China cements ‘senior partner’ role in Russia relationship

OVER the last decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin has met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping over 40 times. However, there has been a significant change during this period, with Beijing increasingly the senior partner in bilateral relations.

This development is a significant shift from 75 years ago when the Soviet Union officially recognised the People’s Republic of China, which former leader Mao Zedong declared in 1949, when Beijing was very much the junior partner of Moscow. In the last decade, and especially since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, this trend has become more pronounced as economic and diplomatic ties between the two nations grow – a trend that the West is watching closely.

Yet, the trajectory of Moscow’s higher dependency on Beijing goes back even further till at least 2014, the year Xi and Putin first met, when the Russian leader travelled to Beijing for a two-day state visit to discuss a major gas supply deal. That trip came on the heels of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which was a key turning point in Moscow’s isolation from the West under Putin.