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Xi Jinping arrives in Moscow to stage his new role as international mediator with Putin

2023-03-20T13:02:59.792Z


The leaders of China and Russia write articles highlighting the common interests of both countries in dealing with the West


Xi Jinping begins a historic mandate with the Kremlin in the background.

The Chinese president is in Moscow, the destination of his first official trip after consolidating his absolute power at the head of the Asian power.

One year after Vladimir Putin unleashed war on Ukraine and broke the European

status quo

, Beijing has abandoned its isolation to rival the United States as a global mediator.

For its part, the Kremlin expects from its “unlimited friendship”, not an alliance, financial support – and, according to Washington, arms support – to survive the sanctions and complete its invasion of Ukraine.

The Chinese presidential plane landed at the Vnukovo airport, southwest of Moscow, at 12:59 local time (two hours less in mainland Spain).

“In a world that is far from peaceful, China is prepared to defend together with Russia the international system organized around the UN;

prepared to ensure a multipolar world order based on international law and the basic norms of international relations," Xi said upon arriving in the Russian capital.

Both leaders have a lot to talk about.

"There will be no onerous protocol acts, the main thing is negotiations, negotiations and negotiations," said Yuri Ushakov, assistant to the Russian president.

Xi's official visit will last three days.

Upon his arrival, he was received by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Chernyshenko, although he is expected to hold a first informal meeting with Putin this Monday.

His summit will take place on Tuesday, when the Kremlin awaits the signing of a dozen documents and two declarations.

China as an alternative to the US

Xi considers the visit "a trip of friendship, cooperation and peace", as he wrote in an article published Monday in the Russian newspaper

Rossíiskaya Gazeta

and on the website of the RIA Novosti news agency before disembarking in Russia.

The war in Ukraine floats in the air and will be one of the most sensitive points to deal with.

For the first time, both leaders will be able to discuss face to face a 12-point plan launched by China at the end of February for "the political solution of the Ukraine crisis."

The document, praised by Putin, has been coldly received by the United States, the European Union and NATO: the plan calls for respect for the sovereignty of all countries, but at no time does it detail which state has been invaded or which territories have been busy.

kyiv was terse in its response to the plan, but appears to have opened a channel for dialogue.

The Chinese president could hold a telematic interview with the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, in the coming days, according to

The Wall Street Journal

.

The European Union is closely following Xi's steps regarding the war in Ukraine, reports

Silvia Ayuso.

Brussels insists that it has received assurances from Beijing that it is not — and will not — give weapons to Russia, but it also takes careful note of the misgivings of countries like the United States, which cast doubt on those claims.

For this reason, the Twenty-seven consider that it is time for China to show that it follows this policy of "neutrality" in the conflict.

And after the visit to Putin in Moscow, European sources point out, the best example of that neutrality would be for Xi to "also contact Zelensky", in a way of demonstrating that proclaimed "balance" of his policy in the European war conflict.

For Xi, the Chinese peace proposal "takes into account the legitimate concerns of all parties and reflects the broader common understanding of the international community on the crisis," according to the Chinese president in the article published this Monday.

The leader believes that his proposal is "constructive", but concedes: "There is no simple solution to a complex issue."

Xi does not add more details to China's plan to get Moscow and Kiev to declare a ceasefire and decide to sit down at a table, but the text does include a call for mutual understanding of "all parties" as a path "towards a world of lasting peace and common security.

The Chinese president arrives at the meeting with Putin with some endorsement as a mediator: ten days ago Saudi Arabia and Iran announced the reestablishment of their diplomatic relations, broken by Riyadh in 2016, thanks to the mediation of Beijing.

Moscow is Xi's first destination after being re-elected president for a third and unprecedented term.

Moscow was also Xi's first choice of destination in 2013, just a week after he was first elected president of China.

Since then, as Xi recalls in the text, he has made eight visits to Russia, and they have seen each other 40 times in different forums and bilateral meetings.

Xi's article exudes "friendship", a word that he repeats nine times, and which is reminiscent of the "limitless" bond that both leaders sealed in the meeting they held in Beijing in February 2022, three weeks before the Kremlin decided cross the borders of Ukraine with their tanks.

To date, Beijing has not condemned the Russian invasion, has refused to call for war outright (it often calls it a crisis), and has generally maintained a calculated balance tilted toward Moscow, often calling for an end to sanctions against Russia and increasing trade relations with its neighbor at a rate that has broken all previous records.

That friendship is also reflected in the numbers.

In the decade of Xi in power, trade relations between the two countries have grown at almost the same rate as Russia's ties with the West have been deteriorating, by 116%, reaching 190,000 million dollars in 2022 (about 177,650 million euros), as reflected by the leader of the Asian power in his article.

Economic ties are driven above all by energy resources.

Last year, with the war underway, China imported Russian gas and oil worth 81.3 billion euros, 56% more than in 2021, according to a recent report by the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University (United States). Joined).

An important photograph for an isolated Putin

Russian propaganda portrays Xi's visit as an outright foreign endorsement for the Kremlin when Putin is under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

However, the Russian president has been extremely careful to describe the relationship between the two countries as "a partnership", and not as an alliance, in his article written in The People's Daily, the official propaganda organ of the Communist

Party

.

In the text, the affirmations are as important as the omissions, since it does not mention the Chinese proposal to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

In the Russian translation provided by the Kremlin, Putin's essay is titled

Russia and China: A Partnership Looking to the Future

.

The article is based on three pillars: the personal friendship between the two leaders and its positive impact on bilateral relations in the last decade, the common interest of Moscow and China to counteract the United States, a country that the Russian leader cites in his writing, unlike the Chinese president in his column;

and the growing importance of the Asian economy for a nation subject to the blockade of sanctions.

Relationships marked by suspicion

Relations between the two powers have always been marked by suspicion.

Even the USSR and Mao Zedong's China broke ties in the middle of the Cold War and Moscow has always seen Beijing as a threat to Siberia.

For this reason, Putin emphasizes the good impression Xi made on him when he met him in March 2010 as the head of a Chinese delegation.

“Our first meeting was very professional and, at the same time, sincere and friendly.

This style of communication deeply impresses me personally," says the Russian leader.

The next meeting, when both were already presidents, took place in 2013, and since then "many things have changed in the world, and often not for the better, but the main thing has remained unchanged: the strong Russian-Chinese friendship" , according to the Russian leader.

The war will star in this summit.

"We are grateful for the balanced line of the People's Republic of China in relation to the events taking place in Ukraine," said the Russian president.

Putin mentions the points that interest him in the Chinese proposal, such as the lifting of "illegitimate unilateral sanctions" and the defense of "the principle of indivisibility of security" (that the association of two countries does not put a third party at risk), but the Russian head of state forgets to mention the Chinese proposal that Ukraine recover all its borders, which would even include Crimea, whose illegal annexation Beijing does not recognize.

Putin also warns that he is only willing to negotiate on Ukraine "taking into account the prevailing geopolitical realities", and assures that this "is not the only manifestation of [Western] intentions to maintain a unipolar international order", for which he tends to a helping hand for China to unite against NATO and other alliances in the Asia-Pacific region shortly after the US, UK and Australia reaffirmed their partnership under the Aukus alliance.

Another of the main points of their meeting will be the replacement of Western markets by Chinese due to sanctions.

Beijing, which buys Russian oil and gas at deep discounts, has benefited from the Russian blockade, while Moscow has found an alternative to the dollar and euro in the yuan.

"We have reason to believe that the bar of 200,000 million dollars (of bilateral trade) will not be exceeded in 2024, but this year," Putin points out.

The president also assures that the development of the Russian-Chinese gas pipeline

Power of Siberia

"has become, without exaggeration, the deal of the century."

However, China is still far from being a panacea for Russia.

After the construction of this work, the import of Russian gas would rise from the current 15,500 million cubic meters of gas per year to around 50,000 million.

For comparison, the European Union imported 155 billion cubic meters the year before the war.

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Source: elparis

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