Lyn Frans
Chinese President Xi Jinping increased his country’s friction with the US and its Western allies by heralding the Lunar Year, vowing greater cooperation and coordination with America’s fierce rival in geopolitics – Russia.
Xi heralded a new year of growing coordination with Russia during a an hour-long call with counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday that comes as the two countries continue to cement their partnership amid friction with the West.
Xi called up Russian President Putin and said the two sides should “strengthen strategic coordination” and “safeguard the national sovereignty, security and development interests of their respective countries,” according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.
The Chinese leader also reiterated that the two nations should also “resolutely oppose external interference in their internal affairs. This was an apparent reference to the two leaders’ suspicions about the intentions of the Western governments following the US-led Quad assault on China on its hegemony in South China seas and US sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, which it has successfully circumvented sending ghost ships to supply oil to countries that are its traditional oil buyers — India and China.
The call, which came on the eve of China’s Lunar New Year, is the latest robust exchange between the two leaders, who reportedly have a warm personal relationship sharing a common objective to counter what they perceive as a world unfairly dominated by the US, a universal policeman.
Which explains Russia’s quest for retaking the erstwhile states of the Soviet Union that split during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost to balance the forces in the geopolitical world, strategic affairs experts said.
“We have withstood many trials and tribulations together (in the past). Looking to the future, China-Russia relations face new development opportunities,” Xi told Putin during their call.
The leaders exchanged fresh details on the situation in several regions, including the Middle East, and discussed “the current situation” in Ukraine, according to a readout from the Kremlin.
In the Middle East, “both Russia and China support a political and diplomatic settlement of the Palestinian problem within the generally recognized framework of international law,” the Kremlin statement said.
The Chinese statement did not name Ukraine or the Middle East, where geopolitical instability is rampant due to the unending ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. It said the two sides discussed “international and regional hot-spot issues”.
Both Beijing and Moscow are seen to have increased their coordination on international issues in forums like the United Nations in recent years, while also building separate international groupings where they hold sway such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Russia and China trading in Yuan during sanctions on oil purchases is floating the idea of a BRICS pay currency to destabilize the US-led Petrodollar.
Xi and Putin both called for further enhancing their international “multilateral” coordination during the call, the readouts said, mentioning the BRICS and SCO, both of which have expanded their membership over the past year. Russia assumed the rotating annual chair of BRICS earlier this year.
“Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping specifically stressed that close Russia-China interaction is an important stabilizing factor in world affairs,” the Kremlin statement added.
The leaders also hailed record trade, which last year exceeded a target of $200 billion ahead of schedule. Those ties have been buoyed by discount Russian oil purchases from China and sanctions-hit Russia’s increasing reliance on Chinese consumer goods amid its economic isolation.
Putin also praised the Russia-China trade relationship during an interview with American right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson published Thursday.
“Our trade is well-balanced, mutually complementary in high-tech, energy, scientific research and development,” Putin said in his remarks, where he referred to Xi as a “colleague and friend,” according to a translation provided by Carlson.
Thursday’s phone conversation between Xi and Putin took place as the two countries celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations this year. Last year, Xi made his symbolically significant first foreign trip of his third term as President to Moscow last March.
Putin made one of just a handful of overseas trips since the start of the war in Ukraine to Beijing in October 2023.
Additional Source: IANS
