Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will meet today in Uzbekistan
Far from Ukraine, but still linked to the situation on the ground, the presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Russia, Vladimir Putin, are meeting today in Uzbekistan for a regional summit that looks like a confrontation facing the West.
MM. Xi and Putin will be joined in the city of Samarkand, a key stop on the ancient Silk Road, by the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and other countries, for a two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. If the main meeting of this summit will take place tomorrow, it is the bilateral meeting between the Chinese and Russian presidents on Thursday which will be the most scrutinized, their countries being at the heart of international diplomatic crises.
For Mr. Putin, who is trying to accelerate a shift towards Asia in the face of Western sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, this summit is an opportunity to show that Russia is not isolated on the World Scene. Mr. Xi, who is making his first foreign trip to Central Asia since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, will be able to further strengthen his stature as a top leader ahead of a Chinese Communist Party congress in October, where he will is aiming for an unprecedented third term.
Their meeting also had an air of defiance thrown at the United States, which took the lead in sanctions against Moscow and military support for kyiv and aroused the ire of Beijing with the visits of several American officials to Taiwan. “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization offers a real alternative to Western-oriented structures”, assured the press on Tuesday the diplomatic adviser of the Kremlin, Yuri Ouchakov. it’s about the “largest organization in the world, which includes half the population of the planet” and she works for a “just international order”he added.
The last meeting between MM. Putin and Xi date back to February, when the Russian president visited the Winter Olympics in Beijing, days before Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine. Without explicitly supporting Russian intervention, Beijing has repeatedly expressed its support for Moscow, isolated in the West, in recent months. Moscow, for its part, supported China’s position during the recent tensions around Taiwan. Last month, Beijing also took part in joint military maneuvers in Russia, before agreeing to settle its gas contracts with Moscow in rubles and yuan. And no longer in Western currencies.
According to the two economists François Chimits and Antonia Hmaidi, imports and exports between Beijing and Moscow jumped in several sectors during the months following the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
To find out more, read their op-ed:
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