FILE - Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022. Putin and Xi will meet next week at a summit in Uzbekistan, a Russian official said Wednesday, Sept. 7. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
LONDON/BEIJING: Xi Jinping will leave China this week for the first time in more than two years for a trip to Central Asia where he will meet Vladimir Putin just a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
The trip, his first abroad since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, shows just how confident Xi is about his grip on power in China and just how perilous the global situation has become: Russia’s confrontation with the West over Ukraine, the crisis over Taiwan and a stuttering global economy.
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