The Chinese went out of their way to be accommodating. They agreed to settle their last complicated border dispute with Russia essentially on the Kremlin's terms. And they offered $16 billion of investment in Russia over the next decade and a half.

Chinese President Hu Jintao even officially backed Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization - a crucial economic and diplomatic priority for Russian policymakers.

But no progress was made on two key planks of Beijing's strategy - an $18 billion, 3,000-mile gas link from the massive Kovykta field in eastern Siberia, first proposed nearly a decade ago, and a 1,500-mile oil link from western Siberia to the heart of China's refining industry.

Putin's cool, canny stand took the Chinese by surprise. They were confident in advance that they would get what they wanted.

Officials at the China National Petroleum Co., China's leading oil and gas firm, had told Western businessmen and energy analysts they were confident that Putin would approve the gas link during his talks with Hu, who raised the issue personally. But all CNPC got was a vague agreement on cooperation with Gazprom, the world's largest gas company.

Putin's visit reversed a dynamic of Sino-Russian relations over the past decade and more. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union - a cash-strapped, long-impoverished Russia suffering from few export markets and the flight of hundreds of millions of dollars in capital - has repeatedly offered its remaining crown jewels, its still potent weapons and space technologies, to China on bargain-basement terms and had them snapped up accordingly.

But now soaring global energy prices and Russia's emergence this year ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world's largest exporter of crude oil, not to mention natural gas, has finally put Moscow back in the driver's seat of the relationship.

Indeed, over the past month, Putin has stunned the Chinese by making unanticipated major energy deals with South Korea. Also, he has appeared to favor Japan as a partner for Siberian oil pipeline development.

Now it is the Chinese who are going out of their way to woo the Russians rather than - as has been the case for so long - the other way round.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jinbao told a state dinner to honor Putin that China and Russia should open their markets wider to each other, increase trade volume and improve the current trade structure. The two countries should regulate trade through the early warning and consultation mechanisms on sensitive products and carefully handle bilateral trade problems, he said.

Talking about investment in Russia, the Chinese premier said his country is willing to increase investment in Russia on the construction of infrastructure facilities, exploitation of oil and gas and high-technology cooperation.

Putin, in fact, appears to be perfectly happy to maintain warm ties with Beijing. He has given the go-ahead for stepped up anti-terrorism cooperation with China within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the so-called Shanghai Pact that also functions as a mechanism for Russia and China to work together in blocking the extension of U.S. military power and influence among the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Putin told his Chinese hosts Friday that Russia's regions should become involved in development programs in western China.

He spoke at a meeting of Russian and Chinese regional leaders in the Chinese city of Xian, noting that Russian participation in Hu's ambitious new programs to develop western China would give a strong boost to the huge Eurasian heartland.

I am confident that numerous Russian territories and regions and also state agencies and businesses may join this program, he said.

Under Putin, Russia's trade with China has risen to new levels. It will hit $20 billion this year, nearly double its value of $10.67 billion in 2001. Bilateral trade between the two giant nations of Eurasia is expected to top $20 billion this year, compared with only $10.67 billion in 2001, Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Wu Yi said on a recent visit to the Russian capital.

In the first eight months of this year, the total value of trade was $12.8 billion and it is still increasing, Wu said during a visit to Moscow a few weeks ago.

But Putin knows that China's increasingly desperate hunger for Siberian oil in an inelastic global market where prices hit a previously inconceivable $55 a barrel this week now defines his relationship with Beijing.

Only a few weeks before Putin's visit, China announced it was picking up the costs of oil imports from Russia after the Yukos Corp. said it could no longer pay them. Gennady Fadeyev, president of Russian Railroads, also known as RZD, said that Chinese officials agreed during the visit of Prime Minister Wen to Moscow to cover RZD's transport costs for exports of oil produced by the embattled Yukos Oil Corp.

The Russian government has hit Yukos with $7 billion in back tax demands for 2000 and 2001 and on Sept. 20, Yukos announced it would stop supplying the state-owned Chinese National Petroleum Corp. with the 400,000 tons of crude oil it sends every month unless CNPC came up with $160 in transport tariffs and export duties per ton - a total of $64 million per month.

The move was widely seen as an attempt to embarrass Putin ahead of the Chinese prime minister's visit, but it backfired, illustrating instead how desperate China was to keep the flow of Siberian oil coming.

The development of a powerful new Moscow-Beijing access has been one of the most important and underreported ongoing stories in global politics and strategic affairs over the past decade. That process is continuing and even accelerating.

But the balance of power within the relationship has changed. Russia is now in the driver's seat because of the oil factor - and both sides know it.

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