Xi, Putin Sign 9,935-Word Statement, No Major Deals
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- Xi Jinping welcomed Vladimir Putin to Beijing on May 20 with an honour guard, gun salute, and flag-waving children — the same ceremony used for Donald Trump five days earlier — and the pair signed a 9,935-word joint statement alongside roughly 20 additional documents, though no major deals were announced.
- The long-stalled Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline reached only a "general understanding" between Russia and China, with the Kremlin saying key details and a timetable still need to be agreed after years of pricing disputes.
- Russia and China jointly criticized Trump's Golden Dome missile defence project as a threat to strategic stability and accused Washington of irresponsibility for failing to negotiate a replacement for a landmark nuclear treaty.
- Sberbank CEO German Gref said Russia hopes to power its flagship GigaChat AI model with Chinese-made chips, citing Western sanctions that have cut Moscow off from advanced hardware.
- The Putin visit followed Trump's May 15 departure from Beijing, which likewise produced no major trade breakthroughs or concrete Beijing help ending the Iran war, despite two days of public flattery toward Xi.
- China-Russia bilateral trade stands at roughly US$240 billion, making China Russia's largest trading partner and Russia its fifth-largest, underscoring Moscow's deepening economic reliance on Beijing since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Why it matters: Two back-to-back Beijing summits within a week — Trump on May 15, Putin on May 20 — showcased Xi's ability to host rival world leaders on identical ceremonial terms, yet both visits exited without the headline deliverables (a trade deal for Trump, the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline for Putin) that each side publicly wanted, suggesting Beijing prefers symbolic parity with Washington and Moscow over concrete economic concessions.
