How long this relationship lasts is anybody’s guess.
In the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin is an outcast—a man who unjustifiably invaded a sovereignty country, kills or jails his political opponents, is wanted for war crimes, and single-handedly destroyed whatever democratic system Russia had during the Boris Yeltsin era.
In China, however, Putin is a legitimate head-of-state, a partner and a personal friend of Xi Jinping, the strongman president and head of the Chinese Communist Party. In February, after a phone conversation between Putin and Xi, the Kremlin stated that relations with Beijing were at «an unprecedentedly high level,» a consequence in part of the U.S.-led sanctions regime driving Moscow into China’s orbit. Ties between the two countries are perhaps the warmest they have been in modern times. Putin’s state visit to China this week, where he will meet with Xi and other senior Chinese officials, is merely the icing on top of the cake.
It’s hard to overstate just how dependent Putin is on China. «Never since the fall of the Soviet Union has Russia been so distant from Europe, and never in its entire history has it been so entwined with China,» Russia scholar Alexander Gabuev wrote in The New York Times. He is absolutely correct. The Russian economy, which was reliant on Western markets for centuries, has moved east, with China seen as Russia’s main source of exports and imports. Bilateral trade between Moscow and Beijing amounted to $240 billion in 2023, up 26 percent from the year prior. Russia was China’s largest supplier of crude oil last year, surpassing Saudi Arabia. This has earned the Kremlin tens of billions of dollars in crucial revenue at a time when it’s waging a very expensive war in Ukraine. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air assessed that Russia received more than $87 billion from oil exports to China between January 2023 to the present day.
