Editor’s Note for Thursday, September 15, 2022

My thoughts today:

Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 left China for the first time in 970 days, and went to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he today met Russian president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.

There may have been some awkwardness: Earlier this week, Russian state sources seem to have leaked a video of Lì Zhànshū 栗战书, China’s No. 3 leader, expressing support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in a way that Beijing has not done publicly since February, when Russia’s “special military operation” began.

Li says (in my rough translation):

On issues involving Russia’s core interests and some major key issues, China fully understands and supports Russia…

…The United States and NATO are directly pressing against Russia’s door…Russia has taken some measures it thinks should be taken, and China understands, and provides support from different aspects…It can be said that Russia was forced into a corner, and a counterattack was taken to safeguard the core interests of the country.

Geremie R.Barmé, scholar and occasional contributor to The China Project, sent me the above link, and commented:

It’s an uncomfortable performance, and as No. Three in China, Li is fantastically lackluster and charmless. Personality-lessness aside, noteworthy is the use of the expression 给予策应 jǐyǔ cèyìng, which Li, being a Hebei peasant, mispronounces as gěiyǔ cèyìng.

Cèyìng means to aid and abet a buddy, ally, or someone who is on the same team.

From the glum expression on the faces of Li’s Russian interlocutors, however, these would appear to be little more than empty words. Presumably Moscow did not yet get what it wants from Beijing. I guess it’s up to the Big Boys now.

Our word of the day is aid and abet (给予策应 jǐyǔ cèyìng).