Frequent proponents of "wishful thinking", the Western mainstream media repeatedly pointed out that nothing of importance - neither arms sales contract, nor declaration of support for the war in Ukraine - had been signed during the visit that the Chinese president made to his Russian counterpart in Moscow, from March 21 to 23, 2023, and that it was therefore a flop for Vladimir Putin.
But Westerners do not understand that in geopolitics the symbolic always takes precedence over the material.
Xi Jinping is not a man who practices diplomatic tourism.
When he goes to Moscow and hugs a Putin who has just been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), he wants to send a powerful message to his Western rivals .
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It is a message of challenge.
Of refusal of any moral primacy that the West holds over the rest of humanity.
"Your democratic principles and your variable-geometry international justice, you can...
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