Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Oct. 17 to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of China’s Belt and Road Forum, in a bid to show their never-ending partnership even as the war in Ukraine continues.
Reuters
Putin landed in Beijing on Monday for his first stop in a primary global force since March, when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him for alleged war crimes committed through Russia in Ukraine. The last time Putin stopped in the capital China a few weeks before this invasion, in early 2021, when he and Xi praised an “unlimited” partnership between their countries.
Since the war, Russia has relied heavily on China’s diplomatic and economic prowess in the face of crippling sanctions imposed through the West. Putin was joined this week by the heads of Russian oil and fuel giants Rosneft and Gazprom, and will seek to make progress in the long term. The allocation of the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline that would traditionally carry Russian fuel to Europe was delayed. Redirected to China.
In an obvious show of unity with China, Russia announced this week that it will join Beijing in restricting imports of fish and seafood from Japan in reaction to Tokyo’s discharge of treated water from the former Fukushima nuclear site into the Pacific Ocean.
Xi and Putin will meet on Wednesday to exchange perspectives “on a variety of bilateral issues,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. The Kremlin said this would come alongside the ongoing standoff between Israel and Hamas; Moscow and Beijing criticized Israel’s attacks on Gaza and called for an early ceasefire.
Beyond Russia, this week’s forum will give China a chance to show its continued diplomatic strength, even as the country’s economy continues to falter after emerging from COVID controls that expired last year. Beijing is competing with the U. S. and India for influence in the coming years. The U. S. government has joined the world, with last month’s G20 summit in New Delhi (which Xi did not attend) to position himself as a leader of the “Global South. “
The BRI is key in that effort, said Christoph Nedopil, director of the Asia Institute at Griffith University in Australia.
“Support for the BRI should not be underestimated,” he said, adding that “interest in cooperation with China is very strong” in emerging countries, even as express projects under the BRI have been criticized and Beijing has been accused of pitting the poorest against the poorest. opposed to each other. Heavily indebted countries.
“Undoubtedly, a number of BIS countries have noticed that their debt levels have increased,” he said. Nedopil, a phenomenon aggravated by the weakness of the economic expansion in recent years. He said the BRI had been rebuilt from classic large infrastructure projects, such as roads. built through Chinese developers and financed through Chinese debt, to “truly commercially viable projects that generate money and even profits. “At the same time, China supports emerging economies through the Global Development Initiative, which uses a more classic, low-cost aid technique. interest-bearing loans and grants.
Elaine Dezenski, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said the BIS “has failed to achieve its stated goals, shelling out cash and corruption in gigantic doses and building crumbling dams and deep debt dependence on the South. “. »
This week’s forum, he added, will focus on “an economically weakened China” that will look for new tactics to “present the small and troubled initiative as a positive thing for China and the world. “
In an editorial on Tuesday, China’s state-run Global Times newspaper lashed out at Western critics who have been “keeping a close eye on the BRI, pouring dirty water and undermining it over the past decade. “
“Nearly three-quarters of the world’s countries” will be represented at this week’s forum, the newspaper adds. “They themselves have voted with their feet for the achievements of the Belt and Road Initiative over the past decade. “