Sidelining Trump, China’s Xi rolls out carpet for Ukraine war aggressors

BEIJING – In a show of solidarity with the aggressors in Europe’s worst war in 80 years, Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet his Russian and North Korean counterparts for the first time as US President Donald Trump and other Western leaders watch on.

The gathering of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Beijing this week is testament to Mr Xi’s influence over authoritarian regimes intent on redefining the Western-led global order, while Mr Trump’s threats, sanctions and tariff-driven diplomacy strain longstanding US alliances, geopolitical analysts say.

The leaders’ milestone meeting in the Chinese capital also raises the prospect of a new trilateral axis building on the mutual defence pact signed between Russia and North Korea in June 2024 and a similar alliance between Beijing and Pyongyang, an outcome that could change the military calculus in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism,” Mr Xi said on Sept 1 in a thinly veiled swipe at his geopolitical rival on the other side of the Pacific.

Mr Kim crossed into China early on Sept 2

aboard his special train, en route to the capital Beijing. Mr Xi and Mr Putin, meanwhile, gathered at the Great Hall of the People for a meeting with Mongolia’s leader that was expected to touch on a vast gas pipeline project and bilateral talks.

Mr Putin thanked his “dear friend”, Mr Xi, for the warm welcome and said the close communication showed Russia’s relations with China were at an “unprecedentedly high level”, according to a video of the talks posted on the Kremlin’s official Telegram channel.

“Our close communication reflects the strategic nature of Russian-Chinese ties, which are currently at an unprecedented level,” Mr Putin told Mr Xi in remarks on a pooled live feed.

In a nod to cooperation between the two countries during the war, the Russian leader said: “We were always together then, and we remain together now.”

“China-Russia relations have withstood the test of international changes,” Mr Xi told Mr Putin on Sept 2.

Mr Xi added that Beijing was willing to work with Moscow to “promote the construction of a more just and reasonable global governance system”.

Following a summit in Tianjin on Sept 1 where he and Mr Putin pitched their vision for a new global security and economic order to more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries, their meeting with Mr Kim is the next set piece ahead of a massive military parade on Sept 3 to mark the end of World War II.

Mr Xi has already held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

on his first visit to China in seven years, resetting strained bilateral ties, while Mr Trump’s tariffs on Indian goods have riled New Delhi.

Even as the US leader touts his peacemaking credentials and sets his eyes on a Nobel Peace Prize – claiming to have ended wars, holding a Ukraine peace summit with Mr Putin in Alaska and pushing for a sit-down with Mr Kim later in the year – any new concentration of military power in the East that includes a war aggressor will ring alarm bells for the West.

“Trilateral military exercises between Russia, China and North Korea seem nearly inevitable,” wrote Professor Youngjun Kim, an analyst at the US-based National Bureau of Asian Research, in March, citing how the conflict in Ukraine has pushed Moscow and Pyongyang closer together.

“Until a few years ago, China and Russia were important partners in imposing international sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests... (they) are now potential military partners of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea during a crisis on the Korean peninsula,” he added, using the diplomatically isolated countries’ official name.

Mr Kim is an important stakeholder in the conflict in Ukraine.

While China and India have continued purchasing Russian oil, the North Korean leader has supplied more than 15,000 troops to support Mr Putin on Europe’s doorstep.

In 2024, he also hosted the Russian leader in Pyongyang – the first summit of its kind in 24 years – in a move widely interpreted as a snub to Mr Xi and an attempt to ease his pariah status by reducing North Korea’s dependence on China.

About

600 soldiers have died fighting for Russia in the Kursk region

, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency, which believes Pyongyang is planning another such deployment.

Mr Putin also told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit that a “fair balance in the security sphere” must also be restored, shorthand for Russian demands about Nato and European security.

His visit to Beijing and expected meeting with Mr Xi and Mr Kim may offer clues to Mr Putin’s intentions, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also due to attend the parade on Sept 3 in a show of defiance that Western analysts have dubbed the “Axis of Upheaval”. REUTERS, AFP