Xi Jinping secretly hates Russia, - British journalist.

Michael Sheridan, author of the new book "The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His China" and a long-Time foreign correspondent in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, revealed a critically important episode in the formation of Xi Jinping's foreign policy views.

On the Silicon Curtain podcast, Sheridan, who worked for 20 years as a correspondent for the Sunday Times in the Far East, based in Hong Kong and later in Bangkok, shared information about the visit of Xi's mentor, Defense Minister Guangbiao, to the US.

"I discovered a declassified American document from the Carter White House that detailed the visit to Washington of his mentor and first patron, then Defense Minister Guangbiao," Sheridan noted.

This visit took place in 1980, which is especially important, as at this time Xi Jinping was at the early stages of his political career. "At that time, Xi Jinping was his junior personal secretary, constantly being around him in Beijing, working with classified documents," Sheridan emphasized.

The expert revealed the content of Guangbiao's conversation with the American vice president, which demonstrates the depth of Chinese mistrust towards the USSR: "Guangbiao sits down to lunch with the Vice President of the United States in 1980 and tells him why they orchestrated the Sino-Soviet split. He says that Stalin was the only friend of China... after Stalin, Soviet leaders were arrogant and overconfident, and they wanted to reduce China to the level of an agrarian satellite state that would be the breadbasket of socialism. They told the Chinese not to build any industry and declared they wanted to place troops and naval units on Chinese territory".

Sheridan emphasizes the impact of this episode on the formation of Xi Jinping's worldview: "He grew up without much formal education, absorbing this lesson from one of the key figures that influenced his life".

In the expert's opinion, this explains Xi's deeply rooted mistrust of Russia: "In the depths of his soul, he remembers those 19th-century treaties where the tsars seized all the eastern provinces of China across the river and made them part of the Russian Empire".

Sheridan makes an important conclusion about Xi's personal attitude towards Russia: "Xi Jinping himself secretly hates and fears Russia".