On 16 May, Chinese President Xi hosted a warmly welcome ceremony for Russian President Putin, who, following his inauguration for a fifth term as president, chose China as the destination of his first foreign trip.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on 16 May 2024. (Sputnik/Sergey Bobylev)

Along with the friendly exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia on a wide range of issues, China-Russia ties has reached a historical new high. Xi, in the meeting with his Russian counterpart, sees the deepening ties between the two countries as a “model of relations between major powers and neighbouring states, characterized by mutual respect, trust, friendship, and mutual benefit”.

The China-Russia two way trade has reached about $240 billion; and 90% of the cross-border payments between the two countries today are carried in yuan and rubles, according to the Russian President. This payment practice matters very significantly in driving the rising trade flows between these two nations. In addition, China-Russia energy cooperation has shown a big surge - in 2023, Russia exported 107 million tons of crude oil to China, increasing by more than a quarter compared to the level of 2022. Upon Russian President’s trip to China, Moscow and Beijing agreed to enhance their strategic energy cooperation, and also further deepen their ties in other range of fields such as technology, investment, auto industry, civil aviation, and culture etc..

So, what does the deepening ties between China and Russia mean for the two countries and beyond?

From the economic and trade dimension, obviously, the numbers secured by the two countries in this area proved that both sides have greatly benefited from an increasingly close bilateral ties. Apart from that, the enhanced cooperation between China and Russia could also be conducive to the revival of the collaboration among countries based in the broad Eurasian region. The Belt and Road Initiative and other regional initiatives could continue playing their parts in helping facilitate the possible cooperation between China and Russia and the Eurasian countries by integrating the interests of various parties together.

From the security and strategic perspective, a stable China-Russia ties would serve the interest of the two major powers and beyond, as a peaceful coexistence among major powers including China and Russia matters most crucially in relation to regional and global peace. As Russian President said, China-Russia cooperation is “one of the main stabilizing factors on the international stage.” 

In addition to the above, the development of China-Russia relations from a certain sense also manifested a breakthrough in developing a new model of major power relations. Both China and Russia are major powers, and they are also neighbours. Instead of seeing each other as a threat, over the past more than two decades, China-Russia political relations as well as their collaboration over a wide range of issues under various bilateral and multilateral forums have depicted a steadily rising trend from day to day. This doesn’t mean that China and Russia have no differences, yet, very crucially, so long they have been able to successfully manage their differences, focus on their common interests and mutual benefits, and build more trust toward each other. 

In this regard, China-Russia relations somehow has gone beyond the traditional way of thinking in international relations specifically related to the relationship between two great powers, according to which, major powers, especially for the ones neighbouring with each other, would usually treat one another as a threat, so that in order to counter the threat posed to each other, the major powers would tend to deploy various means to raise their defensive or offensive capacity; then as a result of a few rounds of competition, the level of risks between the major powers would be elevated.

On the contrary, the development of China-Russia relations so far has been out of the above traditional logic. In this respect, therefore, we may assume that managing to find a series of more peaceful means in dealing with each other among all the major powers and preventing major power conflicts in the long future shouldn’t be unrealistic.