Last week ended along with an extensive Politburo meeting on Ukraine, which brings together the top seven Chinese leaders.
And the first visible result, as the Wall Street Journal highlighted at the top of the page on Sunday, in a text by its chief China correspondent, Lingling Wei, was a declaration against the invasion of Ukraine, also reported by the New York Times and by the Global Times.
“The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of any country must be respected,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. “Ukraine is no exception.”
More than a warning to Russia, the WSJ pointed out, citing conversations with Chinese diplomats and advisers, “a desire to safeguard ties with the US”. In the newspaper’s assessment, Xi Jinping himself, in the middle of the week, had already adopted a more diplomatic tone for Ukraine, in a phone call with Frenchman Emmanuel Macron.
As a background, underlines the WSJ, Beijing is preparing events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s visit to China, which began on February 21, 1972.
At the same time, Jair Bolsonaro also gained renewed attention from Xi.
In the midst of the Anglo-American news that China was moving away from Brazil, the PC’s Renmin Ribao or Diário do Povo, published at the top of the front page, next to the logo (above), that “Xi sends a message of condolences to Brazilian President Bolsonaro for the torrential rain in the State of Rio de Janeiro”.
PEACEMAKER
Macron also called the presidents of Russia and Ukraine – who, featured in French Le Monde on Sunday, “agree to ‘intensify diplomatic efforts’ amid heightened tensions”.
NATO AND HISTORY
This week’s edition of Der Spiegel reports, with repercussions in Germany and France, but not in Anglo-American outlets, that “New Discovery in 1991 Archives Supports Russian Accusation”—that NATO promised not to assimilate countries from the former soviet bloc.
The “remarkable document”, raised by a US academic in UK archives, reproduces statements by diplomats from both countries and Germany, during a meeting, saying that they “made it clear” to Russian representatives that they would not “offer membership of the NATO for Poland and other countries”
