Less than a week after US President Donald Trump traveled to China, Russian President Vladimir Putin also arrived in China for a diplomatic visit.
This seems calculated on Putin’s part: he doesn’t want his Chinese partner to drift toward America.
Notably, there is a lot of history here. In 1972, US President Richard Nixon visited China, a major symbol of the US making inroads as Beijing pursued policies different from Moscow’s.
A lot has changed since Nixon went to China. China did appear to be closer to the US orbit for decades, but that began to change in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Russia also underwent changes: the collapse of the Soviet Union led Moscow to shift policies in the 1990s, but it shifted back towards greater hostility to the US in the 2010s.
Putin seeks to keep China close after Trump visit
The last few decades have seen increasingly negative relations between the US, China, and Russia. China is concerned that this could lead to an inevitable clash. For Moscow, the clash is already happening in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Russia has had hopes that the Trump administration might shift its course on Ukraine. This comes after Putin said earlier this month that he believes the war could end soon.
On the other hand, China has had its ups and downs with the Trump administration. Things weren’t going well in 2019 during the first administration, when there was a trade war. When some of the war was reduced in December 2019, COVID-19 broke out.
The current Trump administration has been hyper-focused on the Middle East this year with the Iran war. In 2025, the US was focused on peace deals, including in Pakistan, Gaza, and other places.
China is reportedly supposed to be Trump’s 2026 focus of 2026. Moscow hopes the US gets sucked into a long conflict with, and saw that with Iran. As such, Putin leaped at an opportunity to go to China to shore up relations when Trump left.
Many headlines in international media are focused on China and Russia’s relationship. For example, the Associated Press reported that Putin is “reaffirming” ties. Putin appears to believe China-Russia ties are at an unprecedented level and that his ties with Xi are unshakeable.
But the messaging from Beijing may be more complex. The Independent says that Chinese President Xi Jinping told Trump that “Putin might regret invading Ukraine.” China is clearly the stronger player today.
This is, to some extent, a huge historical reversal of fortune. China has been a rising power for decades. During the Deng Xiaoping era, the concept in China was a slogan: “hide your strength and bide your time.” This began to change, especially under Hu Jintao, who updated the phrasing of this strategy in a 2009 speech. It was Hu who pushed for a larger Chinese navy.
China has been an important country for a very long time. However, it entered a malaise in the 19th century as Europeans came to dominate parts of Asia. A victim of the Opium Wars and internal strife, such as the Boxer Rebellion, it was a weak and divided 20th century, and was also defeated by the Japanese in several conflicts.
It’s known that Japanese foreign policy in Manchukuo, an area Japan controlled in what is now northern China, viewed China and Russia as threats. At the time, Russia was Communist, and China was run by the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek.
That has all changed now, but essentially China’s policy of working with Russia continued throughout the post-1945 era and continues to this day, despite the hiatus of the Nixon visit and what the US called “triangular diplomacy.”
Putin doesn’t want any kind of America “triangular” diplomacy resurrected that would drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow. He wants to be in China’s orbit and a partner in blocs such as BRICS, the China-led SCO, and other non-Western arrangements. So long as the Ukraine war goes on and Iran conflict simmers, Putin feels he is still in a decent position.
Things can change, though. The White House has been tough on historic allies in Europe and on the Five Eyes allies, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and China may see an opening.
Xi seeks to pry the US away from the West and avoid what he has called the Thucydides trap. That trap is seen in Beijing as the possibility that an erratic US policy may lead to conflict.
Certainly, one issue for China in that setup is Taiwan’s future, but it is not the only issue. So long as the US is erratic, Beijing is concerned. But Beijing is also concerned that its friends in Moscow, Iran, and Venezuela are weaker than they appeared.
Chinese media is reporting a new breakthrough in space technology and a sell-off in US Treasury bills. There is talk in China about the personal rapport between Putin and Xi. China has sent an aircraft carrier to kick off drills in the Pacific “amid tense Japan ties,” the South China Morning Post says. All of this matters because it illustrates how China is positioning itself in the world. Putin will need to be careful lest his visit turn out less impressive than Trump’s.
