Putin, Xi to Display Budding Partnership

"When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping hold a summit alongside the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, on display will be a flourishing partnership that is already complicating U.S. foreign policy and influence around the world.

Mr. Putin is going to Beijing at a time of high tension with the West over Russia's military buildup near Ukraine and his demands that the U.S. and its allies retreat from Eastern Europe.

China, while calling for diplomacy, has offered backing for Moscow, urging the U.S. and Europe to address Russia's security concerns and stop using military alliances to threaten others.

For Messrs. Putin and Xi, Friday will be their first in-person summit in two years after the Chinese leader stopped seeing foreign dignitaries because of the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Putin will be the most prominent foreign leader at the Olympics after the U.S. and several allies declined to send high-level officials, to protest China's human-rights abuses.

After their talks, the leaders plan to release a joint statement laying out their common views on international and security issues, a Kremlin aide said.

Both governments have billed the summit as a landmark in a partnership that has seen Russia and China cooperate on a widening array of matters: trade, energy, counterintelligence, diplomacy, defense, security, and regional hot spots.

Closer coordination between China and Russia, after decades of estrangement, complicates Biden administration strategies to isolate Mr. Putin and punish him and Russia with economic sanctions should Russian forces attack Ukraine. Over the longer term, the Beijing-Moscow entente could tie down U.S. military resources in Europe and East Asia, foiling a Biden administration plan to focus on China as the signal global security threat.

"What's driving them together is their common interest in undercutting the U.S.," said Daniel Russel, a former senior official on Asian issues in the Obama administration. If the Ukraine crisis drives a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies, he said, it benefits Moscow and Beijing since "raising doubts about whether the U.S. can defend democracies helps them both."

Cooperation between Russia and China appears to have limits. While both sides collaborate on defense, they have no formal alliance, and U.S. officials and military specialists said that, aside from joint exercises by their armed forces, the level of military partnership is difficult to determine.

Some Russians are concerned about China's growing economic sway. Beijing is wary of a full-blown military conflict in Ukraine, Chinese security specialists said, given China's business interests in Russia and Europe and an economy well-entwined with global trade and investment.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, who have cultivated domestic images as strong rulers, have built a partnership over the past decade animated by concerns the U.S. uses its pre-eminent global power to suppress Russia and China.

"Moscow and Beijing have a common understanding of the need to create a more just world order," Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters Wednesday. "We have similar and coinciding views on a significant part of international problems. China shares the position that the security of one state cannot be ensured by compromising the security of another country."

Chinese state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday described the China-Russia relationship as "a big ship featuring the highest degree of mutual trust, the highest level of coordination and the highest strategic value."" [1]

1. World News: Putin, Xi to Display Budding Partnership
Simmons, Ann M. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 03 Feb 2022: A.9.