Xi-Putin summit, the precedent in the meeting between Mao and Khrushchev

“The east wind is prevailing over the west wind.” These are words that could be expected from Xi Jinping in his meeting today with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, to seal what the Beijing leader last summer called “an alliance without limits” between China and Russia against the United States and the West. In reality it is a phrase that has become famous, uttered by another Chinese leader during another historic visit to the Russian capital: Mao Tse Tung, who went there in November 1957 for talks with Nikita Khrushchevthe general secretary of the CPSU.