Putin's Beijing visit reveals Moscow’s weak hand with China

On May 19-20, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, just days after Donald Trump did the same.

Although Putin's visit had been scheduled well in advance, the timing alongside U.S.-China talks has heightened the significance of the trip. Russia analysts expect progress toward expanding the Power of Siberia pipeline, a deal the Kremlin has long pushed for.

Despite that, not much had come out of the talks.

Putin and Xi signed a joint declaration, where they committed to "continue deepening comprehensive relations." And that was about it.

In diplomatic terms, the limited outcome suggests continuity rather than change in China-Russia relations, experts told the Kyiv Independent.

Although the recent war in Iran and the surge in oil prices have increased Russia's export revenues, the overall balance of the relationship remains largely unchanged. China continues to hold a stronger position in its ties with Moscow and remains reluctant to fully accommodate the Kremlin's desires.

On the surface, a reaction to Trump's visit

In just over a week, Chinese President Xi hosted the leaders of two nuclear superpowers. While Trump's visit passed under the sign of high honors and symbolic imagery, in practice, no diplomatic breakthroughs were achieved, nor were any important agreements signed.

Days later, the Russian president traveled to Beijing for his own visit, which followed a particularly heavy month for Moscow.

On May 9, Russia was forced to show off an extremely downsized version of its highly symbolic Victory Day parade — mainly due to fears of Ukrainian strikes. The Russian army then compensated by launching a particularly deadly attack on Kyiv the following week — only for Ukraine to retaliate by inflicting the heaviest strike on Moscow since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

In parallel, even state-controlled pollsters have been putting Vladimir Putin's approval rating at its lowest since February 2022.

In this context, Putin's visit to Beijing was largely an attempt at "maintaining the status quo" in Chinese-Russian relations, according to Timothy Ash, an associate fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House.

"Putin is not trying to achieve anything with this visit, this is just part of a diplomatic tradition between Beijing and Moscow," confirmed Temur Umarov from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

On the timing of the visit, Umarov explained that Putin's visit was planned months in advance, and that the timing — just after Trump came to Beijing — "was not some kind of special arrangement." Instead, Trump had delayed his own visit due to the war in Iran.

Power of Siberia-2: nowhere to be seen

Whatever the timeline, relations with China obviously matter to Moscow, even just with regard to the size of the Chinese market — and the market's availability to absorb large quantities of Russian oil and gas.

For years, Moscow has been trying to convince Beijing to agree to a second string of the Power of Siberia pipeline, through which China currently imports approximately 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas per year.

According to Ash, part of this question is about who is going to pay for the new leg of the pipeline.

"On top of that, the same problems remain: the Chinese want extremely good prices (for Russian gas), and the Russians are reluctant to accept this," the foreign policy expert argued.

All in all, while the war in the Middle East somewhat increased Russia's negotiating position with regard to this project, this situation will not "structurally change" the power balance between Beijing and Moscow, said Jiangli Yang, a Chinese political scientist affiliated with Harvard University.

While Russia's negotiating power has "grown a bit" since the war in Iran, Moscow is still very much dependent on China in many fields, Umarov agreed. "And this dependency overwhelms the negotiating power that Moscow has potentially gained due to the global energy crisis," he said.

As a result, it is unlikely that China will want to continue talks on Power of Siberia-2 in the coming months, as its negotiating power is not as strong as it used to be due to the recent spikes in oil and gas prices, Umarov added.

However, despite these imbalances, the Xi-Putin meeting was still meant to "reinforce the message that the China-Russia partnership remains strong, institutionalized, and coordinated across a broad range of strategic issues," according to Patricia Kim, a researcher at the Brookings Institution.

Xi Jinping and the invasion of Ukraine

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China has avoided any kind of official condemnation of Russia's actions. In this context, hours before the Putin-Xi summit was set to start in Beijing, international media leaked a rather surprising strip of conversation, in which Xi would have told Trump that Putin would "regret" his invasion of Ukraine.

These words, however, were soon denied by both Xi and Trump.

Official statements made by the Chinese and Russian presidents during the summit also made no reference to the war in Ukraine — all while Xi said it was "imperative" to stop the fighting in the Middle East.

According to Umarov, this situation shows that China "really doesn't have the instruments" to change Moscow's view of the war.

"China does not have an influence over Vladimir Putin, and Putin did not go to China to get some sort of appreciation of his actions or something," the foreign policy expert said. "(In the context of the war in Ukraine), China has shown that it can only adapt to the reality Moscow presents and not vice versa."

More significantly, China simply "doesn't need the war in Ukraine to end," Yang said in turn.

"The war in Ukraine — and the western sanctions imposed on Russia — allow for China to buy cheaper oil and gas from Russia," the researcher said.

"On the other hand, China is also interested in participating in post-war reconstruction, both in Ukraine and Russia. So, in the end, Xi Jinping does not really care whether or when Russia's war on Ukraine will end."