Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin Hold 2-Hour ‘Friendship’ Meeting over Tea in Beijing

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin celebrated what Putin called a “productive and substantial” encounter on Wednesday, reportedly lasting two hours and featuring a “particularly confidential” discussion.

Neither Chinese nor Russian media indicated that the two leaders specified what topics they discussed outside of their countries’ business cooperation and inviting domestic companies to invest in each other’s nations. China’s Xinhua News Agency claimed the two “had in-depth exchanges of views on the Palestine-Israel situation and others,” without elaborating.

Putin landed in Beijing on Tuesday for the Belt and Road Forum, an international event attracting representatives of over 100 countries – according to the Chinese Communist Party – to promote the country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure funding program. China uses the BRI to offer predatory loans, featuring high interest rates and other unfavorable conditions, to underdeveloped and impoverished countries to be used to fund infrastructure projects.

This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands during a meeting in Beijing on October 18, 2023. (SERGEI GUNEYEV/POOL/AFP via Getty)

The loan money often goes to Chinese companies, who decamp to the target nations and usurp the space of local contractors and laborers, and the countries often struggle to pay the loans back, creating a space for the Communist Party to erode their sovereignty and manipulate their foreign policy to its favor.

Among the most negatively affected victims of the BRI are Sri Lanka and Kenya, whose presidents attended the Forum. Other big-name leaders on the guest list included Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Taliban “commerce minister” Nooruddin Azizi.

Putin made his first voyage outside of the confines of the former Soviet Union to attend the meeting this week since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest in March in response to Russian alleged war crimes in Ukraine. China is not a signatory to the ICC and thus has no obligation to arrest Putin.

Rather than arrest him, China regaled Putin with a red-carpet entrance to the Belt and Road Forum guest banquet on Tuesday night, followed up by an extended in-person “business lunch” with Xi on Wednesday.

“We had a business lunch in limited attendance, where the Minister of Foreign Affairs was present, aides were present on both sides – and then Chairman Xi offered to talk in private,” Putin told reporters on Thurday, according to the Russian news agency Tass. “We had a tete-a-tete conversation, indeed, as you imagine, having a cup of tea. We spoke for about an hour and a half or maybe two hours, and we discussed some issues of particularly confidential nature in private.”

Tass described Putin as praising the meeting as “productive and substantial.” He also reportedly discussed at length what he hopes the BRI could do to help Moscow advance its own connectivity with the region.

“If the Chinese Belt and Road initiative also evolves, it will have a synergistic effect on the efforts and investments we are making now, developing Russian capabilities. We are interested in this,” Putin reportedly asserted. “In developing the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Baikal-Amur Railway, the Northern Sea Route, our North-South rail lines, the railway and the motorway network – all this, if China’s Belt and Road Initiative progresses, will create a synergistic effect.”

Coverage of the meeting in Xinhua, a Chinese regime news agency, indicated that Xi found the conversation similarly productive for the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, hailing the “good working relationship” and “deep friendship” the two had developed.

CCTV, another Chinese state media outlet, quoted Xi as declaring record high trade and “political mutual trust” between Russia and China.

“The political mutual trust between the two countries has been continuously deepened, strategic coordination has been close and effective, bilateral trade volume has reached a record high,” Xi reportedly said.

Xi reportedly emphasized the importance of Russian support for the BRI and Chinese businesses.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, during the opening ceremony at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. President Xi Jinping said the initiative has a “golden decade” ahead, welcoming Putin and other delegates at a forum aimed at reinvigorating what Xi has called a “project of the century.” (Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty)

“Lauding Russia as an important partner as China pursues international Belt and Road cooperation, Xi said the operation of major infrastructure projects such as the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline has brought tangible benefits to the people of both countries,” Xinhua reported.

Russia is a major exporter of fossil fuels, oil and natural gas particularly, to China. Russia overtook former top oil supplier Saudi Arabia to become the country importing the most crude oil to China in June 2022, a result of increased purchases following Putin’s announcement of a formal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The invasion prompted European and other Western powers to sanction the Russian economy. By June 2023, China was importing record amounts of Russian oil, a trend oil industry experts expect to continue.

Xinhua reported that Xi mentioned support for a gas pipeline connecting China to Mongolia and Siberia – a major infrastructure project that reports prior to Putin’s arrival indicated was on top of his priority list for his meeting with Xi. Xinhua stated only, however, that Xi said “China hopes that the China-Mongolia-Russia natural gas pipeline project will make substantive progress as soon as possible,” rather than offering any concrete aid.

Putin’s visit follows an appearance by Xi Jinping – who for years did not leave China in the aftermath of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic – visiting Moscow in March. On that occasion, Xi announced that communist China was ready to “stand guard over the world order,” promoting a Ukraine “peace plan” Beijing has been touting for most of this year that both sides have ignored. The peace plan urges both Ukraine and Russia to “calm down as soon as possible” and return to “dialogue and negotiation,” with no specifics on how to do so.

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