No limits? Why Vladimir Putin's latest visit will test China-Russia ties

China's expanding relations with Russia will be put to the test when Vladimir Putin makes an official visit this week, as Beijing tries to keep Moscow close while avoiding Western sanctions over the Ukraine war.

The Russian president will arrive in Beijing on Thursday for a two-day trip that is expected to be a show of the neighbours' growing geostrategic alignment and the "deep friendship" of Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But analysts say it could also reveal the limits of China-Russia ties.

With its full-scale invasion of Ukraine now in a third year, Russia - hit by sanctions and isolated by the West - has been edging closer to Beijing.

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As the US and its allies pile pressure on China over its alleged support for Russia's defence industry, analysts say Putin will be keen to secure a commitment to the nations' "no limits" partnership during his visit.

"For Putin, the visit is important to emphasise that the strategic partnership with China remains strong, at a time when his own personal travel is restricted and his country is isolated internationally and economically," said Elizabeth Wishnick, an expert on China-Russia ties and senior research scientist at the Centre for Naval Analyses, a US think tank.

But for Beijing, while the quasi-alliance with Moscow has become a countervailing force against Washington and its allies, it still needs to balance ties between Russia and the US to avoid confrontation with the West amid threats of fresh American sanctions over Ukraine.

That is why Putin's latest China visit is of unusual significance, according to Artyom Lukin, an associate professor at Russia's Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok. He added that the outcome could "define the further direction of Sino-Russian ties for the foreseeable future".

He said the US demand that China curb deliveries of dual-use goods to Russia was a test of Beijing's claim to be neutral on the conflict in Ukraine.

"Considering that a very wide range of modern products and services - such as machine tools, trucks, chips or satellite images - are essentially dual-use, such demands are tantamount to the requirement of a blanket embargo on trade with Russia," Lukin said.

"If China submits to this ultimatum, it will wipe out much of its current trade with Russia."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after talks with Xi in Beijing last month, alleged Beijing was a "top supplier" to Russia's defence industrial base and that "Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China's support".

"I made it clear that if China does not address this problem, we will," Blinken said, hinting at new sanctions against Chinese banks and companies on top of the existing ones that involve more than 100 Chinese enterprises.

Despite heavy criticism from the US and its allies, China and Russia have strengthened their economic and security ties since Putin launched an all-out war against Ukraine in February 2022, with bilateral trade surging from US$145 billion in 2021 to US$240 billion last year.

But with the US threatening to extend sanctions to banks and other Chinese entities, China's exports to Russia - which grew at a double-digit pace last year - have dropped significantly this year.

Those Chinese exports include industrial equipment and other non-military trade such as cars and electronics, while its imports are mostly oil, pipeline gas and other energy commodities.

But by March, some 80 per cent of payment settlements between Russia and China had been suspended as sanctions mount, according to a report released last week by Renmin University's Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies in Beijing.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have met more than 40 times since 2013. Photo: AFP alt=Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have met more than 40 times since 2013. Photo: AFP>

Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the US and European pressure tactics would bring uncertainty to China-Russia ties.

He said Putin was visiting China at a critical time for both countries.

"This is a dilemma for Beijing, because its decision on whether to cooperate with the US and Europe will be consequential for Russia, whose combat capabilities in Ukraine could be significantly affected if it cannot obtain China's support in critical areas," he said.

But Li said China was unlikely to make major concessions to the US due to the importance it attached to its ties with Russia.

"Such concessions would upset Russia and undermine the strategic trust between the two countries," he said. "China has placed stabilising ties with Russia at the top of its diplomatic priorities since the Ukraine war started."

Lukin also said that Beijing was not expected to openly defy Washington nor fully comply with the US demands. "Most likely, some balance will be struck between keeping the strategic ties with Russia and avoiding confrontation with Washington," he said.

Developments on Ukraine's battlefields would be part of Beijing's thinking. "If the war tends to go in Russia's favour, as is the case at the moment, China will be more likely to side with Moscow rather than abandon it," he said.

Lukin noted that Xi and Putin's close personal ties could also be a factor.

The pair have met 42 times since 2013, and during Putin's last China visit, in October, Xi hailed their "good working relations and deep friendship".

"As long as Xi and Putin are in power, the Russia-China entente will most likely stay intact," Lukin said, adding that "much will hinge upon their confidential conversations during the summit".

Russia specialist Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University in the US, said Putin's trip should be viewed in the context of Xi's European tour of France, Serbia and Hungary last week.

In a trilateral meeting in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged Beijing to help rein in Putin, highlighting Russia's aggression against Ukraine as an "existential" threat to European security.

Xi insisted the conflict should not be used as a tool to criticise China.

"As much as Xi might want to see Europe move away from the US, Europe is not going to do so as long as it feels threatened by Russia," Katz said.

He said that while European leaders hoped China would help end the war, Putin would be seeking more support from Xi. "Beijing, though, may be coming to see that it cannot increase Chinese influence in Europe if China is seen to be increasing its support for Russia."

Li Lifan, an expert on Russia and Central Asia at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said while ties between Beijing and Moscow had steadily developed in recent years, Ukraine had become a "hurdle".

"China and Russia need each other to mitigate the pressure from the US-led West, but they don't necessarily see eye to eye on many issues that are deemed to be their respective core interests," he said, adding that there may not be much room to elevate relations.

Despite Moscow's strategic importance for Beijing, Li said ties with Russia had not reached the heights of China's "ironclad friendship" with Serbia and its "all-weather partnership" with Hungary.

"China has handled the Russia-Ukraine conflict with utmost caution, trying to deepen political and economic ties while avoiding being entangled militarily," he said. "It is clear that both China and Russia have no intention of forming a real military alliance any time soon."

He expected the two leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine when they meet, and also establishing new payment and settlement channels to get around sanctions.

Wishnick said Putin was also expected to raise the stalled Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline project, but Xi was unlikely to sign off on it due to concerns about China's energy dependence on Russia.

She said while a renewed commitment to their partnership could be expected, it was "not very probable" that Putin would accept a proposal - backed by Xi - for a global truce during the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.

Wishnick also noted that China had stopped describing its partnership with Russia as having "no limits" since Xi visited Moscow in March last year. She said Beijing had instead returned to a policy of "three noes" - no alliances, no threatening third parties, no confrontation.

"Neither party wants to be dragged into conflicts by the other and they have parallel but not identical interests on many issues, including the South China Sea, Central Asia, the Arctic," she said.

"Although this is a period of deepening partnership, likely to endure ... in the short to medium term, the history of their relations tells us that domestic and/or international developments may arise that could pull them apart in the future."

Lukin said China's reluctance to enter into a full alliance with Russia and other autocracies could change if the US continued to step up its containment policies against Beijing.

"If Beijing decides that compromise with Washington is impossible, then China may go for a full alliance with Russia," he said.

"The option of an alliance with Russia is significant leverage that Beijing wields over Washington. US policymakers may understand this, which probably makes them more circumspect in dealings with China. They should know that if there is a major breakdown in China-West ties, nothing would keep Beijing from creating an anti-Western geopolitical bloc based on the China-Russia axis."

Katz said although Moscow and Beijing remain united in their opposition to the United States, there may be a growing realisation that "the more successful Putin is in Ukraine, the more Chinese ambitions in Europe will be negatively impacted".

"Chinese officials may also be thinking that growing Russian dependence on China should result in greater Russian deference to Chinese interests. Moscow, though, doesn't seem to share this view," he said. "I have a feeling that neither Putin nor Xi is going to be satisfied with their meeting."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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