A once-in-a-generation security crisis in Russia compounded fears in Beijing that a strategic partner central to its global ambitions is not as stable as it hoped, analysts say.
BEIJING —
This weekend's crisis in Russia saw private mercenary group Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin try to storm Moscow. "China has already been surprised at Russia's poor military performance in Ukraine," Ms Susan Thornton, a former senior US diplomat specialising in Asia, told AFP by email.China's leaders have long framed Mr Putin's Russia as a bulwark against the West.
China is Russia's largest economic partner, with trade between them reaching a record $190 billion last year, according to Chinese customs data. "It was probably quite shocking for Beijing and for Xi Jinping personally that Russia's internal defence mechanisms all failed," Assistant Professor Bjorn Alexander Duben, an expert in Beijing-Moscow ties at China's Jilin University, told AFPChina has long grappled with dramatic events in its northern neighbour -- its leadership pointing to the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos that followed as vindicating Beijing's rigid system of government.
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