A 2014 survey conducted in China by Tencent, the developer of the popular instant messenger WeChat, showed that 92% of the respondents roundly approved of Mr. Putin

Awaiting a meeting at a state guest house with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, known otherwise for flaunting his machismo, showcased his “softer side”. Spotting a piano, apparently by chance, he waded into an impromptu performance, striking the keys of what he later called an ill-tuned instrument. But it was good enough for Mr. Putin to dig out two Soviet-era tunes.

The Russian President was in Beijing to support his Chinese counterpart in his sweeping One Belt One Road connectivity initiative. He was joined by 28 other world leaders and representatives of 130 countries at the two-day Belt and Road Forum organised by Mr. Xi.

Mr. Putin rendered “Evening Song” by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi and “Moscow Windows” by Tikhon Khrennikov, both popular tunes in Russia. “Evening Song” has been an undeclared anthem of St. Petersburg — formerly Leningrad, the President’s home city on the edge of the Gulf of Finland. “Moscow Windows” captures the proud and enduring spirit of the capital city. Both songs were born after the demise of Joseph Stalin in 1953, when the Soviet Union was undergoing major changes.

In Beijing, the Russian President’s “spontaneous” recital was without a vocal component. But it is more than likely that the evocative words of “Moscow Windows” would have echoed through Mr. Putin’s mind as he played the piano. “Up high the sky darkens again, And windows have lit up in the dusk. It is here that my friends live, And with bated breath I gaze at the windows at night,” wrote Mikhail Matusovsky, the songwriter of this 1956 classic, rendered to the music of Khrennikov.

A million hits

The video clip of the Russian President’s rendition has gone viral in China. The hashtag #PutinPlayingPiano has already generated more than a million hits on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. “President Putin knows both arts and arms,” said ‘Xixiya’, his Sina Weibo fan, as quoted in the Global Times.

But critics quickly picked holes in the President’s performance. “As an amateur, Putin’s performance is basic in terms of skill and intermediate in music sense,” said pianist Kong Xiangdong. Mr. Putin was conscious that his time on the piano may not have been good enough to garner critical acclaim. At a press conference following his China visit, the President said: “I can’t say I was playing. I just pressed the keys with two or three fingers, while waiting for our Chinese friend and partner. I thought, if Mr. [Dmitry] Peskov was filming something, then it was probably for personal purposes, for the archive. But they decided to publish it. Well, it’s okay, I trust that you weren’t disappointed.”

The eruption of responses in the Chinese social media to Mr. Putin’s recital is not surprising. The Russian President enjoys a jaw-dropping popularity in China, both at the street level and in the high-browed circles of the officialdom. Prior to one of his visits in 2014, the Chinese government published the Russian President’s collected works — a rare honour reminiscent of the times when collected works of Lenin and Stalin were routinely published in China.

At the ground level, several factors are driving the Russian President’s soaring appeal, including his macho physical persona. Phoenix weekly, published from Hong Kong, points to Mr. Putin’s strong ‘emperor quality’, capped with an aura of invincibility, as a cause for his magnetic appeal. In a 2014 survey conducted by Tencent, the developer of the popular instant messenger WeChat, in China 92% of the respondents roundly approved of Mr. Putin — numbers that even exceed the President’s popularity in his native Russia.