On Tuesday, Beijing returned the praise in kind, declaring the "sky is the limit" for bilateral cooperation. "China and Russia are united like a mountain, and our friendship is unbreakable," foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a news briefing.
In recent years, the two countries have gravitated closer toward each other amid their deteriorating relations with the West. For Russia, a pivot to the world's second largest economy was a natural solution to sanctions over its annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine in 2014. And Beijing was more than happy to embrace closer ties with its northern neighbor as tensions escalated in almost every aspect of its relations with the US.
