Any alliance between Putin & Xi (as with all egomaniacal autocracies, it's about the current dictators, not the nation-states per se) will last until it doesn't. Which will be when they create a context where they are each other's biggest threat. Which is inevitable, if they succeed, since each is seeking global domination. The imagined global dictator's office will be enormous, I'm sure, but still only big enough for one.

Meanwhile most all more or less ordinary people of all the world suffer, and inflict suffering on each other, in service to these narcissistic sociopaths and their quests for global kingship. Privileged analysts and pundits speculate on abstractions of global power politics, arguing over which nation will kick which nation's ass, as though it were merely a few schoolyard toughs posturing during recess.

It is no more reprehensible to aspire to global empire than to provide support for same by offering nothing but specious color commentary on its distractions and sideshows, while billions suffer its actual consequences.

There's a relevant folk saying which I first heard as attributed to the Swahili - "when two elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."