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Excerpt from chinadigitaltimes.net
Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, only weeks after his first trip to Europe in five years. While E.U. and French leaders pressed Xi to make greater efforts in halting Russia’s war against Ukraine, his summit with Putin suggests that Xi has no intention of casting aside his country’s close ties with Russia. This mirrors the outcome of Xi’s visit to Moscow last year. As David Pierson summarized for The New York Times, Xi and Putin have embraced in defiance of the Western-led world order:
Mr. Xi’s talks with Mr. Putin this week were a show of solidarity between two autocrats battling Western pressure. The two leaders put out a lengthy statement that denounced what they saw as American interference and bullying and laid out their alignment on China’s claim to self-ruled Taiwan and Russia’s “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine.
They pledged to expand economic and military ties, highlighted by Mr. Putin’s visit to a cutting-edge Chinese institute for defense research. Mr. Xi even initiated a cheek-to-cheek hug as he bade Mr. Putin farewell on Thursday after an evening stroll in the Chinese Communist Party leadership compound in Beijing.
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