Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking in Davos, China, reiterated his opposition to sanctions imposed by the West on Russia
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BEIJING
Is there anything new in Xi Jinping’s thinking about the war in Ukraine, his boundless friendship with Vladimir Putin, and the creeping confrontation between China and the United States? The Chinese President today delivered a speech on the challenge of building a bright future through cooperation.
Theater of virtual intervention in video conferences of the Boao Economic Forum, considered the Mandarin equivalent of Davos.
These inaugural speeches, which once promised China’s grand opening to global investment, have been overlooked by Beijingologists as mere rhetorical exercises. Now political scientists are reading them carefully, hoping to learn something new about the Chinese president’s position, particularly on the Ukraine crisis.
Today’s key phrase appears to be one in which Xi warns that economic decoupling and pressures that disrupt supply chains cannot work. This is the umpteenth resistance to the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia (which he defined in the speech as the long arm of jurisdiction), but also an appeal to continue trade relations with China, the “business as usual” on which Xi recalled recent talks with US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
In his speech today, the communist general secretary made no mention of the United States and the European Union, but the statement that facts were once again proving cold war mentality, hegemony and power politics to be peace-breaking was certainly aimed at the two rival blocs.
The Chinese recipe? Xi says China wants to propose a global initiative focusing on the principle of indivisibility of security and opposing building national security systems based on other countries’ insecurity.
No details on this initiative: it sounds like a wise Mandarin proverb and sums up Beijing’s ambiguity regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which Xi never referred to as an invasion).
According to Beijing, the war is blamed on the security policies of the United States, NATO and the European Union, which have undermined Russia’s security by refusing to leave Ukraine in the face of threats and then aggression from Putin.
Xi also invoked the UN, arguing that we must follow the dictates of the United Nations Charter, which outlines the path of dialogue and negotiations to resolve conflicts between countries. But his China abstained in all UN votes condemning Russian aggression, including when the General Assembly called for an end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine.
Xi’s final thought of the day: We’re all in the same boat, with a common destiny, in a stormy ocean… Trying to throw someone overboard is unacceptable.
April 21, 2022 (Change April 21, 2022 | 13:36)
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