Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged stronger ties with Russia after meeting President Vladimir Putin on Monday, as Beijing flexed its diplomatic might at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan.
With 10 member states in attendance, the gathering offers Xi the chance to demonstrate that Beijing has “friends and options around the world at precisely the moment Washington is alienating many of its allies,” a China adviser in the Biden administration told The New York Times.
It’s also a chance for Xi to put a floor under China’s tense relationship with India, which “finds itself a reluctant and defensive participant — unable to move too close to China or identify fully with the anti-Western agenda promoted by Beijing and Moscow,” a Foreign Policy columnist argued.