Accompanied by a 160-member delegation including top business leaders, Putin will attend the 16th regular meeting of the two countries' premiers at the invitation of Premier Wen Jiabao.
Putin is scheduled to arrive in the Chinese capital on Tuesday. He and Wen are likely to talk with reporters after meeting and officiating at the signing of bilateral agreements.
Putin will also meet President Hu Jintao and top legislator Wu Bangguo during his two-day stay here, to discuss bilateral relations and regional and international issues.
His latest visit to Beijing follows his announcement last month that he will seek a third presidential term in March polls that may keep him in power until 2024.
Putin has paid frequent visits to China as president and prime minister since he took office in 1999.
It is reported that the two countries will sign 38 agreements worth up to $5.5 billion, and plans to pump Russian gas to China over the next three decades are expected to top the agenda.
Putin stressed the importance of ties with China at an investors' conference last week.
"We have a huge common border with China. We have lived together for thousands of years," he said.
"Today our bilateral ties are perhaps at their highest level in history aside from a very brief Soviet postwar period."
While the timing of the trip appears to be a coincidence, observers say it is richly symbolic and could see Putin lay out his foreign policy priorities for years to come.
"It's symbolic that Putin, who's very well known in China, is going there at this particular time," Sergei Sanakoyev, head of the Russian-Chinese Center of Trade and Economic Cooperation, a Moscow-based lobby group, was quoted by AFP as saying.
Zhao Huasheng, director at the Center for Russia and Central Asia Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University, told Reuters the significance of this trip exceeds that of a normal prime ministerial-level visit.
Since China became Russia's top trading partner last year and the two countries are aiming to nearly double bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015 and then to $200 billion by 2020, AFP said Putin's expected return to the presidency will likely give a further boost to ties.
Moscow and Beijing, permanent members of the UN Security Council, on Oct 4 vetoed a draft resolution, which meant to strongly condemn "the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities" and threatened punitive measures against the Middle East country.
On Monday, Vice-Premier Wang Qishan will meet his Russian counterpart Alexander Zhukov for the 15th meeting of the Chinese and Russian Premiers' Regular Meeting Committee.
On Tuesday, Wang will meet Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin for bilateral energy talks.
He and Wen will probably talk with reporters after meeting and officiating at the signing of bilateral agreements. A meeting has also been scheduled between Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
In the mean time, both parties plan to discuss a wide range of topics on economic, scientific-technical and humanitarian cooperation issues. Special attention will be paid to improving the structure of bilateral trade, investment cooperation, high-tech cooperation and long-term energy projects. The leaders will also exchange views on current issues in international and regional agenda.
Still, some Western media agree that Putin's Beijing visit is somewhat symbolic, in that it is his debut visit abroad following his announcement to return to presidency. Chinese experts, however, hold different views on the timing set for the visit.
"This is just a coincidence," noted Jiang Yi, expert on Russian Studies at China's Academy of Social Sciences, "The upcoming PM-level meeting is still concentrated on pragmatic cooperation between the two countries, and is part of the regular meetings decided by both."
Over the past decade and more, China-Russia relationship has developed into a relatively mature stage, which will not be impacted or changed by the shift of leaderships. Moreover, Russia’s China policy has more or less remained intact all these years, and bilateral ties have seen a steady and sustained development, even if rosy and bumpy alternatively.
On the other hand, Western reaction to the so-called "Return of the King", as described by the Western media, has hardly been ecstatic, as they believe Putin's world view could be anti-Western. The Obama administration put out a bland statement confirming that its "reset" with the Kremlin will go on. Privately, however, the White House will certainly not be delighted at the prospect of dealing with prickly "President Putin" again.
But to China, Putin's return to the Kremlin will not affect Sino-Russian ties, as both countries are facing a crucial period for national rejuvenation and re-emergence in the second decade of the 21st century. Hence, both will underscore national development strategies.
Also:Medvedev generously responded by proposing Putin as United Russia's candidate for the Russian presidential election in March 2012.
The cat was finally out of the bag: the outcome is clear, and so the presidential election is effectively already over.
This should come as no surprise. The elites in the Kremlin and Lubyanka --the head office of the Federal Security Service (FSB) secret police -- have one overriding political goal: to keep control for themselves. Their leaders, first and foremost Putin as their effective boss for the past 12 years, have an urgent need to secure amnesty for their crimes -- and this is precisely why Putin has to come back to presidential office for the next 12 years.
In Russia, politicians enjoy de facto immunity for crimes committed while in office. Theoretically, however, indictments can be brought after they leave office. The only person who cannot be dismissed and therefore cannot be indicted is the president -- so if you have reasons to avoid trouble, this is the position you want to hang on to.
Vladimir Putin has a lot to answer for, and very good reasons for wanting not to do so. He is directly responsible for the second Russian war in Chechnya, in which an estimated 100,000 people have been killed. This is a crime against humanity, and arguably genocide.
Everybody knows of the colossal level of corruption in Russia, in particular among the political leadership. A few years ago, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky made sensational allegations in the German newspaper "Die Welt" that Putin owns stakes of 4.5 percent in Gazprom, 37 percent in Surgutneftegaz - both energy corporations --- and 50 percent in Gunvor, an oil-trading company based in Zug in Switzerland and run by his close associate, Gennady Timchenko. At the time, the total value of those investments was estimated at $40 billion. Recent estimates are 50 percent higher, possibly making Putin the richest person in the world.
In other words, Putin has very good reasons to evade judicial scrutiny. He will calculate that after two back-to-back six-year terms of presidential office, everybody will have forgotten, or lost interest in his crimes -- or be sufficiently well paid-off to remain silent. He then envisages pulling out of the political limelight at the age of 71, after having ruled the largest country in the world as a dictator for almost a quarter of a century. Comparisons with Stalin and Brezhnev are very much justified.
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