Russia and China have never been equal partners

Barely a week after inaugurating himself as president once again, Vladimir Putin has gone to China – his first foreign trip of his new term. He is accompanied by a rarely seen entourage of all the principal ministers of state, the head of the Russian central bank, leading industrialists and top managers of state-controlled companies. 

Along with all the pomp and grandeur laid on by the Chinese, this cast list provides a handy illustration of the deepening friendship and cooperation between the two superpowers. Moscow and Beijing have a history of ‘eternal friendship’. But Russia and China have never truly been equal partners in their friendship with benefits.

Sino-Soviet friendship flourished in the 1950s as Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong enforced communism on a third of the global population. China, ravaged by war and poverty at the time, sought solace in Soviet industrial and military might.