Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told Russian President Vladimir Putin the \u201cpolitical mutual trust\u201d between their countries was \u201ccontinuously deepening\u201d as the two men met for bilateral talks in Beijing. State news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday that Xi also called for joint efforts by China and Russia to \u201csafeguard international fairness\u201d and \u201cjustice\u201d as he hailed \u201cclose and effective strategic coordination\u201d between their two countries. Xi noted that he and Putin had met \u201c42 times in the past 10 years and [had] developed a good working relationship and a deep friendship\u201d. The two leaders last met in March when Xi travelled to Moscow. The two men spoke at that time of a \u201cnew era\u201d of cooperation, building on the \u201cno-limits\u201d partnership they announced in 2022 days before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Their Beijing meeting comes as Kyiv continues a counteroffensive to remove Russian troops from its territory amid a worsening crisis over the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. China\u2019s Middle East envoy Zhai Jun is due to travel to the region soon. \u201cThe visit aims to help with de-escalation in the Middle East,\u201d Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters at a regular briefing on Tuesday without going into further detail. \u201cThis is part of China\u2019s efforts to promote peace talks.\u201d Putin told Xi that China had a crucial role to play in foreign policy. \u201cIn the current difficult conditions, close foreign policy coordination is especially necessary \u2013 which is what we are doing, and today we will also discuss all of this,\u201d the Russian leader said. The meeting is taking place on the sidelines of a forum to mark 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a globe-spanning infrastructure development policy that is one of Xi\u2019s signature policies. Leaders and senior politicians from some 130 countries are in the Chinese capital for the event, which opened on Wednesday. China is Russia\u2019s largest trading partner, with the exchange between the nations reaching a record $190bn last year, Beijing customs data shows. Putin is on a mission to strengthen the two countries\u2019 already strong bond, although experts say Moscow is increasingly the junior partner in the relationship. Beijing has attempted to position itself as a mediator in the Ukraine war, but it has refused to condemn Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told Russian President Vladimir Putin the \u201cpolitical mutual trust\u201d between their countries was \u201ccontinuously deepening\u201d as the two men met…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10583,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}