Presidents Xi and Putin Meet and Call for a “New Era of Development”

Just prior to attending the opening ceremony of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing on Feb. 4, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin held wide-ranging talks, saw to the announcement of 15 economic and policy deals, and issued a “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.”

Most importantly, the 16-page document,which covers four areas of strategic concern, is a call to action and is grounded in the commitment to economic advancement as the basis for security. The opening section denounces the “unilateral approaches” taken by some nations and figures of intervening into the internal affairs of other states, and inciting confrontation, “thus hampering the development and progress of mankind…”.

The first area discussed stresses that democracy is a universal value, and no states should attempt to impose “their own ‘democratic standards’ on other countries”, while the second emphasizes development as the “key driver in ensuring the prosperity of nations,” and therefore their security. In that light, further integration is planned between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union.

The third and longest section addresses “serious international security challenges”, and has caused the greatest consternation in western geopolitical circles. The two Presidents oppose further expansion of NATO and call on the alliance to abandon its cold war approaches. China supports Russia’s proposals for “long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe”, while Russia “reaffirms its support for the One-China principle” and confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.

The fourth section identifies the United Nations as having a “central coordinating role in international affairs,” and calls for cooperation, not confrontation among world powers.

Clearer heads in the trans-Atlantic world, including our newsletter, have long pointed out that the increasingly confrontationist stance of NATO countries against both Russia and China, could only lead to a strengthening of relations between those same two countries. And that has just been unmistakably confirmed personally by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. The “British empire” is particularly freaked out, as so eloquently expressed by the Daily Telegraph (cf. the following item). However, responsible leaders in Europe and the United States, rather than trying to increase the hostilities, should follow the advice given by Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Feb. 5, and “remove their ideological glasses” long enough to recognize the “extraordinary opportunities for the whole world” of working together to realize the common aims of mankind.