It is not the same to demand peace in Ukraine and denounce Vladimir Putin’s war from the West, or in the heart of Europe, than to do it in China itself. And this is what Pedro Sánchez has done on the first stop of his first official visit to the Asian colossus. On the eve of his long-awaited meeting with President Xi Jinping on Friday in Beijing, the Spanish president participated this Thursday on the island of Hainan in the inaugural session of the Boao Forum chaired by Ban Ki-Moon, the former UN Secretary General , in the presence of the Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Li Qiang. Before all of them, Sánchez has denounced the “brutal and illegal aggression of Russia against Ukraine”.
An aggression that Sánchez has warned, before the representatives of some thirty states of the Asia-Pacific region that participate in this important economic forum inspired by Davos, that “it is causing a huge humanitarian crisis, food insecurity, inflation and a crisis of debt in a growing number of vulnerable countries. “In this context -the head of the Spanish Executive has warned-, the international community needs responsible and constructive political actors”.
For the Spanish government, China is a “stabilizing power”, whose role in the face of the war in Ukraine may be essential in determining its evolution. To begin with, by not selling weapons to Russia. This is the message that Sánchez will also convey tomorrow to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. The Spanish president will be the first European leader to be received by the Chinese president after his meeting with Putin in Moscow last week. And, in this same sense, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as well as the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, or the high representative of the EU, also have upcoming visits to Beijing. , Josep Borrell.
During his speech, in English, before the plenary session of this important Asian economic forum, Sánchez highlighted that in the last week he has participated in the European Council in Brussels, has attended the Ibero-American Summit in the Dominican Republic, and is now beginning his first official visit to China. In total, he has assured, he has met with more than forty leaders from three different continents. “And let me be clear: in each of these meetings I have heard the same yearning for peace, stability and prosperity. Nobody wants an economic crisis or war ”, he warned. This is the message that the Spanish president, aligned with the majority of European leaders, wants to start permeating China.
