Putin meets Chinese President Xi Jinping as Ukraine rises

Putin arrived in China more than a week after Xi Jinping visited France, Serbia and Hungary, a trip that some analysts said exposed cracks in European unity.

“Xi Jinping’s goal is to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe and to show that transatlantic unity has limits on China,” wrote Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In France, Xi Jinping faces pressure from European leaders to use his influence with Putin to end the war in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President von der Leyen also reiterated calls for a more balanced trade with Beijing.

But Xi Jinping has made few concessions. He denied that China has an overcapacity problem. On the Ukrainian issue, he emphasized that China “is not the source of this crisis, nor is it a party or participant in this crisis.” There is no sign that he will ask Moscow to stop the war.

Xi Jinping received a red carpet welcome in Serbia and Hungary and promised to deepen political and economic ties. Researchers at the Italian Institute of International Political Studies (ISPI) described it as “an elaborate display of brotherhood towards China by the two most pro-China European countries.”

Yet despite the charm offensive, Xi seems “more determined to exploit the EU’s different views on how to deal with China than to find common ground,” ISPI researchers wrote.