Correspondent in Asia
On this summer evening, George Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, or Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd flock to Beijing's “bird's nest”, the extraordinary Olympic stadium, the epicenter of the planet.
It is August 2008. It is ages ago.
The American president then underlines the need to maintain at all costs a "
constructive
" relationship with the emerging China of his counterpart Hu Jintao, despite temporary friction.
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The call of intellectuals: "We must boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics!"
Fourteen years later, his distant Democratic successor Joe Biden will be absent from the icy spans of the presidential platform of the same building, where Vladimir Putin will be a lonely star, alongside his Chinese host Xi Jinping, for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games winter, in Beijing, on February 4, orchestrated by director Zhang Yimou.
In the midst of a standoff with the West over Ukraine, the Russian president will even have the great honor of being the first foreign leader to officially meet ...
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