The UN Charter of 1945 that granted permanent seats on the Security Council to the United States , Britain, France, Russia and China, did so shortly after the “big five” had emerged as victorious allies in World War II. Behind the decision was the belief that world peace could be kept only when every member of this influential group agreed to work together. The fact that within two decades of the war ending the five all went on to become nuclear powers served only to underline the foresight of this decision. Fast forward three quarters of a century from that charter and the “big five” are clearly split between two sets of opposite alliances. This was on show last week, when US President Donald Trump visited both Britain and France , while Chinese leader Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Russia . Trump and Xi are in world’s largest game of chicken, and neither can blink Both leaders appeared keen to underscore their alliances – the Washington-London axis and the Beijing-Moscow axis – amid rising tensions. Russia is now under US-led sanctions, while China and the US are in the middle of a mutually destructive trade war . The diplomatic fanfare surrounding the visits also served to drown out, momentarily, recent confrontations in the Security Council. Recently, the US, Britain and France have voted together to condemn the massacre of civilians in Sudan, while Russia and China have teamed up to block them. Beijing and Moscow have also tended to veto US-led resolutions designed to pressure President Bashar al-Assad over the war in Syria. Trump’s trip to Europe saw him join French President Emmanuel Macron in attending the 75th anniversary of the allies’ D-Day landings in France. Xi, meanwhile, was marking the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two former communist allies. Trump’s visit was also aimed at underscoring America’s “special relationship” with Britain, a country that faces great uncertainty both in its post-Brexit future and in who will lead the country as it attempts to leave the European Union. But the visit also comes amid a low point in relations, with many Britons protesting against Trump’s visit. Xi’s visit to Russia, his eighth since 2013, was also aimed at cementing a special relationship, with the Chinese leader claiming ties were at their “highest level in history”. Chill out China and America, the Arctic is not worth a cold war Still, “special” as both these relationships are, it would be wrong to think of them as equally special. US-Britain relations have been built on shared heritage, language and common political, social and economic values and have endured through a century of war. The nations fought together in both world wars, the Korean war, the Gulf war, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and in Afghanistan, though the term “special relationship” predates most of these conflicts – it was coined by prime minister Winston Churchill in a 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri. The transatlantic relations have also been marked by intimate personal friendships between generations of leaders: Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt; Edward Heath and Richard Nixon; Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan; Tony Blair and Bill Clinton (and George W. Bush); Theresa May and Trump. China and Russia, on the other hand, have been close in only two (non-consecutive) decades of the past century. What’s more, this closeness was largely only because they have been driven together by their deteriorating relations with the West, and the US in particular. The pair now support each other on various foreign policy issues, including the Venezuela crisis, North Korea’s nuclear programme , the Iran nuclear deal, and also their shared support of the Assad regime in Syria. China’s navy has a challenge – persuading others it is to be used for peace Again, a friendship between the countries’ leaders has helped nurture ties. Xi and Putin have met 30 times in the past six years and the Chinese president calls his Russian counterpart his “best friend”. The pair share a philosophy on ruling, too. Both strongmen have amended their constitutions to extend their rule. Until they came along, both constitutions had limited presidents to two terms in power; Putin is now in his fourth term and Xi has done away with term limits altogether. But there are weaknesses in this relationship, too. China and Russia have a long history of mutual suspicion and hostility, with border clashes going back as far as the 17th century and occurring as recently as 1969. Indeed, the neighbours have enjoyed only two brief periods of rapport in recent centuries – one in the 1950s, in the aftermath of the second world war when they were communist allies, and the other in the past decade. Despite the bromance between Xi and Putin, the two nations do not share as much in ideology as one might think. They might once have been communist cadres, but they now have very different political systems. Russia is constitutionally a democratic, federative and rule of law-based state, even if it is not as mature a democracy as those in western Europe. If China thinks it’s overtaking the US any time soon, here’s a wake-up call Furthermore the two do not have the same strategic objectives. Russia is militarily powerful but economically weak; China is economically strong and militarily increasingly powerful. Each follows coercive strategies in their pursuit of regional leadership – from Asia to the Middle East to Africa and Latin America – that come at the other’s expense. And despite the trade war, Beijing’s overall vision is economic integration with the US, rather than decoupling from it. Moscow’s future prosperity on the other hand relies on greater links with Europe. But the biggest thing holding their relationship back is that Beijing and Moscow show little interest in each other’s core concerns. While Moscow frets about Nato’s eastward expansion, Beijing shows no interest. While Beijing frets over the South China Sea and Taiwan , Moscow cares little. In contrast, Britain and other Western nations often join US-led missions such as the freedom of navigation exercises in the Indo-Pacific that are aimed at checking China’s maritime expansion. Russia tends not to get involved. Thus, while a China-Russia alliance is not to be taken lightly, it is not as solid as that between the US, Britain and the rest of the West. Even so, as the “big five” show signs of splitting back into the two alliances that characterised the cold war era, the hopes and dreams of the diplomats from 50 nations who drew up the UN Charter of 1945 seem as far away now as ever. ■ Cary Huang is a veteran China affairs columnist, having written on the topic since the early 1990s