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China ups stakes for Biden by backing Moscow against West
By jointly lashing out Friday at Washington's alleged destabilising policies in both Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Beijing and Moscow indicated that sanctions alone would not deter their bids to play larger roles on the global stage.
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US President Joe Biden gestures as he meets with China's President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (AFP/Mandel Ngan)
C
hina's support for Russia in the standoff over Ukraine upends the strategic calculus for US President Joe Biden, who must now contend with a second front in a geopolitical fight whose ramifications could be felt worldwide.
By jointly lashing out Friday at Washington's alleged destabilising policies in both Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Beijing and Moscow indicated that sanctions alone would not deter their bids to play larger roles on the global stage.
Appearing publicly as the Beijing Olympics opened, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping showed an "enhanced commitment to make the world safe for authoritarianism, in particular in former socialist countries," said Steve Tsang, a political scientist at the SOAS University of London.
And for Xi, taking a public stand on Ukraine demonstrates "his shared interest with Putin to challenge the US-dominated world order", Tsang told AFP.
Official Chinese media outlets have been playing up the frequent encounters between Xi and Putin since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, which saw the Russian leader largely blacklisted by the West.
China's Global Times noted recently that "besides the official meetings, the two also shared some close moments like enjoying vodka, caviar and Russian ice cream and celebrating each other's birthdays".
"We know that both Russia and China value sovereignty above anything else, so alliance is still too strong of a word," said Anton Barbashin, an analyst at the Riddle think-tank in Glasgow, Scotland.
