Joe Biden is preparing for his impossible mission in the Middle East. And on a wonderful sunny day, smiling and without fear of being handed over to the International Court of Justice because China is not part of it, bold and swinging Vladimir Putin is received with all honors by President Xi Jinping, who for two days moved three quarters of the world to the foot of the Great Wall of China. With echoes of the bombings in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, the new edition of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation opens, marking the tenth anniversary of Xi’s ambitious vision, what we in Italy call the New Silk Road, determined to put China in its rightful place. He is practically at the head of a global machine based on cooperation between very different countries and not always interested in following American hegemony.
For Putin, the embrace of Xi (and the handshake with Viktor Orbán, the only significant representative of the European Union), is to legitimize the Russia-China agreement that was also to serve as a lifeline in the war in Ukraine. The Tsar said that Russian relations with many European countries “maintained and developed” despite the sanctions, “one of which is Hungary.” For Xi, the forum is an acknowledgment that Beijing is the real economic and trade competitor to the United States, and can be so on a military level. Over the course of 10 years, the Chinese government launched an unusual and expensive campaign in Africa and Asia, offering developing countries attractive and binding ready-made projects, which Italy also joined, and then announced with the Meloni government that it would not be renewed from the spring of 2024. The memorandum signed by the governments Previous. But this does not mean that we will abandon the strategic economic relationship with the dragon.
Behind its massive railway networks, new ports, and thousands of kilometers of highways, China is celebrating a kind of alternative new world order based on sustainability and multipolarity, with which the West and America are expected to compete at the forefront. If Amazon Bezos advertises the delivery of all kinds of products within 24 hours, Beijing under Xi is already able to do this in less than 50 minutes.
Xi’s philosophy in this decade of real estate crises, political conundrums, silent purges and sudden disappearances has been to recreate the same conditions for digital growth in all of China’s major cities. Ten years later, not only does enrollment in the initiative remain open and growing, but interest is expanding to include Asia, Africa and even Latin America.
But the political presence of dozens of heads of state and government in Beijing is what Xi analyzes and appreciates, in this new division of the world on the basis of development, while acting as a mediator between Israel and Palestine and in the deeper Ukrainian trench. . .
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