China on Wednesday staged a strengthening of its economic ties with Russia in response to the G-7 summit that was held last weekend in Japan. The Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, signed a series of agreements with China during a trip to Beijing in a meeting where he assured that bilateral ties have reached an unprecedented level, despite the disapproval by the West of their relationship due to to the Ukrainian war.
Mishustin, the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Beijing since Moscow sent thousands of its troops to Ukraine in February 2022, held talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang before meeting President Xi Jinping. "China and Russia should further enhance economic, trade and investment cooperation, and expand energy cooperation," said the Chinese president.
With the war in Ukraine in its second year and Russia increasingly feeling the brunt of Western sanctions, Moscow is leaning on Beijing much more than China on Russia, feeding off Chinese demand for oil and gas.
Pressure from the West has shown no signs of abating. The joint declarations of the Group of Seven (the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan, as well as the EU) in Hiroshima put pressure on both countries on a large number of issues, including Ukraine and Taiwan.
"Today, Russia-China relations are at an unprecedented high level," Mishustin assured Li at their meeting. "They are characterized by mutual respect for each other's interests, the desire to jointly respond to challenges, which is associated with increased turbulence in the international arena and the sensational pressure pattern from the Western collective," he added. . "As our Chinese friends say, unity makes it possible to move mountains," he said.
The memorandums of understanding that the "friendly" nations have signed included an agreement to deepen investment cooperation in commercial services, a pact on exporting agricultural products to China and another on sports cooperation.
Likewise, energy shipments from Russia to China are projected to increase by 40% this year. And the two countries are discussing the supply of technological equipment to Russia, the Interfax news agency reported.
"Given sanctions against Russia provide new opportunities for China, it is not surprising that China is happy to engage actively, if not proactively, with Russia economically, as long as the relationships they forge do not trigger secondary sanctions against China," said the director of the Institute for the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Steve Tsang, to the Reuters agency.
"China's policy toward the war in Ukraine is 'declare neutrality, support Putin and pay no price,' and this visit reaffirms that, particularly the support for Putin element," Tsang said.
Xi visited Russia in March and held talks with his "dear friend" President Vladimir Putin. The year before and just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Xi had committed to a "no limits" partnership with Moscow. Beijing has rejected Western attempts to link its partnership with Moscow to Ukraine, insisting their relationship does not violate international norms, China has the right to collaborate with whomever it chooses and its cooperation is not directed at third countries.
"China is willing to work with Russia to implement joint cooperation between the two countries. And promoting pragmatic cooperation in various fields can take it to a new level," Li stressed to Mishustin.
Tightening ties with China is a strategic course for Moscow, Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said, holding talks on Monday with Chen Wenqing, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo who oversees police, affairs legal and intelligence.
Beijing has refrained from openly denouncing the invasion of Russia. But since February, Xi has promoted a peace plan, which has been greeted with skepticism by the West and greeted with caution by Kyiv. Last week, China's special representative for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, visited Ukraine and met President Volodymyr Zelensky on a European tour that Beijing called an effort to promote peace talks and a political solution to the crisis.
