In a break with indirect statements from previous summits, their statement criticized the United States by name six times, challenging its alliances with Australia and others in Asia, as well as its arms control and other policies. He also opposed any expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a central demand of Russia in its standoff with the West over Ukraine.

Opposition to NATO marked China’s most explicit support to date for Russia in the confrontation and, according to international affairs scholars, showed Beijing’s ambition to have a say in European security and its closest alignment with Russia since the communist bloc’s early Cold War years. with the West.

“The world must prepare for a significant further deepening of China-Russia security and economic relations,” said Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society, a New York-based think tank and former Australian prime minister.

Mr Rudd said that since the Communist bloc’s bitter split between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1950s, Beijing had not taken such a definitive position in favor of Russia on European security.

The Beijing-Moscow deal falls short of the full-fledged treaty alliances the US enjoys with Europe, Japan, Australia and others that the Biden administration says underpin the strength and influence of the United States in the world. Closer ties with Moscow present particular pitfalls for Beijing, as China is a top trading nation still dependent on the West for critical technologies.

The timing of Friday’s meeting between MM. Xi and Putin at a time of high tension with the West and sharp criticism of their statement on the United States marks a shift in their challenge to Washington as it tries to maintain global pre-eminence and cement a Western-led economic and political world order.

“The growing breadth and depth of Sino-Russian cooperation is rooted in pure pragmatism, not ideology,” said Daniel Russel, a former Obama administration official in charge of Asia issues. “Russia and China are making common cause to better defend their respective interests and authoritarian systems in the face of Western pressure.”

The Sino-Russian collaboration could thwart US efforts to isolate Moscow due to its military intimidation of Ukraine, which Moscow wants to bring into its sphere of influence and away from its increasingly Western orientation. The United States has threatened to impose sanctions on Russian banks, state-owned enterprises and imports such as microelectronics in case Russia attacks Ukraine, and China could close many loopholes by boosting trade, investments and finance.

Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region, said Beijing should have used the summit to “encourage Russia to pursue diplomacy and de-escalation in Ukraine”. This is what the world expects from responsible powers.

Instead, Mr Kritenbrink told reporters: “If Russia continues to invade Ukraine and China looks the other way, it suggests that China is ready to tolerate or tacitly support Russia’s efforts. to coerce Ukraine, even when they embarrass Beijing, harm European security and threaten the world. peace and economic stability.

The Sino-Russian joint statement is broader and talks about linking together iconic economic initiatives — Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Campaign and Mr. Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union — to forge ties stronger in much of the Eurasian continent and with developing countries. The two sides have said they will cooperate on Arctic sea passages for shipping and on international technology standards – areas where the United States is wary of China’s ambitions.

Other areas of economic cooperation include nuclear power, with Russian state energy company Rosatom launching construction of power plants in China last year. The main aeronautical companies of the two countries, the Chinese Comac and the Russian United Aircraft Corporation, are also collaborating on an airliner to challenge Airbus and Boeing..

Russia and China have held joint military exercises, including one last summer with coordinated command centers. Moscow is increasingly willing to transfer military technology it once kept from Beijing, defense analysts have said.

Added to this is Friday’s opposition to US alliances, with Beijing backing Russia on NATO and Moscow siding with China against the Biden administration’s strategy of rallying partners in the Indo-Pacific and its new Australia-UK-US Defense Pact, or AUKUS. This raises the possibility of possible cooperation between Russia and China in both hemispheres.

“Russia and China oppose attempts by outside forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” the statement said. He later added, “Both sides believe that certain states, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages at the expense of the security of others.”

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence in much of the developing world, with Moscow being joined by Beijing for much of the 1950s. Differences over ideology, geopolitics and the leadership of the communist world have severed these ties; Soviet and Chinese forces engage in bloody border skirmishes.

Relations have warmed as Moscow and Beijing seek to improve ties with the West and attract investment. China’s need for energy to fuel its rapidly growing economy, Russia’s search for markets outside the West and the sentiment shared by MM. Putin and Xi that the United States aimed to frame its global ambitions have increasingly buttressed the ties.

During a trip to Moscow in 2019, Xi hailed deepening economic cooperation between the countries as a “key pillar of our relationship”.

That year, the two countries opened the $55 billion Power of Siberia pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to China. Moscow is pushing a second pipeline that would carry gas through Mongolia.

Thanks to this energy alliance, said Yana Leksyutina, a professor at Saint Petersburg State University, trade between the two countries has increased. China is Russia’s biggest trading partner, and last year trade between the two countries reached a record $147 billion.

Friday, while MM. Putin and Xi were meeting, the two countries unveiled new oil and gas deals worth an estimated $117.5 billion.

Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft, also said it had a new oil deal to supply 100 million tonnes of crude through Kazakhstan to China’s national energy giant CNPC over the next 10 years, while the Russian gas giant Gazprom has agreed to supply CNPC with 10 billion cubic meters of oil. gas per year. These Gazprom shipments should begin with a new pipeline in two to three years.

The closer ties with Moscow, as reflected in Friday’s statement, represent a fundamental shift in China’s foreign policy, which for four decades has focused on building its relationship with the United States.

Then-President Donald Trump’s trade war against Beijing helped erode the foundations of the relationship. As tensions now escalate in areas ranging from human rights to Beijing’s sovereignty claims, the narrative that Washington is determined to keep China grounded has taken hold in both official and official circles. among the general Chinese public.

Nowadays, the guideline established by Mr. Xi at the start of his reign – that “we have a thousand reasons to manage China-US relations well, and not a single reason to ruin them” – has been replaced by an approach more assertive and more confrontational. approach. Mr. Xi’s government has retaliated against all of Washington’s moves against China, whether related to China’s crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong or Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur minorities in the western region of Xinjiang.

In private meetings with American academics and business leaders, Chinese diplomats and other officials no longer portray China-US relations as the most important bilateral relationship for Beijing, as they once did, but as the one of his key relationships.

Friday’s joint statement said the friendship between Russia and China “has no limits. There are no “prohibited” areas of cooperation.

While Moscow-Beijing cooperation offers economic benefits – energy for China, trade and investment for Russia – international business and trade analysts have said the relationship is fragile and the limits of the Xi-Putin partnership remain at risk. test, especially when it comes to global security.

If the United States decided to sanction Russian banks and other parts of its financial sector and impose export controls on semiconductors – as Washington has done on the Chinese equipment maker telecommunications Huawei Technologies Co. – Beijing is said to be at an impasse over how far to go in offering support and risk being penalized by the United States

“They generally support and like each other, but they don’t promise each other any particular help,” said Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank. “It’s very different from what the United States and its European allies have pledged to do in reference to Russia.”

—Lingling Wei contributed to this article.

Write to Chao Deng at [email protected], Ann M. Simmons at [email protected] and William Mauldin at [email protected]