No Explanation As Xi Jinping Unexpectedly Skips His Speech At Brics Business Forum
No Explanation As Xi Jinping Unexpectedly Skips His Speech At Brics Business Forum
South China Morning Post Wed, August 23, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping failed to show up at the Brics Business Forum on Tuesday in South Africa, where he was expected to deliver a speech alongside his counterparts. In his place, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao read the speech that criticised the US over its tendency toward "hegemony". Xi, in the speech read by Wang at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, said the US tended to fight countries that threaten its dominance in global affairs and financial markets.
The speech said that every country has a right to development and that people should have the freedom to pursue a happy life. But one country, he said in a thinly veiled swipe at the US, is "obsessed with maintaining hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries".
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"Whoever develops first becomes their target of containment. Whoever is catching up becomes its target of obstruction," Xi added.
Although he had arrived in South Africa on Monday evening, Xi skipped the business forum and no explanation was given, prompting a reaction from China watchers.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Programme at the German Marshall Fund, wondered if his absence meant something was "amiss".
Xi Jinping fails to show up at the BRICS Business Forum. Something is amiss? https://t.co/Xkz8puYmtE
Bonnie Glaser / θδΎε πΊπ¦ (@BonnieGlaser) August 22, 2023
"This should be 'stop the presses' news!" Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, said in response to Glaser's post. "An unannounced absence, especially in a multilateral forum (which the PRC seldom misses), after all the ground work with India, is truly newsworthy. If true, something is certainly amiss."
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