Xi Visits Russia as China Seeks Bigger Global Role Xi Jinping heads to Russia on Friday on his first foreign visit as president amid signs he wants China to be more assertive in challenging U.S. leadership in Asia while looking for new energy sources to fuel the Chinese economy. Since Xi became China's leader late last year, the country has notched up its feud with Japan over a set of disputed islands believed to sit atop petroleum reserves, while also contending with the U.S. and other Western powers at the U.N. over the conflict in Syria, Iran's nuclear program and the growing belligerence of nominal ally North Korea. I think that, clearly, under Xi, China is starting to move away from the defensive philosophy. As it grows into its role as a major power, we can expect China to be even more assertive," said Warren Sun, a Chinese politics expert at Australia's Monash University. Xi, who became Communist Party chief in November and was formally named president last week, will visit Moscow to highlight trade ties and discuss Russian gas exports. Yearslong talks over Russia providing as much as 68 billion cubic meters of gas per year in a new pipeline have bogged down over pricing. China already receives about 8 percent of its crude oil imports from Russia via a pipeline to the northeastern city of Daqing. At a briefing this week, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said the two countries would sign a new deal on oil and gas, but offered no details. In this March 16, 2013 photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping claps as he arrives at a plenary session of the National People's Congress held in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, in China. Xi heads Friday, March 22, 2013, to Russia on his first foreign visit as president amid signs he is nudging the country toward a more muscular global stance in pursuit of economic resources and an Asian leadership role to challenge the U.S. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan) Close Xi's Russian visit offers few potential risks, but will be scrutinized for signs of his personal stamp on Chinese diplomacy. The two countries share an authoritarian bent and a common desire to curb Western dominance. Heads of state from China and Russia, the former leaders of the communist camp, have made a tradition of paying inaugural foreign visits to each other after taking power. Ties between them have warmed in recent years and two-way trade rose by 11.2 percent last year to $88 billion. China has shown revived interest in buying Russian Su-35 fighter jets and other sophisticated weaponry following years of friction over China's cloning of Russian military technology. The two also are closely aligned diplomatically, despite competition for influence in the former Soviet states of Central Asia. China has been happy to follow Russia's lead at the United Nations in opposing outside intervention in Syria's bloody conflict. Xi is to depart Russia on Sunday for Tanzania - one of China's oldest African allies - and then South Africa and Congo. Hawkish Chinese foreign policy experts have called increasingly for more vigorous policies to close what they see as a glaring gap between China's massive economic power and its relatively slight diplomatic heft. That's especially important if China is to ensure its growing overseas economic interests, especially its hunger for energy and other resources, according to a recent essay by Chen Xiangyang, a scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations affiliated with China's main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security. China "needs to take the lead in settling regional and international issues, especially those relating to China," Chen wrote in the newspaper China Daily.