmatism.
“Over these 30 years, our relations, tempered by wind and rain, have risen to ever new heights, following the dictates of the times,” Xi said after the summit on Wednesday morning, referencing the 30th anniversary this year of the China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination.
“[Ties] are now at the historical peak of a comprehensive partnership and strategic coordination in a new era and are rightfully considered a model of a new type of relationship between major powers,” Xi added.
His remarks followed a grand signing ceremony in the Great Hall of the People, where Xi and Putin sealed over 20 agreements covering energy, trade, science and technology, and infrastructure. The two sides also signed a sweeping agreement to further boost strategic ties and a joint declaration to push for a multipolar world order.
In all, over 40 agreements at government and corporate levels were reached during his visit, Putin told reporters at the same briefing.
According to Russian media reports, the two leaders agreed on key parameters for the highly anticipated Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline – including its route and construction details – though pricing terms were not disclosed.
State-owned news agency Tass quoted Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak as saying that the two countries were already in the final stages of finalising the contracts for the project, which has been under negotiation for nearly two decades.
Li Lifan, a Russia and Central Asia specialist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the agreements to strengthen ties, including extending a landmark friendship treaty, showed that Beijing was eyeing a long-term close relationship with Russia.
Putin’s trip had been timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation.
Li said the summit also provided an opportunity for the two sides to reach a “tacit” agreement over the pricing of fuel imports from Russia, as China should be less reluctant to accept a higher price given the overall spike in international oil and gas prices.
For Putin, this trip is a prime opportunity to secure favourable natural gas pricing and gain bargaining leverage as the Middle East crisis upends global energy markets, according to Li.
“[Putin’s trip] is ultimately a price bargain – the finalisation of price haggling. I estimate that we will see new movements on this front very soon,” Li said, noting that the Russian delegation included the head of the country’s energy giant, Gazprom.
After years of deadlock over pricing and routes, the current geopolitical crisis has injected fresh urgency into the Power of Siberia 2 project.
The Kremlin is eager to push the project forward, having lost its primary energy market after the European Union slashed Russian gas imports in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
And while China has long adhered to its energy diversification policy, it also wishes to reduce reliance on fuel shipments through the volatile Strait of Hormuz.
The proposed project could deliver an additional 50 billion cubic metres (about 1.8 trillion cubic feet) of gas annually from Russia’s Arctic and Siberian fields to China via Mongolia, a scale comparable to the designed 55 billion cubic metres annual capacity of the damaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to Europe.
“Our country is one of the largest exporters of oil, natural gas (including liquefied gas), and coal to China. We are, of course, ready to continue to reliably ensure uninterrupted supplies of all these fuels to the rapidly growing Chinese market,” Putin said at the joint press conference.
He also highlighted Russia’s thriving cooperation with China in car manufacturing, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, aircraft manufacturing and space exploration.
For his part, Xi said China would boost cooperation with Russia in energy, the digital economy, artificial intelligence and technological innovation.
Beyond commercial agreements, Xi underscored the strategic necessity of China and Russia aligning on the world stage, framing their partnership as a crucial counterweight in global governance.
“The world is far from calm. The damage caused by unilateral actions and hegemony is overwhelming, and a return to the law of the jungle threatens,” Xi said in a veiled criticism of the United States.
“Political trust is the most striking feature of Chinese-Russian relations,” he added.
A joint statement issued later by the two countries also targeted the US, accusing it of posing “a clear threat to strategic stability” through its Golden Dome missile shield project.
They also warned against provocations by certain nuclear-armed countries, without directly naming the US.
Putin’s packed itinerary – marked by a major signing ceremony, a joint press conference and a sweeping bilateral statement – stood in stark contrast to the closing hours of Trump’s state visit last week.
In the absence of any concrete agreement, Trump’s visit culminated in symbolic gestures, with a visit to the exclusive Zhongnanhai leadership compound for private chats and a stroll through its secluded gardens.
While Trump said the trip yielded commercial agreements, China’s official readout remained devoid of specifics. Instead, Xi shifted the focus to security, emphasising the need to maintain strategic stability with the US through risk management while warning Washington to handle the Taiwan issue with “utmost caution”.
Trump later said that Xi spent a substantial amount of time discussing Taiwan, but the US president had made no commitments on the matter.
Li highlighted the difference in how Beijing had handled the back-to-back visits by the two leaders.
“We handed the substance to Putin and the ‘face’ to Trump, because Trump loves that kind of vanity and showmanship, whereas Putin is quite pragmatic,” he said.
“From a profitability standpoint, the agreements with Russia are definitely more aligned with China’s actual needs.”
The rapport between Xi and Putin was also apparent, having met over 40 times since Xi took office as Communist Party secretary in 2012.
“As we know, in China they say ‘I haven’t seen you for one day, but it feels like three autumns have passed’, and we, indeed, are very happy to see you,” Putin said as he met Xi on Wednesday.
The expression is often used to describe the feeling that time passes painfully slowly in someone’s absence.
Xi, on the other hand, called Putin his “long-time friend”.
The two also continued their talks in a more intimate setting over tea following a state banquet, with both sides calling the visit successful even if the actual visit was only a day long, in a sign of their long-standing cooperation.
Li said the back-to-back state visits were shifting the triangular dynamic among China, the US and Russia into an “equilateral triangle”, with Beijing acting as the central pivot of a drafting compass.
Cui Hongjian, a former diplomat and the head of European studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said China still had a genuine need for Russia on strategic and security levels, even as Moscow relied more heavily on Beijing in trade, energy and civilian technology.
China-Russia ties were an “asymmetric, cross-cutting relationship of mutual interdependence”, he said.
“As long as there is no real resolution in US-China relations – by which I mean both sides explicitly agreeing to stop using strategic, security, or military means to pursue reckless competition and confrontation – China will continue to rely on Russia for strategic stability and a military balance,” Cui noted.b-- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
