China has rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 25th visit to the country, underscoring a frequency of head-of-state diplomacy that far outpaces its engagement with the United States.
Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night for a two-day state visit, less than a week after US President Donald Trump wrapped up his own closely watched trip to China.
This marks the first time China has hosted the leaders of Russia and the US in the same month outside a multilateral setting.
Yet, the rapid succession of the summits is unlikely to fundamentally reshape or overshadow the broader agenda of China-Russia cooperation.
Numerous joint statements have reaffirmed that the ties binding Beijing and Moscow are defined by long-standing, highly reciprocal and frequent exchanges.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Monday that there was “no connection” between the two summits, saying the Russian leader’s trip was agreed in advance, several days after Putin and Xi spoke via video link in early February.
Such official assertions suggest a robust level of trust between Beijing and Moscow.
Wu Dahui, deputy director of the Russian Research Institute at Tsinghua University, said that mutual trust “is built through continuous cooperation”.
“We often assume that a foundation of trust must precede cooperation,” Wu explained at an event held in Hong Kong this month.
“But trust is built through continuous, incremental engagement where small steps accumulate into broader cooperation, and stable mechanisms of collaboration gradually take shape,” he added.
Since Putin was first inaugurated as Russia’s president on May 7, 2000, he has made 25 trips to China as president or prime minister, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
This week’s visit is also his first foreign trip of the year.
As for Chinese President Xi Jinping, since taking office in 2013, he has met Putin on more than 40 occasions, according to state news agency Xinhua. In March 2013, the Chinese leader made Russia the first country he visited as president.
Since 2013, Xi has made 11 visits to Russia, according to public records.
Apart from the coronavirus pandemic years of 2020–2021, Xi and Putin have met regularly, with the frequency of their visits increasing since the war in Ukraine started in 2022, as the two countries tighten strategic ties.
Meanwhile, Xi’s engagement with Trump is more often recorded at multilateral events.
Before Trump’s visit to Beijing last week, the two leaders had met six times, including at Group of 20 summits in Hamburg in 2017, Buenos Aires in 2018 and Osaka in 2019, as well as on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Busan last year.
Trump’s recent trip was the first to China by a US president in nearly nine years.
Later this year, in September, Xi will pay a state visit to the US – his first in more than a decade.
The Chinese leader most recently visited America in 2023, for the Apec summit in San Francisco, holding a bilateral meeting with then US president Joe Biden on the sidelines.
The stark difference in the number of bilateral visits comes as Beijing and Moscow maintain close strategic communication, including regular dialogue on defence and security matters.
For Beijing and Washington, geopolitical issues have proved especially thorny, including over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
And their discussions on trade and economic matters have been shaped by bilateral curbs and sanctions, unfolding through tit-for-tat measures and countermeasures.
In contrast with Sino-US summits that routinely conclude without a joint statement, the dynamic between Xi and Putin has resulted in major joint declarations, illustrating a high level of policy coordination.
During Putin’s 2024 visit to China, the two sides in a lengthy statement reaffirmed that each country was the other’s “priority partner”.
The statement ran to more than 12,000 characters in Chinese, covering a broad range of issues including trade, energy, technology, military ties and cultural exchanges.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Moscow had “very serious expectations” for this week’s visit, noting the two sides would use it to develop their “privileged and strategic partnership”.
The Russian delegation will include relevant deputy prime ministers, government ministers and business leaders, Peskov added.
Also on Monday, Ushakov of the Kremlin said the coming talks were expected to produce about 40 agreements relating to deepening cooperation in areas such as trade, transport, construction, nuclear energy and education.
It is anticipated that energy cooperation will feature prominently on the agenda as Russia faces mounting economic pressure and China looks to bolster its energy security amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the US-Israel military conflict with Iran. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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