This is The Guardian.

It's almost Chi trying to show he can meet the world's top leaders whenever he likes.

Everyone sort of wants a piece of him.

There's no doubt that Beijing is really reveling in this now that China is having this moment on the sort of diplomatic stage. China definitely

has the upper hand on this occasion. And I think both parties know that. She knows that. Putin

knows that. Xi Jinping has welcomed Vladimir Putin to Beijing just days after hosting Donald

Trump. But with an increasing power imbalance between

the pair, has the relationship between Russia and China changed? From the Guardians today in focus,

this is the latest with me, Lucy Hoff. Well, I'm joined by Devica Vatt, the Guardian's deputy head of

international news. Thanks for joining us, Debukas. So this morning,

we've been seeing all these scenes of pomp and pageantry in Beijing, as Vladimir Putin,

the Russian president, has travelled to China for, I think, the 25th time. And he and Xi Jinping have

had more than 40 meetings in the past. We'll talk about the optics of this meeting, because it's

in the exact same location

that Donald Trump was in just a few days ago. Yeah, thanks for having me, Lucy. Yes, so as you say,

Trump was there just last week and this visit has come hot off the heels of that, probably

much to Trump's chargrin, I'd suspect. And yes, the optics and the theatre of it feels very,

very similar. So, you know, there's been the honour guard and a gun salute, which Trump got to,

cheering children, you know, waving, in this case, Russian and Chinese flags, a marching band.

And, you know, alongside the kind of formal talks and the sort of handshakes,

there's going to be background discussions behind the scenes, which again, we sort of saw with

the Trump visit. You know, and the optics will be watched especially closely for this sort of

...