“Changes are happening right now that have not been seen in 100 years. And we are driving these changes together.” These are the words that the Chinese president used Xi Jinping, in the last toast with Vladimir Putin in dinner on Tuesday evening before leaving for the Chinese capital on Wednesday morning. For many years, for Beijing, "the sky is the limit of cooperation with Russia" but unlike the more than 40 bilateral meetings that have taken place in the last ten years between the two countries, today China e Russia they always appear closer, committed to redesigning a new world order using the confrontation with the West over the Ukrainian crisis. In two full days of meetings, Putin and Xi have shown themselves united in creating "a new model of relations" that goes beyond economic interdependence and energy supplies and takes on all the aspects of a true strategic partnership with a global character.
China's new political ambitions
"We are witnessing the emergence of China as the most capable political actor" commented not surprisingly the Washington Post at the end of Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow. For years, states the American newspaper, the economy has been at the center of this new 'Chinese order' which has brought about "massive efforts" such as in the case of the Belt and Road Initiative, on the basis of which Chinese state-owned companies invest in major infrastructure projects around the world from Europe to Africa to Asia. Now the Chinese dragon shows new political ambitions as demonstrated by the peace plan in 12 points formulated by Beijing for the end of the war in Ukraine or as witnessed by Beijing's mediation for the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
China-West: relations already cracked before the war in Ukraine
The Russian capital witnessed the latest act of an axis between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has been strengthening since 2013, when Xi first went to Moscow. But Xi returned to Russia just as his third presidential term began which made him the most powerful Chinese president since Mao Zedong. But it has to be said that Beijing's hegemonic ambitions date back well before the Ukrainian crisis. Beijing's relations with the West were already critical at the time of trade dispute e tecnologica with Use and tensions su Taiwan while they opened a deep furrow in relations with Washington there was an ever greater harmony with Moscow.
The economy at the center of Beijing-Moscow relations
In relations between Beijing and Moscow, however, the economy remains the strong point in bilateral relations. For energy, the maxi-agreement between Cnpc e Gazprom signed by China and Russia during the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Shanghai in May 400. Last year, when Putin traveled to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Gazprom and CNPC signed an agreement for another ten billion cubic meters of gas per year. But by 2014, Putin said, Russia will bring supplies of Russian gas to China at 98 billion cubic meters, to which will be added one hundred million tons of LNG (liquefied natural gas). With Xi's visit to Moscow, the supply levels of the "Power of Siberia 50" were set at 2 billion cubic meters, the second pipeline, after the first Power of Siberia, which brings Russian gas to China.
Trade: in 2023 the aim is to reach 200 billion dollars
China, Xi explained, "attaches great importance to the joint construction of the Belt and Road". New Silk Road launched in 2013, “and the Eurasian Economic Union”, the initiative which includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Xi also invited Putin to China this year on the occasion of the third edition of the Belt and Road Forum, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the launch of the
New Silk Road. Putin said Russia and China will also cooperate to develop the route arctic and among the bilateral documents signed during Xi's visit there is also the one on the cooperation industrial e infrastructure in the Far East of the Russian Federation.
If the volume of trade between China and Russia has grown by 116% in the last ten years, by 2023 the aim is to cross the finish line of two hundred billion dollars. Last year trade reached 190 billion dollars, and in the first two months of 2023 Russia confirmed itself as the leading supplier of crude oil to China, ahead of Saudi Arabia, with a 23,8% increase in supplies year on year.
The "Club of Dictators"
But also on the political plan Beijing and Moscow are ever closer as they are both members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the group which also includes four former Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and which were joined by India and Pakistan in 2017, and Iran, since last year. A "club of dictators" according to the most critical, but in fact an opponent of NATO, which Moscow and Beijing would like to expand in the Asia-Pacific.
Xi ready to play a more active role in the Ukrainian crisis
Xi's two-day visit to Moscow which ended on Wednesday 22 March, while the whole territory of Ukraine was subject to Russian attacks. From the city of Zaporizhzhia in Kiev where the death toll from the Russian attack launched with drones in the city of Rzhyshchiv, southeast of the capital, has risen to four. Xi Jinping confirmed the Chinese neutrality in the conflict and his willingness to mediate to reopen the dialogue between Kiev and Moscow. According to Putin, the Chinese plan could serve as a basis for any agreements with Ukraine, "but only when the West is ready" he specified. Moscow has appreciated Beijing's "objective and impartial" position, reads the joint statement issued by Xi and Putin. Peace talks are the way to resolve the crisis, agree the two leaders, who instead oppose any move - including the imposition of sanctions, which they define as "unilateral" - that could raise tensions and prolong the fighting .
Only a year ago Xi had resorted to a Chinese proverb to define the situation, namely that "it is up to whoever tied the rattle around the tiger's neck to remove it". The tiger being Putin and the rattle the eastern expansion of NATO which would have undermined Russian security. Today, strengthened by his third term, Xi appears less cryptic and seems ready to play a much more direct role in the crisis Ukraine.
Looking to Kiev but especially thinking about Taiwan.
