Russia and China must counter any U.S. attempt at containment, Shoigu says

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The key task for Russia and China is to counter any attempt by the United States to contain their countries, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin told China’s foreign minister on Tuesday.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on China and other countries, raising fears of a trade war and the United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.

China’s Xi Jinping and Putin in May 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.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing that the strong relations between Moscow and Beijing were a stabilising influence on the world.

“I see the most important task as countering the policy of ‘dual containment’ of Russia and China pursued by the United States and its satellites,” Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian state news agencies.

Xi and Putin believe the post-Cold War era of extraordinary U.S. dominance is crumbling after the perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge/Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)