LONDON: In his first foreign trip in further than two times since the launch of Covid-19, Chinese President Xi Jinping will reach Kazakhstan on Wednesday and meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s peak in the ancient Silk Road megacity of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, according to Kazakhstan and the Kremlin.
While Putin’s foreign policy assistant, Yuri Ushakov, told journalists last week that Putin was anticipated to meet Xi at the peak as Kremlin declined to give details on the substance of the addresses, China has yet to confirm the chairman’s trip plans.
The meeting will give President Xi an occasion to emphasize his leverage while Putin can demonstrate Russia’s cock towards Asia amid the worsening situation on the Ukraine front.
The gathering of the SCO comprising China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan is due to take place in Samarkand on September 15 and 16. The organisation is due to admit Iran, one of Moscow’s crucial abettors in the Middle East.
The meeting is listed a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most important Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. He’s extensively anticipated to break with precedent at a Communist Party congress that starts on Oct 16 and secure a third five-time leadership term.
Xi last met Putin in February just weeks before the Russian chairman ordered the irruption of Ukraine.
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At that meeting at the opening of the Winter Olympics, Xi and Putin declared a “no limits” cooperation, backing each other over standoffs on Ukraine and Taiwan with a pledge to unite more against the West. China has abstained from condemning Russia’s operation against Ukraine or calling it an “irruption” in line with the Kremlin which casts the war as “a special military operation”.
The heightening “no limits” cooperation between the rising superpower of China and the natural coffers Goliath of Russia is one of the most interesting geopolitical developments of recent times and one the West is watching with anxiety.
“The bigger communication really isn’t that Xi is supporting Putin, because it’s been enough clear that Xi supports Putin,” said Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
“The bigger signal is that he, Xi Jinping, is going out of China for the first time since the epidemic in the run-up to the party congress. If there were going to be plottings against him this is when the plottings would be. And he’s easily confident that the plottings aren’t going to take place because he’s out of the country.”
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Putin’s assistant Ushakov said the Xi- Putin meeting would be “veritably important”. He didn’t give further details. As Europe seeks to turn down Russian energy significance, Putin will seek to boost energy exports to China and Asia. He’ll also hold a three-way Russian- Chinese peak with Mongolia- a potentially important shorter route for Russian energy from Western Siberia to China.
He said last week that a major gas import route to China via Mongolia had been agreed.
India on Sunday verified that Narendra Modi will take part in the SCO questionable, but the government statement didn’t say whether he’d hold bilateral addresses with Putin, Xi, or — for the first time since he came Pakistani high minister in April — Shehbaz Sharif.
Sourcing the utmost of its arms from Russia, India which is part of an alliance with the US, Japan, and Australia, has also refused to condemn Moscow’s irruption of Ukraine but rather has ramped up purchases of Russian oil paintings.
