• Visit Sanchez defends Zelenskiy's peace plan in Beijing and refuses to reveal Xi's response until China does
  • Foreign Ministry Sánchez meets with Xi Jinping after China's announcement of greater military collaboration with Russia

Pedro Sánchez visits Beijing, telling Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin's most powerful friend, to his face, that we must bet on peace in Ukraine and respect the integrity of the attacked country. What did the president of the second world power answer him? The same thing he always says to every leader who questions him on the matter: that China's position is to promote peace talks.

But the Chinese were not aware of what Xi and Sánchez talked about. What really worries them, is that in Spain, their compatriots, the squatters are invading their homes. This is the playground of social networks in Mandarin.

It all started earlier in the week on Weibo, the Chinese brother of Twitter, when the story circulated of a man named Yue Zhang, who had had their Barcelona home squatted by a gypsy family taking advantage of the fact that Yue had been trapped in China at the beginning of the pandemic and had not left his country in the last three years.

The hashtag "okupación España" was trending topic with more than 30 million visits thanks to a video where some notes were given of how difficult it is in Spain to expel a squatter. Many users did not give credit. "Isn't Western private property inviolable? Tomorrow I can go to Spain on a trip and, if I feel like it, enter an empty house and stay there to live?" asked an Internet user.

In RedBook, similar to Instagram, they have also been taking out several videos for days in which Chinese citizens who have lived in Spain, share their experiences: a doctor who had to stand guard one night and, when he returned home, he found a family living there; a businessman who bought a flat in Barcelona from China and, when he traveled to settle, some squatters had even changed the lock.

The detachment in networks for the official visit of the Spanish president to Beijing has gone hand in hand with the Chinese media, who have given more hype to one of the viral topics of the week. "Spanish law allows forced squatting of homes and Chinese people's homes are squatted," read a headline in a local newspaper called Times of Jinan. "A Chinese family did not return to Spain for three years and their house was occupied by gypsies," another headline in Henan Daily noted.

Ukrainian War

On the walk of Sánchez through the Great Hall of the People of Tiananmen, the mastodon Chinese hemicycle now converted into one of the epicenters of world diplomacy, the state network CCTV has been the one who has taken the usual reading that the Chinese side usually makes of bilateral meetings, reserving for the last paragraph the reflection that Xi shared with Sánchez on the war in Ukraine:

"Xi Jinping stressed that China's position is to promote peace talks and political settlement. The Cold War mentality and confrontation must be abandoned, and extreme sanctions and pressures must be abandoned. It is hoped that relevant parties will be able to build a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture through dialogue and consultation."

Meeting of the Spanish and Chinese delegations at the People's Palace in Beijing.AFP

Beijing, using its usual ambiguous neolanguage, comes to say the same thing, even without changing a comma, as in so many other communiqués that it has released in recent months: it asks for peace and presents itself as the great mediator of the conflict, while throwing a dart at the United States, whom it accuses of dividing the world into blocks. as in the Cold War. It also opposes international sanctions against Russia and buys the Kremlin's narrative that there is a threat in NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe.

The Chinese reading of the talk with Sánchez, who recalls a couple of times that this year marks 50 years of diplomatic relations between Spain and China ("They are two ancient civilizations and cultural powers with global influence," Xi said) also highlights the Chinese president's commitment to "promote mutual cooperation with Spain and import more quality Spanish products."

In the section on the European Union, Xi said his country is willing to "carry out comprehensive dialogue and cooperation with the EU in a spirit of independence and mutual respect." All this while expecting Spain to play an "active role in promoting China-EU dialogue and cooperation."

Official Chinese media coverage of the Xi and Sanchez talk has been on the same level as the Chinese leader also had on Friday with the leaders of Singapore and Malaysia. A much more muted follow-up than the one received, for example, by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz when he traveled to Beijing in November. Or even when, at the beginning of March, Putin's squire and Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, also visited the house of the new great helmsman, with whom everyone now wants to take a photo.

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  • China
  • Ukraine
  • Xi Jinping
  • Russia
  • Vladimir Putin
  • Pedro Sanchez