Xi and Sunak meeting canceled over Poland missile strike, and tension with Trudeau

A meeting between British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 that was supposed to take place today was nixed at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts over a missile strike in Poland that killed two people.

The canceled encounter between Sunak and Xi, which had only been confirmed earlier on Tuesday afternoon, would have made Sunak the first U.K. prime minister to meet the Chinese leader in nearly five years.

• “The prime minister obviously thinks it is still important to have that conversation with President Xi,” Sunak’s spokesperson said per the Guardian.
• Sunak yesterday had suggested that he has ditched plans to classify China as a “threat” to Britain’s national security — much to the disappointment of some harder-leaning conservatives in Parliament.

Sunak was called into an emergency meeting with G7 and NATO leaders on Wednesday morning upon news of the strike in the Polish village of Przewodów near the Ukrainian border.

• The missile was unlikely to have been launched by Russian forces waging war in Ukraine, NATO said, and instead was likely fired by Ukraine defenses against a barrage of Russian missile attacks. Moscow has also denied responsibility for the strike.
• Polish President Andrzej Duda told a press conference on Wednesday that his government had reached the same conclusion as NATO.
• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has since disputed NATO’s claim: “I have no doubt that it was not our missile or our missile strike,” Zelenskyy said live on state TV and as reported by the Financial Times.

Earlier reports that initially blamed Russia for the attack, including Warsaw’s claim that the strike was caused by a “Russian-made missile,” had ignited fears that the strike on Poland, a NATO member, would dramatically escalate the stakes of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

• G7 and NATO leaders have since released a statement in support of Poland’s investigation and offering condolences, while condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine as the driving cause of the attack.
• All parties should “stay calm and exercise restraint and avoid the escalation of tension,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Máo Níng 毛宁, told a press briefing on Wednesday. “The pressing priority is to have dialogue and negotiation and peacefully resolve the crisis.”

Xi also met with French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday. Macron “said he intends to visit Beijing” next year and that he believes Xi “can play a mediating role that prevents a resumption of large-scale land fighting in Ukraine.”

Trudeau’s tense moment with Xi

Meanwhile, a rare candid and tense moment between Xi and Justin Trudeau was recorded on video by journalists accompanying the Canadian prime minister and posted to Twitter by a reporter for CTV Nation News, per Bloomberg.

• “Everything we discussed was leaked to the newspapers. That’s not appropriate and that’s not the way our conversation was conducted, right?” Xi told Trudeau via a translator. “If you are being sincere, we must communicate with mutual respect. If not, I’m not so sure how it will turn out.”
• “In Canada, we believe in free and open and frank dialogue, and that is what we will continue to have. We will continue to look to work constructively together, but there will be things we will disagree on,” Trudeau responded.
• “Let’s create the conditions first,” Xi said before shaking his hand and walking away.

Earlier reports had said that Trudeau raised “serious concerns” over suspected Chinese interference in domestic affairs during his sidelines talk with Xi on Tuesday, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea, and the COP15 biodiversity conference in December.

• Canada’s National Post, which first reported the contents of the meeting, had cited “a Canadian government source.”
• The meeting was Trudeau’s first talk with Xi in more than three years, amid the ongoing COVID pandemic and growing bilateral tensions over Canada’s 2018 detainment of Huawei executive Mèng Wǎnzhōu 孟晚舟, and the following arrests by Beijing of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.