While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight
Russian and Indian leaders to meet Xi as Trump courts Putin and alienates Modi
Aug. 29, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
Trump’s policies have frustrated allies, leading to increased sympathy for China, though structural issues still affect relationships.
- Xi Jinping will welcome Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi to discuss the international order altered by the U.S. under President Trump.
BEIJING—The leaders of three of the world’s four most powerful nations will meet in China this weekend to discuss how to react to the upending of the international order wrought by the fourth: the U.S. under President Trump.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently being wooed by Washington, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country—long cultivated by the U.S. as a centerpiece of its aspirations to contain Beijing—has just been slapped by punitive American tariffs.
They will be joined by several other national leaders, including those from Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan, at a summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin that starts Sunday and aims to showcase Beijing’s global economic and political clout.
Putin and some of these guests will then stand alongside Xi, North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, and the presidents from countries as far afield as Cuba and Zimbabwe, to watch the Sept. 3 military parade in Beijing. The event will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II—or, as China calls it, the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance.
The parade will also provide Xi with the opportunity to exhibit the sophisticated modern weaponry that China has developed for a potential war against the U.S.
Viewed from Beijing, the timing for this choreographed diplomatic fest couldn’t be more opportune. Though little of substance is likely to come out of this multiday summitry, images matter. World leaders are flocking to China just as the Trump administration has frustrated Washington’s allies and partners, particularly in Asia, by imposing stiff trade tariffs while seeking an opening to Russia. Washington’s unpredictable foreign policy has also fueled doubts about the reliability of U.S. security commitments overseas.
“The U.S. is helping China to increase its global influence. China may suffer economically because of the tariffs, but politically, China is gaining more sympathy and more support from other countries, and not just in the Global South,” said Xinbo Wu, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “We now certainly face less diplomatic pressure than we did under the Biden administration.”
A Pew opinion poll conducted in 25 nations and released last month showed that the share of respondents with favorable views of China rose to 36% from 31% in 2024, while confidence in the U.S. has declined dramatically, particularly in Europe, Japan and South Korea.
China, with its phenomenal economic growth in the past four decades, has been a major beneficiary of the U.S.-led international order that the Trump administration is dismantling in pursuit of “America First” ideas, and that Russia and, to an extent, India, also view as unfair to them. Unlike many others, including the European Union, Beijing is playing hardball with Trump on trade, forcing Washington to suspend most of the tariffs as negotiations continue.
“What China tries to make sure is that multipolarity is very much preserved and that no country should be allowed to play solo, dictate and hold a gun to the heads of other countries to try to get its way,” said Victor Gao, a former Chinese diplomat and vice president of the Center for China and Globalization think tank in Beijing.
“The United States under Trump is launching a revolution after revolution. The Chinese know well about revolutions, and we know that you better know what the consequences will be if you launch a revolution,” added Gao, who served as an interpreter to former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. “I don’t think Trump is fully aware of the consequences of all these tremendous forces he’s unleashing around the world.”
The summit in Tianjin is an annual event of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The body was initially created by China to boost ties with the Central Asian states and Russia, but it has grown to include India, Pakistan and Iran. It would mark the first meeting between Xi and Putin since the Russian leader met Trump in Alaska on Aug. 15.
To some in the Trump administration, the outreach to Putin at the expense of Ukraine and European security makes sense as part of a “reverse Kissinger” approach. The grand idea is to drive a wedge between Russia, which is seen as a power that could be accommodated, and China, which is considered a challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.
In a Fox News interview after the summit in Alaska, Trump openly mused about how Russia and China are “basically natural enemies” and blamed former President Joe Biden for bringing them together. “Russia has tremendous amounts of land. China has tremendous amounts of people, and China needs Russian land,” he said.
The entire population of Russia’s Far East region, which accounts for 40% of its territory, is fewer than eight million people, or smaller than the number of inhabitants in a medium-size Chinese city like Shenyang or Foshan.
During the first Trump administration, Chinese officials were genuinely alarmed by the prospect of a U.S. rapprochement with Russia at Beijing’s expense, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin and an expert on Sino-Russian relations. But today, he said, they no longer consider it a serious concern because of just how dependent Russia has become on China as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
“The Chinese understand that Russia is in their pocket to a much greater extent than before the war, and they also understand that because of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, a normalization of Russian relations with the West as a whole remains impossible,” Gabuev said. “Xi and Putin also know just how mercurial Trump is—and that the Russians can’t trust any American promises and inducements.”
Indeed, while American presidents come and go, China will always be next door to Russia and is likely to remain consistent in its policy. The new friendship with Beijing didn’t just keep the Russian economy afloat despite Western sanctions, providing Russia’s military industries with essential supplies. The bond with Xi has also allowed Putin to leave undefended the long and once heavily fortified Chinese border, handing him the opportunity to send troops and equipment usually deployed in the Far East to the battlefields of Ukraine.
“There are organic long-term structural reasons for Russia and China to get closer,” said Wang Zichen, a research fellow at the CCG in Beijing and editor of the think tank’s Pekinology newsletter. “It’s unlikely to expect that there will be a sudden breakup between China and Russia.”
The war in Ukraine is also indirectly pushing India closer to China. While Trump has repeatedly stepped back from threats to punish Russia, he did impose a 25% additional tariff on India for buying Russian oil, bringing India’s total tariff burden to a stunning 50%. India accounts for some 38% of Russian oil exports, with China buying most of the rest.
Modi last visited China in 2018 during a brief thaw in relations between the countries, but that opening collapsed after Indian and Chinese soldiers fought in deadly clashes along the disputed border in 2020. In May, India was bruised in a brief war with Beijing-supported Pakistan. The superior performance of Pakistan’s Chinese-made arms, which downed at least one French-made Rafale jet in the first combat test of modern Chinese weaponry against Western equipment, has since fueled a new sense of confidence in China’s security establishment.
Although the very fact of Modi’s China visit carries huge symbolism, the trip’s impact shouldn’t be exaggerated, Indian and Chinese analysts agree. Relations remain chilly, with the border dispute simmering and continued limits on travel, including a ban on direct flights between the two most populous nations in the world. Any improvement in ties is likely to be very limited.
“India doesn’t see the U.S. as an adversary, but Trump appears to be viewing India as an adversary. And, if you’re getting hit by Trump, it makes sense to smoke a peace pipe with the Chinese for a little while,” said Indrani Bagchi, chief executive of the Ananta Centre think tank in New Delhi. “But nobody has any illusions about the other. The Chinese are convinced that India is in the American camp, and no amount of reset with China will mean that India and China will be on the same side. Let’s get the fundamentals right: We are very well aware, for much longer than Trump, that China is our biggest strategic adversary.”
Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that the immediate impact from Trump’s diplomatic moves shouldn’t obscure the long-term structural dynamics of great-power relations. While Trump has courted Russia and angered India, the fundamental factors underpinning existing relationships remain intact.
“In the short term, there are dramatic changes,” he said. “But in the long run, the lasting effect will probably be of the structural perspective. China and India, we know we have our problems; they are still there, we cannot solve them and sooner or later these problems will emerge again. And at the same time, while the U.S. and Russia can get closer in the short run, they cannot get along well in the long run. There are too many structural differences that divide them.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
Xi Jinping will welcome Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi to discuss the international order altered by the U.S. under President Trump.
The leaders will attend a summit in Tianjin and a military parade in Beijing, showcasing China’s global influence and modern weaponry.