PUTIN'S PIPE DREAMS
- Paul Hansbury
- 21 hours ago
- 5 min read
Chinese officials could not have choreographed it better. First came the President of the United States, Donald Trump, seemingly recognising China as a peer competitor by heaping praise on leader Xi Jinping and soft-pedalling on controversial issues. Then, four days later, Russia's president Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing to join Xi in trumpeting the advantages of a multipolar world.
The timing of the two visits reinforced the idea that China's status is rising and a new world order emerging. World leaders are queuing up to meet Xi (Britain's Keir Starmer and France's Emmanuel Macron have also travelled to China this year). Not that the Trump and Putin trips were originally intended to be quite so perfectly timed for Beijing, because Trump's visit had been planned for some weeks earlier, only to be postponed owing to the war in Iran. But the US postponement played into China's hands. Them's the breaks.
As well, both visits managed to bolster the idea that Xi is the real power broker in the world right now. Trump's tough-talking and actions have given way to cajolery when it comes to China, whilst Putin came away from Beijing without any apparent progress on a long-delayed gas pipeline.
