2023-10-18 18:29:09
The world was a better place the last time Vladimir Putin floor Beijing. The Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine and today bombs fall on hospitals Loop. Putin has since received scorn from the West and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes that has limited his movements. He has not changed during this turbulent year and a half his friendship with Xi JinpingChinese president.
Their forty-second meeting in 10 years has come with the Belt and Road (BRI), the elephantine Chinese project of trade and infrastructure, which these days celebrates its first decade in Beijing. Representatives from 130 countries and a couple of dozen presidents and prime ministers have arrived, but none enjoyed the prominence of the Russian. Together Putin and Xi entered the Great Hall of the People and together they posed for a group photo. Putin spoke after Xi without sparing praise to the host: he applauded the “achievements of our Chinese friends” and called for global support for the BRI, also called the new silk road. Both countries, he recalled, aspire “to a world that respects different civilizations and the right of each country to choose its development model.” The allusions to a multilateral world and without traditional Western leadership are common in speeches in Moscow and Beijing. Nor did Xi avoid them, who added subtle criticisms to USA: “Ideological confrontation, geopolitical rivalry and bloc politics are not an option for us. We oppose economic sanctions and coercion, decoupling and disruptions of supply chains.” He said this a day after Washington expanded controls on exports of chips and other technologies to China.
On that visit last year the “limitless” relationship that generated so much concern when the war broke out. A couple of weeks were enough to show that there were, the military cooperation without going any further, but there are no cracks in diplomacy or in the desire for a new world more attentive to the global south. The Middle East conflict has realigned them against the West. No explicit condemnations have come out of Beijing or Moscow Hamas and yes to Israeli excesses. The contrast is capital: Joe Biden visits Israel as Moscow compares Gaza to Leningrad and Beijing denounces that the Israeli response exceeds the limits of legitimate defense and demands an end to Palestinian suffering. This Wednesday, Xi only referred to the conflict obliquely and Putin described the bombings of hospitals as a “catastrophe.”
The Silk Road
The BRI resurrects the mythical Silk Road, that predecessor of globalization that united Europe and Asia between the 9th and 15th centuries. Times change but the Chinese commercial spirit persists. Where there were camels there are high speed trains and the latest technology goods They relieve its delicate porcelain. China and its companies win and the developing world wins with modern infrastructure that reduces poverty. China has invested one trillion dollars in 150 countries on five continents in an initiative that only generates criticism in the West: the debt trap, lax labor and environmental standards…
Beijing disdains them as the usual Sinophobic prejudices that seek to curb its rise. The massive representation of the global south that has gathered these days in Beijing does not sense the perfidy or the spurious Chinese interests that the West speaks of. Alberto FernandezArgentine president, recalled this Wednesday in his speech that Beijing sent them vaccines when the West monopolized them. “China is a brother that accompanied us in the pandemic, that helped us financially when the pressure from the IMF put us in check and that invests in our country generating work for Argentinians,” he stated.
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