By Guy Faulconbridge and Laurie Chen
MOSCOW/BEIJING (Reuters) -&nbsp;Russian&nbsp;President&nbsp;Vladimir&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;will&nbsp;meet&nbsp;Xi&nbsp;Jinping&nbsp;in&nbsp;China&nbsp;this&nbsp;week&nbsp;in a&nbsp;bid&nbsp;to&nbsp;deepen&nbsp;a&nbsp;partnership&nbsp;forged&nbsp;between&nbsp;the&nbsp;United&nbsp;States'&nbsp;two&nbsp;biggest&nbsp;strategic&nbsp;competitors.
Putin&nbsp;will attend the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on Oct. 17-18, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the Hague-based International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.
China&nbsp;and Russia declared a "no limits"&nbsp;partnership&nbsp;in February 2022 when&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War&nbsp;Two.
The&nbsp;United&nbsp;States casts&nbsp;China&nbsp;as its&nbsp;biggest&nbsp;competitor and Russia as its&nbsp;biggest&nbsp;nation-state threat while U.S.&nbsp;President&nbsp;Joe&nbsp;Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential contest with&nbsp;between&nbsp;democracies and autocracies.
"Over the past decade,&nbsp;Xi&nbsp;has built with&nbsp;Putin's Russia the most consequential undeclared alliance in the world," Graham Allison, professor at Harvard University and a former assistant secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, told Reuters.
"The U.S. will have to come to grips with the inconvenient fact that a rapidly rising systemic rival and a revanchist one-dimensional superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world are tightly aligned in opposing the USA."
Biden has referred to&nbsp;Xi&nbsp;as a "dictator" and has said&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;is a "killer" and a leader who cannot remain in power. Beijing and Moscow have scolded&nbsp;Biden for those remarks.
Since the Ukraine war,&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;has mostly stayed within the former Soviet Union, though he visited Iran last year for talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
'NO LIMITS'?
Once the senior partner in the global Communist hierarchy, Russia three decades after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union is now considered a junior partner of a resurgent Communist&nbsp;China&nbsp;under&nbsp;Xi,&nbsp;China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Putin&nbsp;and&nbsp;Xi&nbsp;share a broad world view, which sees the West as decadent and in decline just as&nbsp;China&nbsp;challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
But&nbsp;Xi, who leads a $18 trillion economy, must balance close personal ties with&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;with the reality of dealing with the $27 trillion economy of the&nbsp;United&nbsp;States - still the world's strongest military power, and the richest.
The&nbsp;United&nbsp;States has warned&nbsp;China&nbsp;against supplying&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;with weapons as Russia, a $2 trillion economy, battles Ukrainian forces backed by the&nbsp;United&nbsp;States and the European Union.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the optics of the Ukraine war made big public deals unlikely right now.
"Putin&nbsp;is definitely guest of honour," Gabuev said, adding that military and nuclear cooperation would be discussed.
"At the same time I think&nbsp;China&nbsp;is not interested in signing any additional deals at least in public, because anything that can be portrayed as providing additional cash flow to&nbsp;Putin&rsquo;s war chest and&nbsp;Putin&rsquo;s war machine is not good at this point."
Adding to the complexity of military cooperation is uncertainty over the fate of Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who has not been seen in public for more than six&nbsp;weeks.
The heads of&nbsp;Russian&nbsp;energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft, Alexei Miller and Igor Sechin, will join&nbsp;Putin's retinue during his visit, sources familiar with the plans have told Reuters.
Russia wants to secure a deal to sell more natural gas to&nbsp;China&nbsp;and plans to build the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which would traverse Mongolia and have an annual capacity of 50 billion cubic metres (bcm).
It is unclear if the gas deal - particularly the price and the cost of building it - will be agreed.
&nbsp;
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Putin to visit China to deepen 'no limits' partnership with Xi