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. And this is what Pedro Sánchez did on the first stop of his first official visit to the Asian colossus.
On the eve of his meeting with President Xi Jinping this 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 Mun, the former UN Secretary General, in presence, in addition, of the Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Li Qiang. Before all of them, Sánchez denounced the “brutal and illegal aggression of Russia against Ukraine”.
The Chief Executive assured the representatives of some thirty states from the Asia-Pacific region participating in this important economic forum inspired by Davos that “the international community needs responsible and constructive political actors” in the face of the war in Ukraine that “is causing a severe humanitarian crisis, food insecurity, inflation and mounting debt distress in an increasing number of vulnerable countries.”
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 is going to convey this morning to the President of China, 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 where he outlined a peace plan that has been received with skepticism from Western chancelleries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Xi to visit Kyiv.
Sánchez precedes the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, or the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, on his visit to Beijing.
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 visit official 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, ”said the president in his speech in Boao.
This is the message that the Spanish president, aligned with the majority of European leaders, wants to start permeating in China because neither the Chinese giant, nor its prosperity, benefits from this war that causes global instability. Sánchez, however, wants to demand this Friday from Xi a greater involvement tending to the resolution of the war and that he does not pay an equidistance between the aggressor Russia and the attacked Ukraine.
The Spanish president, like other European leaders waiting to visit the Chinese capital, may have a better dialogue with the Chinese president than the United States to address the war in Ukraine, given the commercial and geostrategic struggle between the two great powers of the planet .
In this morning’s meeting with President Xi, Sánchez will begin to point out this European diplomatic pressure, also with the prospect that Spain will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union as of July 1.
