Beijing has blocked any mention if Vladimir Putin on popular posts on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging service, giving Russia’s president an immunity from public criticism usually reserved for China’s Communist party elite.
The censorship was enforced at the weekend as US President Donald Trump met Mr Putin during the G20 summit in Germany, and underlines the current golden period of China-Russian relations.
China’s President Xi Jinping visited Moscow this month, revealing a $10bn investment fund and gushing that it was the “best time in history” for Sino-Russian relations and the two countries were each others’ “most trustworthy strategic partners”.