Russian President, Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit China this week, using the first foreign trip of his new six-year term to underscore the deepening partnership with China’s Xi Jinping.
“At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin will pay a state visit to China on May 16-17 as his first foreign trip after taking office,” the Kremlin announced on Tuesday, May 14, 2024.
It will be Putin’s second visit to China in just over six months.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Hua Chunying said in a statement that the two will discuss “bilateral ties, cooperation in various fields, and international and regional issues of common interest.”
During the visit, Putin will meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang to discuss economic cooperation. Putin will also visit the northeastern city of Harbin, which has strong ties to Russia, for a trade and investment exposition.
The Kremlin said that the two leaders would “discuss in detail the entire range of issues of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction, identify key directions for the further development of Russian-Chinese practical cooperation, and also thoroughly exchange views on the most pressing international and regional issues.”
The Kremlin press service said that a joint statement is expected to be signed, adding that the two sides would also be signing a number of bilateral documents.
Putin and Xi will take part in an event celebrating 75 years since the Soviet Union recognised the People’s Republic of China which was declared by Mao Zedong in 1949.
China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
Putin pivoted to China after the US and its allies tried to isolate Russia as punishment for the war in Ukraine.
China-Russian trade hit a record of $240.1bn in 2023, up 26.3 percent from a year earlier, Chinese customs data shows.
Russia has become China’s top crude supplier, with its oil shipments to China jumping more than 24 percent in 2023 despite Western sanctions.
Xi’s Western Engagement Not Broken By Allegiance To Putin
For Xi, who freshly returned from a three-nation European tour, the visit is an opportunity to showcase that his allegiance to Putin has not broken his ability to engage with the West.
Putin and Xi share a broad worldview, which sees the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges US supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
China has rebuffed Western criticism of its ties with Russia, but their economic partnership and military cooperation have come under increasing scrutiny in the West.
Meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen as part of his European tour, Xi pledged that China would not sell arms to Russia and would control the flow of dual-use goods to its military, both raised as points of concern by the West.
The United States’s latest punitive measures, announced this month, targeted more than 280 entities in their latest effort to paralyse Russia’s military and industrial capabilities, including 20 firms based in China and Hong Kong.
According to a report on bilateral investment by a Chinese think tank, about 80 per cent of payment settlements between China and Russia were suspended as of March because of sanctions from the West.
The report from the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University noted that this has “severely impacted normal trade and commercial relations” and brings home the urgent need to “build new payment-and-settlement channels as soon as possible, and resolve the threat of secondary sanctions on financial institutions.”
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