Kinaforum

tirsdag 19. mai 2026

Putin visits China to reaffirm Russia ties as Xi also seeks stable US relations after Trump summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Tuesday night in China for meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up his own trip to Beijing.

Putin’s plane landed in Beijing, where he was greeted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and an honor guard, as well as youths in light blue shirts waving Chinese and Russian flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome, warmly welcome!” His two-day visit is likely to be closely watched as Beijing seeks to maintain stable relations with the United States while also preserving strong ties with Russia.

The Kremlin has said Putin and Xi plan to discuss economic cooperation between the two countries, but also “key international and regional issues.” The visit coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship signed in 2001.

Xi’s double act: Putin arrives in China days after Trump’s departure

Less than a week after Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for US President Donald Trump, the Chinese leader is hosting another guest of honor — and this time it’s a close ally. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Chinese capital Tuesday for a state visit clearly calibrated to showcase Beijing and Moscow’s alignment in the face of global geopolitical upheaval.

China and Russia are both navigating shifting relationships with the Trump administration and are weighing up whether to play any role in helping to end a US-Iran conflict that has ensnared global oil supplies and distracted Washington from Russia’s own yearslong war in Ukraine.

Putin Needs Xi’s Help. The 3 Things Russia Wants From China

The red carpet from Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing had only just been packed away before it was rolled out again for Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president's visit to China on Tuesday and Wednesday will see the embattled leader - weakened in the fifth year of fighting in the Ukraine war - push for even more help from its biggest and most important ally. In a video released right before he got on the plane, Putin said the countries' decades-long relations had "reached a truly unprecedented level".

Speaking to "Chinese friends", he said: "I deeply appreciate President Xi Jinping’s commitment to long-term cooperation with Russia", emphasizing the "special nature" of the relationship and "warm and friendly" ties.

Torbjørn Færøvik: China Puts Trump on the Rack

Will he? Won’t he?

Donald Trump is in a quandary. During his visit to China last week, he received a clear message from his otherwise affable host, President Xi Jinping: If the United States continues to support Taiwan, the two superpowers could end up in “a dangerous place.” “I listened to him, but chose not to respond,” Trump said on the flight home to Washington.

It is not often that the blusterer in the White House chooses to remain silent, but for once he did the right thing.

In January, Congress approved a weapons package for Taiwan worth 14 billion dollars. Trump has not yet signed the bill, but will he do so? On the return journey, he merely said that he would make up his mind quite soon. The problem is that whatever he does, he will face a storm of criticism. If he bows to Xi, he will win applause from China but provoke an outcry both in Taiwan and at home. If he signs, he risks wrecking America’s relationship with China for a long time to come.

Soccer players become first North Korean athletes to visit the South in more than 7 years

South Korea received North Korean athletes for the first time in more than seven years on Sunday, when a women’s soccer team arrived to contest the Asian club championship.

Thirty-nine players and staff from Pyongyang’s Naegohyang Women’s Football Club rushed past a crowd of media and security at Incheon International Airport after the team arrived on a flight from Beijing. Arriving smartly dressed in matching blazers and skirts, the North Korean players walked straight to their bus, without glancing at the gathered pro-unification groups cheering, “Welcome.” The players and staff remained silent and emotionless until the door of their bus closed and left for Suwon under police escort.

Torbjørn Færøvik: Stairways to Heaven - China's Sacred Mountains

Imagine a staircase with 7,863 steps. At this very moment, thousands of Chinese are streaming to the famous Mount Tai to offer their prayers and greet the sunrise, 1,545 metres above sea level.

The mountain lies in Shandong province, south of Beijing, where it rises abruptly from the plain, facing the morning sun. In May it is at its most welcoming. The winter cold has withdrawn, while the summer heat has not yet arrived. On the summit the temperature is pleasant during the day, but chilly in the morning. Be careful, though, for spring rain can make the stone steps slippery.

For more than two thousand years, Mount Tai was an important place for China’s emperors. Here, on the Jade Emperor Peak, heaven and earth met. A Chinese ruler could not govern by force alone; he also had to show that he possessed the “Mandate of Heaven”. Mount Tai was perfectly suited to this purpose, and so the mountain became a political altar. By climbing it, the emperor could symbolically report to Heaven and say: “The realm is in order. I am the rightful ruler.”

China ramps up missile buildup for a Taiwan war

China’s accelerating missile buildup is increasingly turning industrial capacity, stockpile depth, and sustained precision-strike capability into decisive factors in the emerging military balance over Taiwan and the wider Indo-Pacific.

This month, Bloomberg reported that China sharply accelerated missile production in 2025, citing an analysis of corporate filings that showed 81 listed Chinese firms disclosed supplying key components to the country’s missile industry, more than double the number recorded when President Xi Jinping took office in 2013.According to Bloomberg, nearly 40% of those companies posted record revenues last year, with combined sales rising 20% to 189 billion yuan (US$28 billion), even as revenues among China’s 300 largest listed firms declined overall.

From indemnity to indispensability: China’s 125-year reversal

When eight foreign flags flew over Beijing in August 1900, no one in the Forbidden City could have imagined that the city would, 125 years later, host the president of the United States as a guest of honor and the president of Russia just days afterward.

The contrast is almost cinematic. In 1900, some 51,755 troops from Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States marched into the Chinese capital, looted the Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace, destroyed volumes of the Yongle Dadian and the Siku Quanshu, and imposed the punitive Boxer Protocol of September 1901.

In May 2026, those same eight capitals — through their successors and alliances — watch as Beijing, not foreign legations, sets the choreography of great-power diplomacy.

The Boxer Protocol was a humiliation engineered around indemnity, extraterritoriality, and the permanent garrisoning of foreign troops on Chinese soil. The 2026 Trump–Xi summit was the photographic negative of that arrangement.

Taiwan vows to maintain ‘status quo’

Taipei presses the US for arms supplies, saying the arms sales are not only a reflection of the US security commitment to Taiwan but also serve as a mutual deterrent against regional threats-Taiwan is committed to preserving the cross-strait “status quo” and contributing to regional peace and stability, the Presidential Office said yesterday.

“It is an undeniable fact that the Republic of China is a sovereign and independent democratic nation,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo reiterated, adding that Beijing has no right to claim sovereignty over Taiwan.

The statements came after US President Donald Trump warned against Taiwanese independence. Trump wrapped up a state visit to Beijing on Friday, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping had pressed him not to support Taiwan. Taiwan depends heavily on US security backing to deter China from carrying out its threat to annex the nation by force.

ROC not subordinate to PRC, Lai says

Sovereignty is the foundation of statehood, Lai said, adding that without Taiwan, there would be no ROC, as the ROC and Taiwan have become inseparable. Without sovereignty, there would be no democracy, he said.

Regardless of how the international community refers to the nation, all terms refer to the 23 million people of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, he said, expressing hope that efforts would be made to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty and democracy, and take care of its people. Lai also talked about Taiwan’s democratic pioneers and liberal academics — Free China’s co-founder and publisher Lei Chen, Yin Hai-kuang and Fu Cheng, who he said sought to use the idea of a “democratic China” to counter “communist China.”

Read more

Nine in 10 families in China own a home. But is the property-owning dream being tested?

For the past three decades, China has been a nation of homeowners — supercharging the world’s second-largest economy and fulfilling the dreams of millions. Since the decline and eventual end of a welfare housing policy in the 1990s, government planning has coalesced with deep-seated cultural norms to create a level of private ownership unfathomable in the West.

While tens of millions of Americans are laden with tuition loans – many well into their 30s, leaving renting their only option – their Chinese counterparts start planning the purchase of their first homes straight out of university.

But a slowing economy and crisis-battered housing market could upend that.

Trump's Reversal on China Buying U.S. Farmland Angers MAGA Supporters

During his 2024 campaign for the White House, then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to block Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing U.S. farmland as part of his “America First” agenda, and shortly after winning a second term, his Administration moved aggressively to curtail Chinese student visas.

Today, however, President Trump has reversed course on both issues, a development that threatens to isolate many in his base who view China as an existential threat to U.S. sovereignty. Trump’s pivot on the issues was drawn into focus following his visit to Beijing this week for a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.In an interview on Friday following the diplomatic visit, Trump defended his turnaround, while offering little explanation for his change of heart.

“Frankly, I think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here. I think it’s a good thing,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on May 15, defending his plan to approve some 500,000 visas for Chinese students.

Trump’s description of Taiwan as a ‘good negotiating chip’ with China raises anxieties

Recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump that arms sales to Taiwan are a “very good negotiating chip” in the United States’ dealings with China are heightening anxieties on the island democracy that Beijing claims as its own. Trump made the comment in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier that aired right after the U.S. president wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China on Friday.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, to be retaken by force if necessary. The U.S., like all countries that have formal ties with Beijing, doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country but has been the island’s strongest backer and arms supplier.

Trump is now suggesting that is open to negotiation.

An Australian journalist turns her harrowing China prison ordeal into a memoir and play

After three years as a prisoner in Beijing, Cheng Lei is busy rebuilding her life. She’s written a memoir and a play, tried her hand at stand-up comedy and is pursuing her career as a journalist. She has shone a rare spotlight on the harsh conditions within the secretive Chinese prison system. She has also shared a personal story of resilience about how meaning can be found in suffering.

“I think when your life gets shattered and you lose so many things that used to define you, you do have a kind of freedom to reorganize your atoms and create a new you,” Cheng told The Associated Press during rehearsals for a play about her incarceration, “1154 Days.”

“For me, it’s a fuller appreciation of life and much more adventurousness and also a serene sort of quiet fearlessness,” she added.

What was actually achieved at Trump and Xi’s ‘stalemate summit’ in Beijing?

Donald Trump’s whirlwind trip to Beijing – the first US presidential visit in nearly a decade – wrapped up with much fanfare but little clarity about what was actually achieved. Trump said on Friday he and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, “settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve”. But he didn’t provide much detail on what those solutions were.

“My guess is that despite all the ceremony and summit theatrics, that at the end of the day, this summit will not be that significant,” said Amanda Hsiao, the China director at the Eurasia Group, an advisory and consultancy business. “The core of the relationship hasn’t changed.”

In the hours after he departed Beijing, Trump provided more detail in an interview with Fox News about what he had discussed with China’s leader. Here is where things stand on the summit’s core issues.

Takeaways from Trump’s trip to China: Taiwan, a new framework for relationship and flattery for Xi

For three days in China, President Donald Trump was unusually quiet, not speaking to reporters much and even mostly staying off social media. Then he got on his plane home and unloaded. Trump’s trip was unexpectedly dominated by discussions about Taiwan and the notion that Washington and Beijing could adopt a new framework for managing their complicated relationship.

Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off the whirlwind visit with a warning: If Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island of Taiwan, the U.S. and China could end up clashing or even in open conflict.

Trump did not respond publicly, refraining from mentioning Taiwan while in Beijing. But he suggested aboard Air Force One on his way home that Xi’s staunch opposition might make him rethink a planned U.S. arms sale to Taipei.

Trump and top CEOs leave a more self-reliant China with few deals to show for it

Before leaving a two-day summit in Beijing, President Donald Trump said he had made many trade deals with China, accompanied by a cohort of “brilliant” tech billionaires.

But the details of those deals – at least on Friday afternoon in Beijing when Air Force One departed – were vague, signaling a potential shift in leverage between the world’s two largest economies since Trump’s last visit nearly nine years ago.

Investors, decrying the lack of specifics, sold off stocks. Dow futures were down more than 300 points, or 0.6%. The broader S&P 500 futures fell 1% and Nasdaq futures were 1.4% lower. With no firm resolution to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Brent oil futures rose 3%, above $108 a barrel. Soybean futures sold off sharply after the United States spoke of a nebulous commitment from China to buy agricultural products. And bond yields rose as traders grew cautious about rising inflation.

Trump’s soft touch on China, in stark relief

President Donald Trump has long tried to portray himself as something of a strongman on China, though his tough talk and trade wars are often undercut by his remarkably accommodating nature toward Xi Jinping. And that softer approach was on full display during Trump’s Beijing visit this week.

Trump’s trip — and his comments at the tail end of it — include some notable rhetorical and actual concessions to the Chinese government. He also explicitly walked back previous campaign promises to get tough on China.