Editorial | Western pressure will only strengthen ties between Beijing and Moscow

President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have good reason to strengthen their countries’ cooperation and collaboration. China and Russia have been labelled geopolitical rivals by the United States and it is in their interests to work more closely on issues of strategic and economic benefit. The leaders expressed a desire for greater interaction when they held a virtual meeting last Wednesday and pledged to follow up with in-person talks on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. Better ties are inevitable when Washington portrays them as imperilling the global order and stability and is doing its utmost to isolate.

Putin is the first national leader to accept an invitation to the Games. American President Joe Biden is heading a diplomatic boycott, using alleged Chinese human rights abuses, Hong Kong and Taiwan as the excuse. The Russian’s presence will therefore symbolise his country’s good relations with China, but as he will also be the first foreign dignitary to meet Xi face-to-face in more than a year, there is greater meaning. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the US and some Western countries having imposed sanctions on Chinese and Russian firms, entities and individuals and threatening further measures and criticising technology, views and values, their standing together will represent unity and strength. Xi and Putin made that plain during their 70-minute meeting.

With US and allied governments criticising Beijing for increased military activity around Taiwan and in the South China Sea and Moscow facing harsher sanctions should an invasion of Ukraine by troops massing on the border take place, Xi proposed that China and Russia cooperate to “more effectively safeguard the security interests of both parties”. Pointing out that the two have met 37 times since 2013, he called Putin his “old friend” and the Russian leader referred to his Chinese counterpart as his “dear friend”.

As one-time adversaries, discord still exists between China and Russia over history. But Western pressure has drawn them together, as with Biden’s recent democracy summit, to which neither was invited and both criticised. Trade is rising and energy from oil and gas and resources are driving relations. Joint military exercises have been stepped up, the first between their navies being held in the Sea of Japan in October, and shared space research has been proposed with a lunar base.