IMO, China is currently going for a "cooperative and reasonable country" image. I think this is worth trying, especially considering US naked belligerence and anti-trade turn, and the results have been good so far. I can see why they gave a platform to Baerbock despite knowing she was a virtue signaller. But this visit damaged Chinese-German relations nonetheless. EU's morality lectures are less and less welcome in the world and that includes China too.Of course it's not a "disaster", but it is a mistake to give Baerbock a platform to spread her hate. She's going to go back to Germany strengthened in their coalition government. She'll be seen as the more competent politician for dealing with China than the chancellor. Some in Germany will conclude that you can insult China as much as you like and China won't retaliate. So you can expect more Chinese investments in Germany to be blocked and future diplomatic visits won't include signing big deals, because apparently China hasn't demonstrated that it prefers friendly visits that focus on trade.
It's a small loss, but it will have an effect. The German coalition government is currently writing a China strategy document. As a result of this visit, expect it to be more hostile than it would have been otherwise. You can't charm people who hate you, you can only confirm their opinion that you'll smile even as they punch you in the face
Seems like a good argument to me. Would it elicit an emotional response from Germans?"China once supported German reunification and hopes that Germany will also support China's great cause of peaceful reunification with Taiwan." - Wang Yi
Its a good diplomatic argument but irrelevant geopolitical argument. Also Germans don't control their foreign policy so any emotional response is also irrelevant
Seems like a good argument to me. Would it elicit an emotional response from Germans?
Is this really a surprise?
No, the youth is to young and ignorant too understand the suffering from german division. The old hags are preoccupied with political infighting about who is the biggest US cuck.
Seems like a good argument to me. Would it elicit an emotional response from Germans?
Russian telegrams predictably think it was a mistake and reunification should have occurred under DDR.
MSM doesn't want people to know that the 8th largest country in terms of PPP and the de facto leader of South America just made best buds with Xi. It's covered a lot more in Portuguese and Latin America media.Is it just me or does Lula's visit seem very low profile compared to Macron's?
It was one of the most applauded passages. "We need to defeat individualism, which is taking over humanity. Humanity was born to live in community."
Fun fact: US conservatives think Lula is a CIA-approved part of the global cabal because of his "socialist" views.You can definitely tell who he's really aligned with. Lula spends 5 days in China, compared to 1 day in the US. like "A community with a shared future for mankind" and "civilizational dialogue".
The American authorities are in discussions about using the Russian central bank assets frozen by the West to rebuild Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, has said.
When the conflict between Kiev and Moscow ends, Washington plans a massive reconstruction program for Ukraine aimed not only at rebuilding its cities, towns, and villages, but also at providing the country with a powerful military, “greener” energy infrastructure and stronger government institutions that would be “better hardened against corruption,” Nuland said during a speech at the US-Ukraine Partnership Forum in Washington on Thursday.
The reconstruction of Ukraine would cost at least $411 billion over a ten-year period, according to conservative estimates of the World Bank, she said.
“Among other things, we are working to ensure that Russia helps pay for all that it has broken,” the State Department official pointed out.
She said that thanks to the support of Congress, the US Department of Justice has been granted new authority to use “illicit assets seized from Russian oligarchs” to help rebuild Ukraine.
“In February, we announced the first tranche of $5.4 million under this authority, with more announcements to come,” Nuland said.
She also stressed that “discussions are ongoing about the estimated $300 billion of Russian central bank assets that we and our allies have frozen” in connection to the reconstruction of Ukraine.
On Thursday, however, German newspaper Die Welt reported – after viewing unpublished internal documents by the European Commission – that Brussels had come to the conclusion that it would eventually have to return the frozen central bank reserves. This could happen after the conflict in Ukraine ends, according to the outlet.
The foreign reserves of the Russian central bank were seized by the US and the EU shortly after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine last February. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the move as “plain theft,” accusing the West of “returning to bandit, wild capitalism from the times of the Gold Rush” in the 19th century.