Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin share similar views on issues from human rights to former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, in an increasingly close personal relationship that mirrors their nations’ converging interests.
Putin is to arrive in Beijing today for the APEC summit and his 10th meeting with Xi since the Chinese president took office in March last year, the People’s Daily said.
Their growing rapport comes as their nations’ trade, investment and geopolitical interests align. Moscow faces harsh Western criticism and sanctions over its seizure of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as opprobrium for its approach to dissent and homosexuality.
Beijing also has tense relationships over territorial disputes with neighbors such as Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, and has recently been the target of criticism over demands for free elections in Hong Kong.
“The situation is pushing the two countries towards closer ties, both are facing very heavy pressures, Russia in Ukraine and China in Hong Kong,” said Vladimir Yevseyev, director of the Moscow-based independent Public Political Studies Center.
“Xi comes from a background close to the military-industrial complex, he is a man who is much closer to the structures of power enforcement than his predecessor,” former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Yevseyev said.
“Putin understands him better, their outlooks are identical,” he added. “Xi is inclined to confrontation if necessary, which pleases Putin.”
Relations between Moscow and Beijing have a checkered history. Territorial disputes between Tsarist Russia and Imperial China gave way to cooperation between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in the latter’s early years.
That subsequently collapsed in a huge split over ideological issues such as how to promote revolution, who should lead the international communist movement, whether to engage with the capitalist world and China’s development of nuclear weapons.
Eventually a tectonic shift in global geopolitics resulted when Beijing and Washington ended their mutual hostility and former US president Richard Nixon visited China.
The USSR broke up 23 years ago and Russia and China have since been brought together by mutual concerns, notably wariness of Washington.
The two nations often vote as a pair on the UN Security Council, where both hold a veto, sometimes in opposition to Western powers on issues such as Syria.
They have carried out joint military exercises on land and sea and are members of the BRICS emerging nations group, which also includes Brazil, India and South Africa.
Their economic links are burgeoning, with resource-rich Russia a natural supplier to China’s growing economy.
After a decade of negotiations, during a visit to China by Putin in May the nations signed a 30-year gas deal said to be worth US$400 billion.
“As Europe is going to cut its consumption of Russian gas, China offers an alternative market,” Yevseyev said.
APEC, which began with ministerial meetings on Friday before the main summit tomorrow and on Tuesday, accounts for more than 50 percent of global GDP, 44 percent of world trade and 40 percent of the Earth’s population.
Russia, with its vast territory stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, is the organization’s only European member.
The consensus-based grouping, which focuses on trade and economic cooperation, generally tries to paper over major differences at its summits.
However, Xi, the scion of a Chinese Communist Party stalwart and war hero, and Putin, a former KGB agent who was stationed in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this month, are likely to assume a common stand in the face of critics of Russian and Chinese policies, such as the US, Canada, Australia and Japan.
They are also united by a common lament for the collapse of the Soviet Union and contempt for the man they hold responsible: Gorbachev, the leader who implemented perestroika and glasnost reforms in what was ultimately a failed bid to revitalize the one-party system.
Putin in 2005 called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century.
“Putin and Xi Jinping seem to be able to work together pretty well in part because I think both of them in different ways say: ‘You know who really did the wrong thing 25 years ago? Gorbachev,’” said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, at a talk in Beijing.
“The Chinese Communist Party says that Gorbachev made a mistake, he let things fall apart,” Wasserstrom said. “Putin says Gorbachev made a mistake. That’s a weird kind of convergence.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The