A strong sense of empathy with Russia on the part of China is only natural as it too faces predicaments such as being forced to the back foot on the issue of human rights in Xinjiang or being branded as “assertive” when it began reviving in 2015 its historical claims in the South China Sea from where they were abandoned in 1935, in response to the activities of the other littoral states.

It is an open secret that Western intelligence had a big hand in stirring up the unrest in Hong Kong. In fact, the history of US interference in China’s internal affairs to destabilize the Communist government is not new. It goes back to the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert activities in Tibet in the 1950s and early 1960s (which were at least partly responsible for triggering the 1962 China-India conflict).

The factors drawing Putin and Xi together