Xi Jinping in whirlwind of meetings with Global South leaders on Brics sidelines

Name: No explanation as China’s Xi Jinping unexpectedly skips speech at Brics business forum
Uploaded: 2023-08-24T08:59:58.000Z
Duration: 2 min 36 s
Description: No explanation as China’s Xi Jinping unexpectedly skips speech at Brics business forum

Chinese president offers support to Cuban counterpart in ‘defending national sovereignty and opposing external interference’

He tells Ethiopian prime minister China’s ‘modernisation’ will bring ‘new opportunities’, and also meets leaders of Bangladesh and Senegal

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Chinese President Xi Jinping meets his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel in Johannesburg on Wednesday. Xi also met the leaders of Ethiopia, Senegal and Bangladesh. Photo: Xinhua

Zhao Ziwen

Published: 4:59pm, 24 Aug 2023

China’s leader has offered support to his Cuban counterpart in “defending national sovereignty and opposing external interference” and a blockade on the country, during talks in Johannesburg.

President Xi Jinping also met Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, telling him that China’s “modernisation” would bring “new opportunities” for cooperation, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. And he indicated that Ethiopia’s debt payments could be suspended – the nation is one of China’s biggest African debtors.

Xi also met the leaders of Bangladesh and Senegal on the sidelines of the Brics summit on Wednesday, calling for closer economic ties and political support in the Global South as they seek an alternative world order.

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No explanation as China’s Xi Jinping unexpectedly skips speech at Brics business forum

During the meeting with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Xi offered support for the isolated nation and the two Communist Party leaders agreed to cooperate.

“China is willing to work with Cuba … to promote the continuous new development of the special friendly relations between the two parties and the two countries,” Xi said, adding that Beijing would support Cuban economic and social development in the face of international hostility.

In a Twitter post, Diaz-Canel said Cuba “notes the will to deepen inter-party ties and the close bonds of friendship and cooperation [with China]”. He also said Cuba appreciated China’s support to end the blockade against the nation and to have it removed from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Cuba was added to the list in 1982 for its “long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training and financial support to guerilla groups and individual terrorists”, according to the US State Department. It was taken off the list in 2015, then put back on in 2021 near the end of the Donald Trump presidency.

On Wednesday, Xi also expressed support for Cuba to host a summit of the Group of 77 developing countries and China in September.