The other day China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin signed a gas supply deal in Beijing. Business concluded, one could imagine them settling down to swap notes on their various quarrels with neighbours and with the west. The exchange would have been a cheery one.

You do not have to be one of the US National Security Agency’s fabled eavesdroppers to guess how the conversation went. The two leaders are contesting the established world order. For all their occasional bluster, the US and Europe have shied away from pushing back.

Beijing is very much the senior partner in the Sino-Russian relationship. Mr Putin needed to sell his gas more than Mr Xi needed to buy it, so the Kremlin was obliged to slash its price. More generally, the Chinese are unimpressed by Russia’s failure to modernise. Mr Xi, though, is conscious of Mr Putin’s fixation with “face”. So he would have indulged his Russian guest by inviting him to speak first.