Putin and Xi pledge a new era and condemn the United States

Reuters:  China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday pledged a "new era" of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Xi greeted Putin on a red carpet outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where they were hailed by marching People's Liberation Army soldiers, a 21-gun salute on Tiananmen Square and children waving the flags of China and Russia.

China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

Xi, 70, and Putin, 71, signed a joint statement on Thursday about the "new era" that proclaimed opposition to the U.S. on a host of security issues and a shared view on everything from Taiwan and Ukraine to North Korea and cooperation on new peaceful nuclear technologies and finance.

"The China-Russia relationship today is hard-earned, and the two sides need to cherish and nurture it," Xi told Putin.

"China is willing to ... jointly achieve the development and rejuvenation of our respective countries, and work together to uphold fairness and justice in the world."

Russia, waging war against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted U.S. effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, increasingly have found common geopolitical cause.

Xi has told Putin the two have the chance to drive changes the world has not seen in a century, which many analysts see as an attempt to challenge a U.S.-led global order.

Their governments, pushing back against perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline, with China challenging U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.

But China and Russia face their own challenges, including a slowing Chinese economy and an emboldened and expanding NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Washington casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.

The U.S. views both as authoritarian rulers who have quashed free speech and exerted tight control at home over the media and the courts.