Regarding the Russia visit, I would be careful with the predictive SCMP articles about improving Sino-Russian or Sino-Central Asian relations every time Xi Jinping goes to visit Russia.
A dataset I lost a while ago clearly showed a pattern back to Hu Jintao: a Chinese president goes on state visit to Russia every uneven year. The only exception was 2015, but in that year there was an extra special visit for the WWII victory parade. Central Asia gets plenty of love, but it’s also a fixed calendar item, thanks to the SCO summits.
Regarding the Russia visit, I would be careful with the predictive SCMP articles about improving Sino-Russian or Sino-Central Asian relations every time Xi Jinping goes to visit Russia.
A dataset I lost a while ago clearly showed a pattern back to Hu Jintao: a Chinese president goes on state visit to Russia every uneven year. The only exception was 2015, but in that year there was an extra special visit for the WWII victory parade. Central Asia gets plenty of love, but it’s also a fixed calendar item, thanks to the SCO summits.
thanks