Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week where the two spoke about their growing economic and security relationship, which was seen as a clear challenge to U.S. hegemony.

While Ukraine was not a centerpiece topic for their meeting, the two issued a statement critical of NATO’s influence in Asia and said the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is healthier than Western alliances because it is “mature, stable, independent, and resilient.”

“The principal contradiction in the world today is not the so-called ‘confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism that a handful of countries have played up, but rather the struggle between development and the containment of development,” Qin Gang, China’s foreign minister, said in a statement. 

Putin and Xi issued a joint statement and called on the U.S. to “stop undermining international and regional security and global strategic stability in order to make its own unilateral military superiority.”

While Russia shows its military might in Ukraine, China is staking its claim as a global power. Beijing’s peace plan for Ukraine—while rejected by Washington—received global interest and Beijing recently scored a major diplomatic coup after getting Saudi Arabia and Iran to sign a peace deal. The Wall Street Journal called the Saudi-Iran pact a “bold foray into the Middle East’s turbulent rivalries” for Beijing. The paper said its “strident” effort into global issues is a signal to the world that it no longer recognizes the “U.S.-led global order and is a clear challenge to the U.S.

Xi indicated that he will hold a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sometime in the future.

TRENDPOST: President Joe Biden announced when he took office that his top foreign policy objective is to make sure China does not surpass the U.S. in the global order. (See “CHINA’S XI ACCUSES U.S. OF CONTAINMENT STRATEGY IN RARE PUBLIC REBUKE” 14 Mar 2023 and “RUSSIA, CHINA HOLD KEY MEETING AMID UKRAINE WAR SIGNAL MUTUAL GEOPOLITICAL INTERESTS AND CLOSE TIES” 28 Feb 2023.)

China and Russia are bonded by the old adage: An enemy of an enemy is a friend. Both countries see the U.S. grasping to maintain the current world order. (See “PUTIN SEES ‘TECTONIC CHANGE’ IN WORLD ORDER, BLAMES WEST OF STOKING NUKE FEARS,” 1 Nov 2022.)

Needless to say, the propaganda media in the West did its best to stoke fears about the meeting, and worked to raise suspicions about China’s peace proposal for Ukraine that warned against the emergence of “confrontational blocs that add fuel to the flames.”

The West has used Ukraine as a warning of what could happen in Taiwan. If Russia walks away with new territory and has its other demands met, that would give Xi a green light to attack Taipei, Western leaders say. (See “JAPAN: WILL CHINA ATTACK TAIWAN LIKE RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE?” 10 May 2022, “WWIII: U.S. QUADRUPLES TROOPS IN TAIWAN IN PREPARATION FOR WAR WITH CHINA” 28 Feb 2023 and “BIDEN PROMOTES NEVER-ENDING WAR IN UKRAINE. WRONG ABOUT RUSSIA” 28 Feb 2023.)

At the same time Xi was meeting with Putin, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made an unannounced visit to Kyiv. Japan’s foreign ministry said Kishida’s visit was intended to “show respect to the courage and patience of the Ukrainian people who are standing up to defend their homeland… and show solidarity and unwavering support.”

Xi told Putin when he left that there are changes that “haven’t happened in 100 years.”

“When we are together, we drive these changes,” Xi said. 

Putin said, “I agree. Take care of yourself, dear friend, please.”

Biden met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa on Friday and a reporter asked him what he thought about the Russia-China alliance. 

“In ten years, Russia and China have had 40 meetings, 40 meetings,” Biden began. “And I disagree with the basic premise of your question.”

China Shuns the U.S. Way of Doing Business 

Xi, who just started his unprecedented third term as president, said last month that Beijing aims to be a source for good on the world’s stage, unlike the U.S.

“In advancing modernization, China will neither tread the old path of colonization and plunder, nor the crooked path taken by some countries to seek hegemony once they grow strong,” he said, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Xi’s recent comments show an interest from the leader to transform the country into a beacon of light in Asia and a “benign power that can stand up to a U.S.-led Western order it sees as hectoring and bullying.”

Xi has accused the U.S. of carrying out an “all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression” of China, from militarizing neighbors to barring Chinese companies from buying advanced microchips from the States. 

David Brooks, the columnist at The New York Times, wrote Sunday: “Whoever dominates chip manufacturing dominates the market as well as the battlefield.”

TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente has mocked the U.S. presence in Syria, asking: Do you think troops would be there if the chief export was broccoli? 

Brooks noted in his column that more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips are produced by a Taiwanese company. Brooks wrote that China’s intention is to approach chip self-sufficiency. (See “TOP 2022 SELF-SUFFICIENCY TREND: ‘WE DON’T NEED YOUR CHIPS’” 7 June 2022.)