Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised to take his country’s ties with Russia to a new level this year in a video conference with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (22), hours after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The two leaders have made it an annual tradition to speak around the new year — a feature of a close personal relationship that helped cement a partnership between the countries that only grew as Putin waged war on Ukraine.
Xi expressed his readiness to “guide China-Russia relations to a new level” and respond to “external uncertainties” with the “stability and resilience of China-Russia ties”, a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout said.
The two countries should deepen “strategic coordination” and “practical cooperation” and “firmly support each other,” Xi told the Russian president, who appeared via video link on a large screen in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People during the conference call.
Putin hailed the countries’ trade expansion — which Chinese data shows reached a record last year — and alluded to their shared ambitions to reshape a global order they see as unfairly dominated by the United States.
“We are united in defending a fairer multipolar world order and work to ensure indivisible security both in the Eurasian space and globally,” Putin told Xi, according to a Kremlin readout.
The joint efforts of Moscow and Beijing “objectively play an important stabilizing role in international affairs,” he said.
The call between the two autocrats comes as they both closely watch Trump’s return to the White House.
Both leaders have publicly expressed hope of reestablishing tense relations with the US under the new administration.
Trump has also signaled interest in engaging or meeting with both leaders early in his presidency, though it remains unclear how conciliatory or hardline the new administration will be toward any U.S. rivals.
Xi and the new US president held their own call days before the inauguration, with the conversation covering a range of topics including the war in Ukraine, Trump said later.
A diplomatic triangle?
The Republican has expressed personal admiration for both autocrats, but he is also expected to seek concessions from each with the aim of leveling the economic playing field between the US and China and ending Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
Trump indicated on Tuesday (21) that he would consider imposing additional sanctions on Russia if Putin did not appear at the negotiating table to end the war.
“We are talking to (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky. We will talk to President Putin very soon, and we will see what — how everything happens,” he declared.
The US president also suggested that he hopes Xi can use his influence to play a role in mediating an end to this conflict, noting that he asked the Chinese leader during his recent call to “resolve this.”
European leaders have long hoped that China’s president could play a role in getting Putin to accept Ukraine’s peace terms, but Trump’s entry into the White House and his stated drive to end the war adds new potential for the administration. Chinese play a role.
This could create a delicate balancing act for Beijing.
Xi has long sought to portray China as a potential peace broker in the conflict, even as the US and its allies have accused Beijing of supporting the Russian war effort by exporting dual-use goods, which they deny.
The Chinese leader is also seen as interested in building a good relationship with Trump to avoid potentially damaging tariffs at a time of economic weakness in China.
But the president will also likely want to be careful not to harm his partnership with Russia.
Xi and Putin signed a “no-holds-barred” partnership weeks before the Russian invasion and the Chinese see their Russian counterpart as a critical partner amid broader friction with the West.
Neither the Kremlin readout nor China’s Foreign Ministry specified whether the war in Ukraine was discussed during Tuesday’s call between the heads of state.
Instead, both readings referred to the 80th anniversary of Beijing and Moscow’s shared Allied victory in World War II.
The rulers invited each other to celebrate this victory together this year, with events in Russia in May and in China in September, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday (21).
This content was originally published in Xi and Putin talk about ties in a phone call hours after Trump’s inauguration on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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