Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed to take his country’s ties with Russia to a new level this year in a video conference with counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, hours after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
The two leaders have made it an annual tradition to speak around the new year – a feature of a close personal rapport that’s helped cement a partnership between their countries that’s only grown as Putin wages war on Ukraine.
Xi expressed his readiness to “guide China-Russia relations to a new height” and respond to “external uncertainties” with the “stability and resilience of China-Russia ties,” a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry said.
The two countries should deepen “strategic coordination” and “practical cooperation” and “firmly support each other,” Xi told the Russian president, who appeared via video link on a large screen in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People during the conference call.
Putin hailed the countries’ expanding trade – which Chinese data show hit a record high last year – and alluded to their shared ambitions to reshape a global order they see as unfairly dominated by the United States.
“We stand united in advocating for a more just multipolar world order and work to ensure indivisible security both in the Eurasian space and globally,” Putin told Xi, according to a Kremlin readout. Moscow and Beijing’s joint efforts “objectively play a major stabilizing role in international affairs,” he claimed.
The call between the two autocrats comes as both closely watch Trump’s return to the White House.
The two leaders have each publicly expressed a hope to reset fraught relations with the US under the new administration. Trump has also signaled interest in engaging with or meeting both leaders early in his presidency, though it’s still unclear how conciliatory or hardline the new administration will be toward either US rival.
Xi and Trump held their own call days before the US president’s inauguration, with the conversation touching on a range of topics including the war in Ukraine, Trump later said.
Xi told Putin about that phone call during the two leaders’ more than hour-and-a-half conversation Tuesday, according to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov.
“Issues of the two countries’ relations with the United States were also raised,” he said. “In this context, the leaders, naturally, discussed certain aspects of the development of potential contacts with the US administration,” Ushakov added, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
A diplomatic triangle?
Trump has voiced personal admiration for both autocrats, but he’s also expected to seek concessions from each with an eye to evening an economic playing field between the US and China and ending Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
Trump on Tuesday indicated he would consider placing additional sanctions on Russia if Putin failed to come to the negotiating table to end the war.
“We’re talking to (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky. We’re going to be talking with President Putin very soon, and we’ll see what – how it all happens,” Trump said.
Trump also suggested he hopes Xi can use his sway to play a role in brokering an end to that conflict, noting that he urged the Chinese leader during their recent call to “get it settled.”
European leaders have long hoped that Xi could play a role bringing Putin around to accepting Ukraine’s peace terms, but the entrance of Trump into the White House and his stated drive to end the war adds new potential for China to play a role.
That could set up a delicate balancing act for Beijing. Xi has long sought to portray China as a potential peace broker in the conflict, even as the US and its allies have accused Beijing of propping up the Russian war effort with the export of dual-use goods, which Beijing denies. Xi is also seen to be keen to build good rapport with Trump to avert potentially damaging tariffs at a time of economic weakness in China.
But the Chinese leader will also likely want to be careful not to damage his partnership with Russia. Xi and Putin inked a “no limits” partnership weeks before Putin’s invasion and Xi sees his Russian counterpart as a critical partner among broader frictions with the West.
Neither the readout from the Kremlin nor China’s Foreign Ministry specified whether the war in Ukraine was discussed during Tuesday’s call between Putin and Xi.
Instead, both readouts referred to the 80th anniversary of the allied victory shared by Beijing and Moscow in World War II. Xi and Putin had each invited the other to commemorate that victory together this year, with events in Russia in May and China in September, the Kremlin said Tuesday.