In Xi and Putin's 'no limits' partnership, a growing asymmetry

📌 Summary:

• Context: Putin visited Beijing — his 25th official visit, in the 25th year of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship — days after Xi Jinping hosted Donald Trump

• Core argument: the China-Russia "no limits" partnership is increasingly asymmetric — China is a rising power while Russia is in decline and dependent on China

• Causal chain of the asymmetry: (a) Russia's economy and global standing have weakened amid war and sanctions, so it needs Chinese markets and capital; (b) China's leverage was visible in Putin failing this week to secure a long-sought contract for a pipeline that would double Russian gas exports to China; (c) unless Russia reconciles with the West, its dependence on China will only deepen

• Historical precedents: Tsarist Russia preyed on Imperial China's "century of humiliation"; the USSR became China's patron after the 1949 revolution; the Sino-Soviet split pushed Beijing toward Washington; post-Cold War rapprochement later deepened into the "no limits" partnership

• India's vulnerability: India long bet on Russia — the 1962 defeat by China drove New Delhi's tilt to Moscow as the US backed Pakistan; today a weaker Russia, a stronger China and a transactional US president wooing both complicate India's traditional hedging

• Solutions proposed: India should strengthen its own capabilities; technology and AI cooperation with the US is a strategic necessity to build on; Russia should remain a source of energy; India must manage its long border and large trade deficit with China — alliances cannot substitute for domestic reform and modernisation

• Comparative angle: the editorial contrasts a rising China with a declining Russia and a "mercurial" US president courting both

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 International Relations — great-power dynamics, the China-Russia axis, and the implications for India's strategic autonomy and foreign-policy hedging.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• The Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship was signed in 2001 (the editorial marks its 25th year)
• The 1962 India-China war drove India's strategic tilt toward the Soviet Union

🔑 Key Term: Strategic autonomy — a state's ability to pursue its national interests and foreign policy without being constrained by alliance dependence.