What's bringing Xi, Putin closer? Is it really a 'no-limits' relationship?

World leaders often pick their first port of call after assuming charge to project their priorities for their term ahead. Vladimir Putin on Thursday arrived in Beijing on his first foreign visit of his fifth straight term as the Russian President. The visit symbolised the importance Russia has come to accord China in recent years.

To some extent, such a treatment is reciprocated. Last year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping had also made his first foreign visit to Moscow after starting his unprecedented third term as the leader of People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The two leaders find themselves in near-similar states: while Putin has ruled Russia continuously for almost 25 years and has snubbed all domestic opposition, Xi is also serving an unprecedented third term as the absolute ruler of China. Both the leaders have also become presidents for life.

There are, however, several crucial differences. The starkest being that while Russia is a shadow of the erstwhile Soviet Union, China is the world’s rising power and is aiming to unseat the United States as the world leader economically and militarily. The place of Putin and Xi is also quite different in the world. While Xi engages with the West, Putin has largely become a pariah since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Moreover, while China is using Russia to diversify its imports and exports, Russia appears to find China increasingly central to its economy, which has led to some analysts to say that Moscow is becoming a systemic junior partner of Beijing. However, the reality is much more complex, says Anushka Saxena, a China researcher at the Takshashila Institution.

Saxena describes the Russia-China relationship as one of codependency.

“The Russia-China relationship is not one where there is a junior or senior partner. It is a co-dependent relationship where both parties extract economic and military benefits from each other,” says Saxena, emphasising that while Russia gets much-needed dual-use technology from China, it also gives China discounted oil and gas and a large consumer market for Chinese goods.

This is reflected in their increasing bilateral. Last year, the China-Russia bilateral trade surpassed $240 billion — beyond the target of $200 billion by the end of 2024 set in 2018.

What has brought Russia and China together?

The bonhomie between Russia and China has come at a time when Xi and Putin are aligning themselves and their countries closer than ever as they mount a common challenge to the US-led world order.

This is part of the broader alignment where China and Russia have also cosied up to North Korea and Iran — both are US adversaries. From Ukraine to Gaza Strip, these countries have found a host of common grounds.

“China wants to subvert the current rules-based world order in its favour. For this, Russia is an obvious choice for China. For Russia, China has emerged as the obvious choice of a partner since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. As other sources of imports and exports dried up, Russia turned to China. Putin has only met two world leaders since 2020 — Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un. This tells you that circumstances and common rivalry with the West has brought these countries together,” says Swasti Rao, a European expert at the think tank Monohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (MP-IDSA).

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has sought arms and ammunition from North Korea and drones from Iran. China has also provided dual-technology goods that can be used in weaponry, such as spare parts to be used in missiles, semiconductors, and raw material for ammunition and artillery shells. Russia has also become a destination for Chinese consumer goods.

“The partnership with Russia has allowed Chinese trade to expand amidst closing doors in the West. In the past three years, China has become one of the biggest exporters to Russia of diverse consumer products such as broadcasting equipment, textiles, cars, plastics, and so on. China is making massive gains from Russia losing markets in response to sanctions,” says Saxena, a China Studies Research Analyst with the Takshashila Institution’s Indo-Pacific Studies Programme.

While the relationship got a boost with the Ukraine War, the two leaders have had a long convergence. Putin has met Xi a record 40 times — more than any world leader.

At international platforms, the two countries have also taken similar positions. They have called for multilateralism, have promoted groups like BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation (SCO), and have pushed for trade in yuan. While these steps may appear like actions in good faith for the developing world, all of these steps undermine the West — a common goal of Russia and China.

“With BRICS and SCO, China and Russia push for groupings that are projected as an alternative to G7. With bilateral trade in yuan, they push for de-dollarisation. Russia has also tried trading in yuan with other countries. With trade in non-dollar currencies, Russia and China fulfil dual goals of ramping up bilateral trade while also undermining the US,” says Rao, an Associate Fellow at the Europe and Eurasia Center at the MP-IDSA.

Russia had also sought a ruble-rupee trading mechanism with India, but it could not happen because of technical issues.

Is red carpet for Putin after Europe visit a snub to West?

Just days after Xi returned from a visit to Europe, he rolled out the red carpet for Putin. In defiance of the world’s push that he should use his position of influence to press Putin to deescalate or at least reduce his support of Russia, Xi was photographed walking with Putin with aides carrying what appeared to be nuclear cases of the two leaders.

Such an appearance at a time when Putin has ordered tactical nuclear drills and his top confidant Dmitry Medvedev has threatened the West with a nuclear strike appears to convey to the world that the advice of French President Emmanuel Macron or US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to not support the Russian war on Ukraine has been brushed off.

Analysts, however, said that connecting Xi’s Europe visit with Putin’s arrival may be too much. Rao of MP-IDSA said that the Europe visit was mainly about trade and symbolic strategic posturing.

“Xi selected countries for strategic signaling as it was his first visit to Europe in five years. France was taken as it pursues foreign policy independent of the United States under its ‘strategic autonomy’ approach. France and China also have outstanding trade issues that Xi would want to address. Hungary and Serbia were selected as both are pro-Russia and are toeing the American line on China and Russia. The visit was about trade and strategic posturing,” says Rao of MP-IDSA.

Saxena of the Takshashila Institution stresses that Xi’s Europe visit and Putin’s China visit are two separate things — even if the timing may suggest otherwise.

“Xi’s outreach to Europe is aimed at allaying some of Europe’s concerns surrounding China’s disruptive trade practices as well as the economic dependency on it, but, at the same time, his meeting with Putin is meant to continue the solidification of partnership with one of its most critical contemporary allies,” says Saxena.

Does Russia-China relationship really have ‘no limits’?

Days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Xi and Putin announced that China and Russia have ‘no limits’ to their relationship. Since then, China has implicitly supported Russia in the war against Ukraine.

The United States has accused China of indirectly supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine with supplies of raw material for ammunition, drone supplies, and other non-lethal goods.

“The PRC cannot claim to be entirely neutral in this case. They are, in fact, picking a side. I think when the PRC tries to portray itself as neutral, when it comes to this war, we don’t buy it…If they were not providing some of these components, or this materiel support, Russia would be in a very different situation and would have trouble pursuing some of these acts of aggression,” said US envoy to NATO Julianne Smith to Politico last month.

Despite such criticism and pressure from European countries to condemn Russia, Xi has so far brushed off such pressure with ease. Saxena of the Takshashila Institution says that China has not criticised Russia as it has vested interests in Russia’s victory.

Saxena tells Firstpost, “Both China and Russia share similar political interests of mutual suspicion of the West and a co-dependent economic and military relationship where each matters to the other as a market for arms or as a trade partner for oil, gas, and other consumer goods.”

Since 2022, Russia has also turned into a highly miltarised country where as much as 6-7% of the economy is dedicated to the war. While some have hailed the resilience of the Russian economy which was otherwise expected to tank under Western sanctions, such resilience is not natural but induced by the war, said Rao of MP-IDSA, who called this transition a “fundamental change” in Russian economy and society.

“Russia’s economic growth is led by the war as more and more factories are producing arms and ammunition. The Russian economy has also become more and more integrated with that of China. In case the war ends not in favour of Russia, it will mean a loss for both Russia and China. Sustaining the current relationship in the long-run will be challenge,” says Rao.

Even though China and Russia are standing up against the West as a bloc, their relationship is not without its limitations. For once, while Putin can afford to be a pariah, Xi can’t. After being shunned by the West, Russia found an economic and trade partner in China, but China cannot replace the European Union (EU) —its largest trading partner— with Russia.

“Both the EU and China cannot ditch each-other. They may spar with each other with a cycle of threats of tariffs and investigations over what they say are anti-competitive practices of the other, but the two are each-other’s biggest markets. China will not let its relationship with Russia kill off its EU market, so that’s a limitation of their relationship. The same applies for the EU. It may talk of ‘de-risking’ but it cannot do without China,” says Rao.

Moreover, even though China has supported Russia in the war with Ukraine, it has not provided weapons whereas other partners like North Korea and Iran have done so. Belarus is even hosting Russian tactical nuclear weapons, bringing the Russian nuclear sabre-rattling at NATO’s doorsteps.

In a stark limit in the bilateral relationship, a similar red line of not deploying boots on the ground or selling weapons will apply to Russian support of China in its conflicts, suggests Saxena.

“Neither of them is obligated by even the umbrella of a ‘no limits’ partnership to aid each other. Many bits of the relationship are transactional. As an example, take China’s buying of oil from Russia on a price that is subsidised. Similar is the fact that while Putin supports China’s bid on Taiwan, no one can say for sure Russia will help China out with boots or systems on the ground,” says Saxena.

This differentiates the China-Russia partnership —and the larger China-Russia-Iran-North Korea axis— from that of the Western alliance of NATO. Collective defence is at the core of NATO which is absent from the ‘no limits’ relationship between Moscow and Beijing. Saxena says that while the partnership may not be an alliance in Cold War-era sense of the term, it is not a marriage of convenience either.

“Their interests are overlapping and their vision for the world order is juxtaposed. They are also in an interesting geopolitical moment where the time is right for them to come closer together. In that sense, it may not be an alliance, but it is not a marriage of convenience either. Hence, the relationship is transactional, momentous, and somewhere between an alliance and a marriage of convenience,” says Saxena.

As for the pressure on China, Saxena said it has only brought the two countries closer.

“In a way, the West is bringing not just Russia and China, but also other States with similar interests together with them. Clearly, between Iran, China, and Russia, when it comes to shaping a world where the US doesn’t command the butter or the gun, the feeling is mutual. Through the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the three actors have found outlets to support each other, diplomatically and militarily,” says Saxena.