China’s leader, Xi Jinping, made excellent use of successive high-level visits from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to brand China as a superpower that “talks to everyone but is tied to no one.” Even though there were similarities in how Putin was received compared to Trump’s visit, the power balance between them is now very different, because Russia is now a country that has become completely subservient to China economically following the sanctions imposed by the West but continues to be denied an important gas pipeline by Xi. Having mended bridges with his Western counterparts and positioned himself as a mediator, Xi is still losing credibility due to his selective diplomacy, whereby he speaks out against the war in Iran while being quiet about Russia’s attack on Ukraine.