The latest Xi-Putin summit, held right in the middle of Europe’s biggest security crisis in decades, marked an important milestone in the China-Russia relationship. In what Xi Jinping described as ‘back-to-back’ strategic coordination in their fight with the West, Beijing openly supported Moscow’s demands for’ security guarantees’ in Europe. This carefully planned display of unity is a product of a long and unevenly paced process of relation-building that led to the formation of the Beijing-Moscow axis – an informal alliance of two autocracies, bound by the strategic conflict with the US and ideological affection. Jakub Jakóbowski will present the diplomatic, military and economic aspects of the Beijing-Moscow axis, exploring both the foundations and the limits of this world-defining relationship.
About the Speaker: Jakub Jakóbowski is a Senior Fellow with the China Programme at The Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), a Polish state analytical center based in Warsaw, covering the political and economic developments in Central and Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet space and China.