This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 6, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown. What does China owe Russia? Not much.

And that fact matters when considering war in Ukraine and the recent meeting between

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Cato's Eric Gomez comments.

A lot seems to have been made of the closeness between President she Jin Ping and Vladimir

Putin with respect to the war in Ukraine.

One, how do you characterize that discussion and how accurate or fair is it?

I think it's a natural tendency to conclude that China and Russia are very much joined at the hips in

cahoots. She jin ping or Vladimir Putin visited Beijing for the Winter Olympics right before the

invasion happened and there was kind of this belief that at the time that

like oh you know she kind of asked him to hold off until after the Olympics

happened and the Russia-China relationship has been generally improving over time

before the Ukraine war there was increased trade, there was, you know, some Chinese

soldiers went to observe and participate in Russian military exercises, that kind of thing.

So since the war has started, I think there's this idea that China might be this key to pressuring Russia.

I think that's a bit unfair though. I, I, I, China's playing this very well in the sense that for the

duration of the war, they've been very careful not to get on the wrong side of US or Western sanctions,

while also providing Russia with some diplomatic support, but almost no material support, but beyond just general trade, right?

And so I think they're trying what Evan Feinbaum at Carnegie calls the Beijing Strattle, which I think is very apt.

They're trying, China's trying to like have a good enough relationship with Russia without getting too far drawn into this and suffering negative consequences.

And so far, you know, a year and change into the war, that's been remarkably successful. I think China of sort of any major power in all

this has the most potential freedom of maneuver, right, where the US is

...