The cracks are appearing in Putin’s relationship with China

Relations between China and Russia are going from strength to strength – or so they say. In reality, the strain is beginning to show. ‘Against the backdrop of accelerating changes unseen in a century, China is willing to further strengthen multilateral coordination with Russia,’ said Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency after a meeting on Wednesday in Moscow between premier Li Qiang and Vladimir Putin. Far more intriguing, though, was what wasn’t said, and which suggests a growing tensions in their ‘no limits’ partnership.

First there were the cyber spies. A few days before Li arrived in Russia, Kaspersky, a Moscow-based cyber security company, suggested that Chinese state-linked hackers had targeted dozens of computers belonging to Russian tech companies and state agencies. Kaspersky dubbed the espionage campaign EastWind, and while not explicitly blaming China (precise attribution is always tricky), it said that the tools used were associated with Chinese groups. The US has suggested that Kaspersky is linked to Russian intelligence, which the company strongly denies, but the timing of the report – indeed its very existence – is intriguing, given Putin’s increasingly dictatorial control of Russia.

Then there is the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline project, once hailed as a centrepiece of their burgeoning economic relationship and designed to carry 50 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year from the Yamal region in northern Russia to China, by way of Mongolia.