Reuters-Putin to visit China to deepen no limits partnership with Xi
October 15, 2023 4 min 656 words
这篇报道涵盖了普京计划访问中国，以深化中俄两国之间的“无限制”合作伙伴关系。这一合作伙伴关系是在乌克兰战争爆发前由中俄两国宣布的，这次访问标志着普京自国际刑事法院在他身上发布逮捕令以来的首次出访。 这次会面的背景非常复杂。美国将中国视为最大的竞争对手，将俄罗斯视为最大的国家威胁。同时，乌克兰战争引发了对西方最致命的土地战争，自第二次世界大战以来最大规模的战斗。这使得普京与习近平的合作引起国际社会的广泛关注。 普京和习近平分享一种广泛的世界观，他们将西方视为堕落和衰落，同时中国在从量子计算和合成生物学到间谍活动和强大军事力量等各个领域挑战美国的霸权地位。然而，习近平不得不平衡与普京的亲密关系，同时应对美国这个拥有27万亿美元经济体的现实，仍然是全球最强大的军事大国和最富有的国家。 这篇报道强调了中俄合作的复杂性，特别是在军事合作方面，因为目前的乌克兰战争局势使得公开达成重大军事协议不太可能。这还包括对俄罗斯国防部长李尚福去向的不确定性，他已经六周没有在公开露面。俄罗斯能源巨头俄罗斯天然气工业公司和俄罗斯石油公司的首脑将随普京一同访问中国，他们希望达成出售更多天然气给中国的协议，并计划建设“西伯利亚力量-2”管道。然而，目前尚不清楚是否能够达成天然气协议，尤其是关于价格和建设成本的问题。 这篇报道强调了中俄合作的复杂性，以及国际政治中的权衡和不确定性。中俄之间的关系将继续对全球政治格局产生深远影响，这也需要世界各国密切关注和理解。
Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Xi Jinping in China this week in a bid to deepen a partnership forged between the United States' two biggest strategic competitors.
Putin will attend the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on Oct. 17-18, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the Hague-based International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.
China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.
The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat while U.S. President Joe Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential contest with between democracies and autocracies.
"Over the past decade, Xi has built with Putin's Russia the most consequential undeclared alliance in the world," Graham Allison, professor at Harvard University and a former assistant secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, told Reuters.
"The U.S. will have to come to grips with the inconvenient fact that a rapidly rising systemic rival and a revanchist one-dimensional superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world are tightly aligned in opposing the USA."
Biden has referred to Xi as a "dictator" and has said Putin is a "killer" and a leader who cannot remain in power. Beijing and Moscow have scolded Biden for those remarks.
Since the Ukraine war, Putin has mostly stayed within the former Soviet Union, though he visited Iran last year for talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Once the senior partner in the global Communist hierarchy, Russia three decades after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union is now considered a junior partner of a resurgent Communist China under Xi, China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Putin and Xi share a broad world view, which sees the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
But Xi, who leads a $18 trillion economy, must balance close personal ties with Putin with the reality of dealing with the $27 trillion economy of the United States - still the world's strongest military power, and the richest.
The United States has warned China against supplying Putin with weapons as Russia, a $2 trillion economy, battles Ukrainian forces backed by the United States and the European Union.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the optics of the Ukraine war made big public deals unlikely right now.
"Putin is definitely guest of honour," Gabuev said, adding that military and nuclear cooperation would be discussed.
"At the same time I think China is not interested in signing any additional deals at least in public, because anything that can be portrayed as providing additional cash flow to Putin’s war chest and Putin’s war machine is not good at this point."
Adding to the complexity of military cooperation is uncertainty over the fate of Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who has not been seen in public for more than six weeks.
The heads of Russian energy giants Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and Rosneft (ROSN.MM), Alexei Miller and Igor Sechin, will join Putin's retinue during his visit, sources familiar with the plans have told Reuters.
Russia wants to secure a deal to sell more natural gas to China and plans to build the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which would traverse Mongolia and have an annual capacity of 50 billion cubic metres (bcm).
It is unclear if the gas deal - particularly the price and the cost of building it - will be agreed.