China. China China. ChinaChinaChina for the China

I couldn’t say, but I would assume nothing, since it doesn’t meaningfully change the substance or context of the story.

Here’s the South China Morning Posts translation of what was said:

I was able to hear both, if you key off diplomacy where he says “conversation” you get “diplomacy can work”. I think it’s just an honest mistake as there’s a lot of background noise.

I am just sad that a lot people don’t even want to try an honest mistake angle with how China turns out this way.

Not sure what you mean

I’m not sure where Justin is coming from. If this is how he feels then no leader should ever share any private thoughts with him since he feels it’s okay to simply turn around and feed everything to the press.

At first I had the same thought, but what I remember from the CBC article is the summary of the discussion given to the media was all about what subjects Trudeau raised, and nothing about what Xi Jinping had to say in response. Maybe I missed the important revelation but it didn’t seem out of bounds to me.

Former Prime Minister of Australia, former political science academic specialising in Chinese diplomacy, and Mandarin speaker Kevin Rudd offers a grim assessment on our future (note: to avoid paywall paste it into the private browser and it should work):

Because it was not an official meeting, just some sideline exchanges, in which from the report we can see it was one sided, Xi didn’t respond with anything of substance. There was no scheduled meeting between the two in G20. Like Xi said in the recorded later exchange, “let’s create conditions (for dialogues) first”.
This is why the words the Guardian got wrong was important: “that’s not how the way the conversation was conducted.” It gives more context. Imagine someone you do not want to discuss things with at the moment, runs into you, says a bunch of things he wanted to say, leaves, then tells everyone you had “discussions”. Then cut to the confrontation recording.

“This is not how diplomacy can work” would express this sentiment too.

Trudeau got the chance for a 10 minute sideline meeting with Xi, and raised the issues he felt he needed to raise. That’s it. Giving an informal readout of such a minor meeting is unusual but hardly a breach of protocol, since it did not attempt to characterise anything Xi said. I also note that Xi has shown no inclination to have a longer meeting with Trudeau.

Xi’s real objection is to Trudeau calling out Chinese misbehaviour and the public lese majeste of being criticised by Trudeau to his face, but CCP propagandists don’t want to mention that so instead he’s created this weird dispute about diplomatic protocol and you are spending your time going on about a minor transcription error in the Guardian.

He’s done a great job shifting the topic of conversation to the form of diplomacy, rather than the substance which is the horrific way in which the CCP governs the people in China and seeks to influence the politics of other countries.

Well I see a lot more Russian apologists than China applogists in politics, it seems to me China really governs like shit and was not spending that much money on influencing other countries politics.

I think it depends on where you’re looking. China apologists are everywhere in much of SE Asia, African, and increasingly South (and Central) America. China has put a lot of money into these areas as part of the Belt and Road initiative, and bought a lot of influence (and paid for a lot of infrastructure and bribes).

China doesn’t need apologists, they have capitalists.

You dont often see reports of social unrest in China these days.

The videos are being taken down as quickly as they are put up but I believe new laws will soon come into place to imprison anyone to put videos of this nature up in the first place.

I’m not sure that the Chinese government can infinitely sustain censorship and I also believe that sustained censorship leads to a loss of trust in the government. Chinese people who leave China for holidays will certainly be able to see all such protest videos, and become acutely aware of the media gap (if they are not already). As it stands VPN also allows for content leakage.

Over time, yeah, there are simply too many people with too much connectivity and mobility to lock down discourse in China. The more the government tries, the less people will accept it, over time I think. It won’t be immediate, but I imagine Beijing cannot sustain total control forever.

What it looks like when the dam breaks though…

Similar pontificating of the hair that broke the camel’s back as when the Wuhan doctor died in early 2020… And during the Shanghai protests of April 2022. And the steel layoffs of 2016. Etc etc etc.

Nothing goes on forever, but there is no shortage of false dawns for Western hopefuls in China.

It’s really not a good timing for anti-Xi protests. He had just solidified his position in the party in Oct. People’s movements are already restricted because of the ongoing COVID travel policies. The ongoing COVID restrictions can also be easily applied to contain demostrators or protesters in groups. The general sentiments around Zero Covid policies are still conflicted among the general public. That’s why there are only demonstrations in the more “woke” spots: universities, metro-Shanghai. It probably would even hurt the ongoing policy change on reducing lockdowns (yes there is a trend), as lockdowns can easily be used as a pacifying weapon towards civil unrest.

I wonder how conflicted it is - according to my Chinese friends even pro-CCP locals are pretty much fed up and want the country to re-open and can’t understand what the hell the leadership is doing

This is just what I hear during my city’s current half lock down. People complain all the time but does everything possible to stay away from Covid.