Xi Jinping is leaving China for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and is heading to Central Asia.
Xi Jinping this week for the first time in more than will leave China for two years and go to Central Asia, where he will meet with Vladimir Putin.
This trip, which will be the first trip abroad since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, shows how confident Xi is in his power in China and how dangerous the global situation has become: Russia's confrontation with the West over Ukraine, the crisis over Taiwan and a stuttering global economy, writes Reuters.
Xi is due to visit Kazakhstan on Wednesday on a state visit, and then meet Putin at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, according to Kazakhstan and the Kremlin.
Last week, Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuriy Ushakov, told reporters that Putin was to meet Xi at the summit. The Kremlin refused to provide details on the substance of the negotiations. China has yet to confirm Xi's travel plans.
The deepening of the “borderless” partnership between rising superpower China and natural resources titan Russia is one of the most intriguing geopolitical developments in recent years, with the West watching with trepidation.< /p>
Once a senior partner in the global communist hierarchy, Russia, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is now seen as a junior partner to a resurgent communist China, which is projected to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy in the next decade.
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While historical contradictions in the partnership abound, there are no signs that Xi is ready to abandon his support for Putin in Russia's most serious confrontation with the West since the height of the Cold War.
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Instead, the two 69- annual leaders deepen connections. Trade between Russia and China increased by almost a third in the first 7 months of 2022.
