The Canadian and Chinese leaders, embattled in a diplomatic dispute, sat side by side on the first day of the G20 summit but appeared to pay each other no mind.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese President Xi Jinping were seated together during the Leaders Working Lunch in Osaka, Japan, on Friday thanks to alphabetical seating.
The two did not shake hands or look at each other, according to Global News reporter Mercedes Stephenson, and did not engage throughout the meeting.
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Update: Trudeau has 'brief, constructive interactions' with Chinese President Xi Jinping at G20 (CBC).
WNU Editor: The Canadian Prime Minister's office is saying that Trudeau and Xi had a number of constructive interactions during the conference .... Trudeau has 'brief, constructive interactions' with Chinese President (CTV). But my friends in China are saying that aside from a greet and meet interaction that lasted about 5 seconds, both leaders have stayed away from each other. Judging by the above video, I think my Chinese contacts are right.
4 comments:
Actually this is very normal behavior at G20 between leaders in which a language barrier exists. Surprised you are buying into this WNU, figured you would know this?
They don't have personal translators to engage in personal talks ready and waiting, (before some idiot makes a suggestion concerning their earpieces, that's not how it works) and usually formality of handshakes, meet-n-greet, etc, are done before they sit at the conference.
Again, this is quite normal behavior.
There's a sincere distaste between them. Even if the above behavior is normal, there would naturally be some sort of perfunctory acknowledgement of one another as they sat down - if they were on even moderately friendly terms. Which they apparently are not.
Anom
I have been to a lot of these type of conferences/summits/etc.
The language barrier does exist but people do make an effort to communicate or convey their feelings, especially if there is an issue that is important between the two. As you can tell in the above video, there is zero interaction between Xi and Trudeau.
They would have at least nodded at each other. Xi knows that Trudeau wants to talk since his party won't shut up about it in the media, and Trudeau doesn't want to look like the groveling attendant yet again so he's not going to make the first move in public.
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