China and Russia yesterday condemned US President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield plans and Washington’s “irresponsible” nuclear policy at a joint summit, a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) hosted Trump in Beijing.
A statement from Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Trump’s plan for a ground and space-based missile interceptor system posed a threat to global strategic stability.
It also criticized the US over the expiry of the last remaining treaty restricting the size of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, which lapsed in February with Trump failing to respond to Moscow’s proposal to extend the limits by a year.
Photo: AFP
Xi and Putin, who have met more than 40 times, stressed the closeness of the relations they sealed in 2022 with the signing of a strategic partnership treaty, less than three weeks before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
For Xi, it capped a remarkable week of diplomacy in which he has set out to showcase China as a pillar of stability in a world rocked by trade wars and military conflicts in Iran and Ukraine.
While the summit with Trump was largely about managing tensions between the world’s two most powerful countries, the meeting with Putin posed a different challenge — how to demonstrate progress in a relationship that the two sides have already proclaimed is “without limits.”
However, there was no apparent breakthrough on a massive new natural gas pipeline, the Power of Siberia 2, that the two sides have been discussing for years.
Moscow had signaled ahead of the visit that it was seeking further energy agreements with China, the largest buyer of Russian oil, including pipeline supplies and sea-borne shipments.
The countries should focus on long-term strategy and promote a “more just and reasonable” global governance system, Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.
“China-Russia relations have reached this level because we have been able to deepen political mutual trust and strategic cooperation,” Xi said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
Putin said after the talks that Russian-Chinese ties had “reached a truly unprecedented level and continue to develop.”
Both sides jointly signed a statement on strengthening comprehensive strategic coordination and a declaration advocating multipolarity in the world order.
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