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.
Putin and Xi want to upend what they see as an unfair Western-dominated world order
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.

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