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Vladimir Putin travels to Beijing for the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian treaty and his 40th meeting with Xi Jinping, days after a Trump-Xi summit in San Francisco — Moscow seeking assurances that the US-China rapprochement does not come at its expense.
On 19 and 20 May 2026, Vladimir Putin travels to Beijing, just four days after Donald Trump left the Chinese capital. The visit marks the 25th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation signed in 2001. The two trips occurring within less than a week is considered unprecedented in contemporary diplomacy outside a multilateral framework.
The sequence places China at the center of dealings with both powers. Beijing is Russia's leading trade partner, supplying more than a third of its imports and absorbing more than a quarter of its exports; bilateral trade exceeded 227 billion dollars in 2025. Moscow seeks assurances that the trade rapprochement emerging from the Trump-Xi summit will not come at its expense, while Washington looks to Beijing for leverage on other issues. Some forty bilateral agreements and the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline project are on the agenda.
Several readings clash over the actual significance of these summits. Some actors present the US-China agricultural deal as a tangible outcome, while others note that Beijing called the announcements preliminary and did not confirm the figures. Washington describes the Trump-Xi summit as a strategic victory, whereas other capitals consider that China secured the main gains.
Several points remain disputed or unconfirmed: the possible discussion of arms sales to Taiwan, the military dimension of the Sino-Russian partnership, and the place of Ukraine, largely absent from official communiqués. The net result is a China managing both of its major strategic relationships in parallel without breaking with either.
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« Washington views Beijing's sequence as a validation of its own strategy: the Trump-Xi summit would have put the United States in a position… »
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