Russia and China keep the West guessing

Russia’s close relationship with superpower China is under close scrutiny as Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday.

As both countries’ ties with the West become fractured amid the war in Ukraine and global trade disputes, the latest meeting between is being closely followed for signs that the leaders will deepen their own economic, military and geopolitical cooperation.

As Putin was greeted by Xi at a welcome ceremony in Beijing at the start of his two-day state visit, he said that “it is of fundamental importance that relations between Russia and China are not opportunistic and are not directed against anyone. Our cooperation in world affairs today is one of the main stabilizing factors in the international arena.”

Putin told Chinese state media ahead of the visit that “Russia-China relations have reached an all-time high, and even in the face of severe international situations, relations between the two countries continue to strengthen,” news agency Xinhua reported.

The Russia-China relationship is “inescapable,” Sam Greene, director of the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told CNBC.

“It would be probably too much to call them strategic partners, but they are strategically aligned in a lot of respects, maybe not entirely within their own making and maybe not entirely to their own liking, but inevitably as a result of decisions they’ve made and decisions that Western governments have made that really have pushed them together,” Greene said Wednesday.

“Neither Putin nor Xi can achieve what they want to achieve, both domestically and internationally, without the support of the other. Having said that, it’s not symmetrical and China has many, many more options and much, much more flexibility than Russia does,” he added.

There’s no doubt that Russia’s and China’s leaders will accentuate the positives when they meet on Thursday, a trip made at the behest of Xi. It’s also Putin’s first overseas trip since he was re-elected to a fifth term in office in March.

The Kremlin said Thursday that the leaders “will have an extensive discussion of the entire scope of issues pertaining to the Russia-China overarching partnership and strategic cooperation” — although talks between Xi and Putin and their respective delegations are only set to last 45 minutes, news agency Tass reported — before signing a joint statement and several bilateral documents. They will then attend a gala event marking 75 years of diplomatic relations between Russia and China.

Putin is also expected to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang and to travel to the northeastern city of Harbin for a trade and investment expo, according to Russian state media.

Analysts expect this latest encounter between the leaders — there have been more than 40 such meetings in the last 14 years — will see the leaders pledge to deepen cooperation, if not their “no limits” partnership, although this exuberant description of their relationship (made just before Russia’s invasion in Feb. 2022) appears to have been quietly shelved. Plans to pursue joint economic projects could also be announced.

It’s also likely to see Moscow and Beijing repeat their fundamental ideological opposition to what they see as Western “imperialism” and hegemony as they call for a multipolar world order. It’s also likely that the war in Ukraine (a conflict China describes as a “crisis”) will be on the agenda, as Putin told the Chinese press on Wednesday that he supported a 12-point peace plan than Beijing proposed last year.

Putin and Xi have made much of a close friendship that they’ve formed over their respective 24 and 11 years in power, but analysts stress that the relationship is more nuanced than meets the eye.

“Essentially, it’s not an alliance — it’s a very multifaceted, multi dimensional relationship that’s been building and evolving for about 30 years now,” Natasha Kuhrt, senior lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London, told CNBC Wednesday.

“It can seem as if the only basis for the relationship is animosity towards the West, and that is one component, but there are a number of other factors that bring them together,” she added.

Russia was benefitting from continuing Chinese trade, particularly in the energy sphere, Kuhrt noted, but Beijing was also benefitting from Russia’s shared interest in maintaining security and stability in Central Asia, as well as its military experience and rapid development in the field of defense technology.

“I think it’s a mistake to just think of it as a marriage of convenience, because that’s how people have been looking at it for quite a long time in the West, which means that we have basically underestimated the strength of the relationship,” Kuhrt said.

CEPA analyst Greene agreed that it was wrong to mischaracterize the relationship as one of unequal parties, with both Russia and China getting a lot out of the partnership.

“China gets a lot, materially, out of this relationship,” he said, enabling it to purchase Russian hydrocarbons at preferential prices and access investment opportunities. Russia also offers it a way into the Arctic, a region it covets from a strategic and trading perspective, Greene said.

Russia, on the other hand, gets “a lot of rhetoric” and trade from the relationship “that allows it to keep money flowing into its economy and that’s really mission critical for Putin.”

“But it’s not getting that on what we would think of as preferential or friendly terms and China continues to drive very hard bargains in all of its trading relationships,” he noted.

Anna Rosenberg, head of Geopolitics at Amundi, told CNBC there might soon come a time when China needs Russia more, however.

“What Russia really needs from China is alternative partners and alternative ways to circumvent sanctions, as well as an alternative partner to say to the Global South, ‘Look, we actually have friends in the world, we’re not isolated,'” Rosenberg told CNBC Thursday.

“But when you see the direction of travel — of U.S. sanctions against China, which are likely going to increase with more trade friction and export controls under whatever new U.S. administration we have, China will also need friends — that’s why they are also depending on the Russia relationship,” she said.

Despite the united front presented by Russia and China, there are points of divergence and discomfort between the allies.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has not been openly criticized by Beijing but has disrupted global alliances and supply chains, making China uneasy at a time when its own economy is vulnerable to sluggish growth and demand.

Its support for Russia during the war has also made China a target for the U.S. as it looks to punish countries it believes are helping Moscow circumvent sanctions and trade restrictions.

At the start of May, the U.S. imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Chinese companies that it accused of supplying Russia with dual-use components that could be used in Russian military hardware against Ukraine.

China has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, with Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, stating “the Chinese side firmly opposes the U.S.’s illegal unilateral sanctions,” in comments reported by Reuters. Russia has previously denied asking China for military equipment and financial aid.

Unlike Russia, which appears to have accepted and outwardly embraced its economic and political isolation from the West, frequently lauding the fact that its economy has overcome challenges posed by international sanctions, China is — for now — not so ready to “decouple” from the West.

“Russia has for a while come to China with a proposition which is that ‘neither of us like Western structural power in the world … so why don’t we break that, right?’ … But China, at this point, has not accepted that proposition,” CEPA’s Greene said.

“China is not rhetorically where the West would like it to be, but it’s not fully rhetorically and politically where Russia would like it to be either.”