Chinese president took advantage of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games to meet the main leaders present, after twenty-three months of isolation due to the pandemic.
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Xi Jinping is back! After twenty-three months during which Chinese president received no foreign leaders and was not released from his country, he took advantage of the opening of the Olympic Winter Games, Friday, February 4 in Beijing, for Perform, at home, a true diplomatic ballet. A way also to start turning the China’s diplomatic isolation page caused by its zero-covid policy. The first sequence is of course the meeting of nearly three hours with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, Friday, just before the opening ceremony of the games. On this occasion the two leaders have concluded a real anti-Western informal alliance. “This meeting will remain in history,” predicts a Western ambassador to Beijing.
The next day Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan received during a banquet at the People’s Palace twenty-five foreign leaders who had attended the day before, at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. They should remember the decorum: a huge table on which had been built a decoration evoking the Olympic sites of Beijing crossed by a winding stream.
On one side of the table: nine Chinese, on the other eighteen foreigners, including the presidents of Argentina, Poland, Serbia, Egypt, Central Asian countries and the Secretary-General UN, Antonio Guterres. Seven other strangers had taken place on the side sides including Pakistani Prime Minister and the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO). Vladimir Putin had to have already returned. In any case, it does not appear in the official photo. In addition to this spectacular lunch, Xi Jinping met with a dozen leaders at head at the head, while Prime Minister Li Keqiang and other officials received most of the other guests.
According to China released releases, Xi Jinping provided Central Asian leaders from its support. Among them was President Kazakh, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who appealed to Russia in early January for matering, violently, a revolt related to increased prices. He also had an exchange with Mohammed Ben Salman, the heir prince of Saudi Arabia, a traditional ally of the United States. To Polish President Andrzej Duda – only the European Union’s political leader attending the opening ceremony, boycotted by Washington – he would have promised more investments. Central European country to be part of the group “16 + 1” set up by China to weigh more in this region of the world, Poland, diplomatically close to the United States did not hide its disappointment before the concrete impact of His cooperation with Beijing.
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