China’s ambassador to France on Monday paid tribute to former French president Charles de Gaulle’s “visionary” role in helping the communist government secure global recognition.
In a ceremony to mark the 49th anniversary of France becoming the first Western power to establish full diplomatic relations with Beijing, the ambassador laid a wreath at the former president’s tomb in the Champagne region.
“Time has proved right the common vision of General De Gaulle and Chairman Mao [Zedong (毛澤東)],” ambassador, Kong Quan (孔泉) said of the man who was the symbol of France’s wartime resistance to Nazi Germany and served as president between 1959 and 1969. “Since this recognition, the strategic partnership between France and China has been characterized by friendship. This recognition allowed our two countries to assert their independence and their respective places in the world.”
France announced its recognition of Mao’s communists on Jan. 27, 1964, in a brief communique that generated diplomatic shock waves at a time when the US still insisted the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime in Taiwan should be considered the legitimate government of all China.
Britain had recognized the communist regime in 1950, but did not exchange ambassadors with Beijing until 1972.
At the time China was recognized, De Gaulle was seeking to forge a new “middle” role for France on an international stage dominated by the Cold War confrontation between the US and its allies and the communist world. Two years later, he was to withdraw the country from NATO’s military command structures.
“There is something abnormal in the fact that we don’t have relations with the most populous country in the world because the Americans don’t like the regime,” De Gaulle confided at the time to then-French Information minister Alain Peyrefitte.
Officials at the Charles de Gaulle foundation are hopeful incoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) will visit Paris for next year’s 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.
The French Foreign Ministry said no arrangement to that effect had been made.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS