The two speeches were expected… and they confirmed that tensions and conflicts should not end in 2024. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, held their traditional New Year speech this Sunday, December 31. An. Here are the main elements to remember.
For Putin, Russia will be “even stronger” next year
Vladimir Putin assured that his country would “never back down” after having “firmly defended” its interests in 2023, in his New Year’s speech, without explicitly mentioning Ukraine. “We have proven time and again that we can solve the most difficult tasks and that we will never back down because no force can divide us,” he said on television.
Even if the master of the Kremlin, who announced in December that he would run in the presidential election scheduled for March 17, 2024, did not directly mention the conflict in Ukraine, which began almost two years ago, he did several allusions, for example paying homage to the soldiers, “our heroes”. But unlike last year, when the Russian president appeared flanked by soldiers in uniform, this time he proclaimed that the year 2024 would be that of “family”, in front of the traditional background of the Kremlin.
In 2023, “we firmly defended our national interests, our freedom and our security, our values”, he said in this speech broadcast first in the Russian Far East, taking into account the difference in time zones with Moscow. The president assured that Russia, which is experiencing “a historic phase”, would be “even stronger” next year. During his wishes last year, Vladimir Putin assured that “moral and historical correctness” was “on the side” of Russia.
China will “surely be reunified”, says Xi Jinping
“All Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common goal and share the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” President Xi Jinping said in his New Year speech, broadcast on the official CCTV channel. During the Chinese leader’s meeting with the President of the United States in mid-November, Xi Jinping had already deemed the reunification of Taiwan “inevitable”.
China considers Taiwan as a province that it has not yet succeeded in reunifying with the rest of its territory since the end of the civil war in 1949. Beijing, which has not given up on conquering the island by force , has exerted strong military and economic pressure on the island since Tsai Ing-wen, from the Progressive Democratic Party (DPP), came to power in 2016. Taiwan will also experience a crucial presidential election on January 13, 2024.
Xi Jinping also estimated that relations between Beijing and Moscow had strengthened in 2023. Looking back on the past year with his Russian counterpart, the Chinese president clarified that “the material bases and in public opinion of our relationship are become stronger,” according to state channel CCTV.
“In the face of changes not seen in a century and a turbulent regional and international situation, China-Russia relations have maintained healthy and stable development and progressed steadily in the right direction,” Xi Jinping said. “Under our joint leadership, political mutual trust between the two sides has deepened, our strategic coordination has been strengthened, and mutually beneficial cooperation has continued to produce new results,” said the Chinese leader who also praised, more generally, a Chinese economy “more resilient and more dynamic than previously”.