While Donald Trump is hard to beat when it comes to stealing the global spotlight, Xi Jinping proved this week he can also put on a good show.
In memorable scenes reminiscent of a family reunion, the Chinese leader embraced and riffed with some of the world’s preeminent strongmen — including an impromptu conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un about organ transplants and immortality.
But the most surprising image may have been a chummy three-way gathering between Xi, Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who made his first visit to China in seven years. Beyond the symbolism of seeing them laugh and hold hands, as well as Modi riding in Putin’s limo, they also hold the biggest potential for real economic shifts that could offer the world an ability to withstand threats from Trump to impose financial pain for defying the US.
For the moment, the ties that bind them center primarily around energy. One of the big outcomes this week was Russia saying it has reached an agreement with China on the Power of Siberia 2, a vast pipeline that Beijing had sought to delay for years, as it neither needs the fuel nor wants the energy dependence on its neighbor. While key details over pricing are still unclear, the decision to move forward now served as a sign of deeper cooperation. At the same time, India signaled it would keep buying oil from Putin’s regime, something Trump has already targeted with punitive tariffs.
“This is a significant and serious inflection point,” said Matthew Bartlett, a former State Department appointee under President Trump during his first term. “It really reveals how energy security is critical to national security in the 21st century.”
The newfound bonhomie in China this week also raises a question of the business, economic and strategic implications if the three nations were to move closer together in other areas, even if that remains a remote possibility at the moment. The China-Russia nexus alone serves as a powerful counterweight to the US, prompting Trump and others in his administration to warn earlier this year about the dangers of their budding alliance.
Adding India to the mix would make that an even more formidable partnership. The three nuclear powers collectively hold a third of the world’s population, vast natural resources and world-beating manufacturing power. Today they account for roughly a quarter of global gross domestic product, up from about 5% at the turn of the century, and China has made steady strides in coming closer to catching up to the most cutting-edge US technology.
While the obstacles to more fulsome economic integration among the three nations are vast, Trump’s use of tariffs to inflict economic damage opens the door to imagine the possibilities. Beyond energy, that could include efforts to build up alternatives to the dollar, expand investment opportunities and explore other ways to withstand US sanctions and tariffs. In China this week, Xi and Modi pledged to resume direct flights between the nations.
“The classic maxim of foreign policy is unite your friends and divide your adversaries,” former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. “We have pursued policies that have managed to unite our adversaries and divide our friends.”
“This should be an occasion for some real soul-searching on the part of America’s national security thinkers,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg TV.
The idea of a strategic Eurasian triangle consisting of Russia, India and China dates back to the late 1990s, when Moscow sought to diversify its foreign policy away from an over-reliance on the US and Europe. The group struggled to take flight, but eventually spawned the creation of the BRICS grouping that also included Brazil and South Africa. That bloc has since expanded to include nations like Indonesia and several from the Middle East, and is set to hold a virtual call next week to discuss Trump’s trade policy.
Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, China has served as Russia’s most important economic partner, even as it has been careful to appear like it’s not overtly supporting his war effort. Xi’s government has also become bolder in testing US sanctions: Last week, it took a single cargo of liquefied natural gas from Arctic LNG 2, a US-sanctioned project dear to Putin’s heart and energy ambitions.
Under the previous administration, the US was quick to slap retaliatory sanctions on any vessel or company that appeared to be circumventing restrictions on Russian LNG. It isn’t clear how Trump will react, and the White House hasn’t commented on the trade.
“Rigorous enforcement of US sanctions, including against Novatek and Arctic LNG 2, has been key to maintaining pressure on the Kremlin to reverse course and accept a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine,” said Geoffrey Pyatt, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and former US assistant secretary of state who helped craft Arctic LNG 2 sanctions under the Biden administration.
It’s still unclear if China’s pipeline deal with Moscow is more signal than substance. China and Russia haven’t agreed on a price yet — a key sticking point before the project can move forward. Beijing will likely only greenlight the pipeline if Moscow accepts a price close to what domestic Russian consumers pay, according to a report from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
What’s more, if all the capacity is used, China would be taking more than 40% of its imported gas from Russia — a dramatic shift for a country that has long sought to keep a diverse stable of suppliers as part of its energy security drive. China also imports significant volumes of gas from Qatar and Australia.
China’s progress in renewable energy is also closing the window for the Russians to get more gas into the Chinese market, according to Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“The Russians, in order to get there, will really need to accept the conditions that make China happy,” he said. “And so far, I think it seems that the conditions look like straight robbery.”
The roadblocks to closer cooperation with India are also high. Modi’s trip to China is more a rebalancing away from the US orbit than an embrace of Beijing, according to an Indian official familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified. The trust deficit on both sides remains high after ties suffered following a 2020 border clash, and India is far away from easing restrictions on Chinese investment, the official said.
While Modi attended the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Tianjin, he stayed away from Xi’s military parade in Beijing several days later. The Indian leader also stopped in Japan, a key US ally, ahead of the China visit.
“Modi was going to send some signals that he’s going to maintain India’s strategic autonomy, and to show that he has options, and won’t be pushed around,” said Daniel Kritenbrink, former assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Biden administration. “But India is going to be careful and cautious. And I remain cautiously optimistic that because of the fundamental common interests that the United States and India hold, that there’s an opportunity to bring things back together there as well.”
Trump’s administration has kept up a steady barrage of verbal attacks on India in recent weeks, with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro accusing New Delhi of funding Russia’s campaign in Ukraine and even calling it “Modi’s war.” New Delhi and Moscow have deep ties dating back to the Soviet era, and Russia is India’s biggest supplier of weapons.
The US president also accused Xi, Putin and Kim of conspiring against the US during their meeting in China. On Wednesday, he said that US relations with all of the leaders who were in Beijing was “very good,” while warning that “you’ll see things happen” if Putin doesn’t meet Trump’s deadline for holding talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Western officials familiar with the matter were impressed with Xi’s parade, calling it a military version of China’s 2008 Olympics that signals it will soon become a US peer. They also said the events in China made them believe that Xi viewed himself as the boss of both Putin and Kim, and will only cooperate with them on favorable terms to Beijing.
A goal of the parade was to showcase China’s industrial prowess by featuring weaponry made with Chinese technology, according to Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University and former diplomat seen as close to the government in Beijing.
The aim, he said, “is to tell the world ‘there is no need to fight a war with China anymore. You won’t win anyway.’”
Beijing often seeks to instill stability in its capital markets around major national events. Ahead of the parade, Chinese stocks jumped about 10% in August, but that rally is starting to cool.
At the SCO summit, Xi also sought to extend China’s influence among more than 20 leaders in attendance by taking veiled shots at the US and emphasizing that all countries should be treated equally. While the body is often dismissed as a bureaucratic talk shop in the West, the expansion of membership in recent years and shift to create a development bank helps provide a more stable partner to leaders roiled by Trump.
Many of the leaders who went to Beijing aren’t necessarily trying to side with China or Russia against the US, but rather to look for space to maneuver between the world’s big powers and preserve flexibility.
“They were hoping I was watching,” Trump said. “And I was watching.”
