Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/russia-china-ukraine-brics-xi-jinping-visit-3f6e07b705ec634c458a2b89e37614c8
For a BRICS summit, leader Xi Jinping from China will visit Russia next month, in which China’s Foreign Minister asserted that this is in order for Moscow and Beijing to counter the West’s global influence. This visit will be Xi’s second time since Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022. China states that they remain neutral towards the conflict, but they continue to provide necessary equipment to Moscow and agree with the Kremlin’s claims that Russia’s actions were provoked by the West. After China’s Foreign Minister met with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin announced they will discuss aspects of Russia-China relations in a bilateral meeting, which Putin says are “‘developing quite successfully'” and “‘in all directions'”. Russia’s dependency economically on China has increased as Western nations have applied sanctions that have diminished its access to much of the international trading system.
China continues their good relations with Russia especially as they both face pressures from the West. This shows China’s perseverance to maintain strong ties with Russia in order to strengthen their collaboration in economic and political affairs. Russia demonstrates that they still have influential partners despite now strained relations with the West. China is perhaps keeping up this relationship to gain access to Russia’s energy resources since Western Countries are not competing for it and are instead looking at other energy alternatives away from Russia. Both Russia and China aim to expand BRICS to make it more influential in global affairs so that they can push away from Western institutions and can create their own more powerful alternative platforms.
Russia values support from non-Western powers, especially due to increased sanctions. Russia’s low-profile support from China helps the country to show that they are not alone in international affairs- they have a powerful country who pretty much sides with them. China will most likely pursue saying they are neutral to continue trade with the West and look unbiased towards the Russian-Ukrainian war, while also encouraging BRICS growth to counter Western alliances. The EU might be worried about China’s influence in BRICS, especially if it leads to more political or economic alignment against the West or if they manage to bring in more developing countries who view BRICS as an opportunity for more trade and political leverage. I assume the U.S. will view this meeting and relationship with concern, but I wonder with how much concern? Enough to do something about it or will we just wearily watch things play out?