Here’s why Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing this week is so important

Kirill Babaev: Here’s why Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing this week is so important

 Kirill Babaev

Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing this week marks the second Russia-China summit this year. This time, the president is paying a visit to his friend and strategic partner, following agreements reached during Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow in March. At that time, the Chinese leader invited Putin to attend the third forum of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which marks its tenth anniversary.

The presence of the Russian leader at the event is especially notable given the occasional view (mostly from the West) that the project has reached a dead end. The scheme, launched by Xi in 2013 to link Chinese goods to European markets via trans-Eurasian land and northern sea routes, is indeed facing a dilemma.

By erecting a new “iron curtain” on the borders of Russia and Belarus, Western Europe has fallen into its own trap, depriving itself of low-cost energy sources – the main driver of its economy since the 1970s. At the same time, Western European countries are also closing off the possibility of importing cheap Chinese goods by land since Russia was the critical link in the ‘One Belt, One Road’ project. 

Meanwhile, sanctions on the supply of high-tech products to China and the refusal to allow Chinese investment in their markets are also jeopardizing Sino-European trade along the Northern Sea Route. Under these conditions, the BRI is looking for new points of growth, one of which could be fast-growing Russian-Chinese trade and the coupling of the initiative with the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

The EAEU and the Belt and Road pairing would be important for Russia in the context of its ‘pivot to the East,’ which is largely complete in exports and imports. China understands that trade with the EAEU is much more reliable than interaction with Western countries, albeit in smaller volumes.

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