Slightly overshadowed by COP27 on climate change and COP15 to be held in Montreal in December on biodiversity, China currently chairs COP14 on the protection of wetlands. This officially takes place from November 5 to 13 in Wuhan (China) but also in Geneva, Beijing’s zero Covid policy deterring almost all foreign speakers from traveling to China.
As a sign of the importance of the subject for Beijing, President Xi Jinping sent a message to the participants at the opening of their work. Similarly, Beijing passed on Sunday a “Wuhan Declaration”. She regrets that, despite the commitments made by the international community at Ramsar, in Iran, in 1971, “the extent of natural wetlands has shrunk by 35%, resulting in the loss of irreplaceable ecosystems”. Stakeholders “will strive to take all appropriate measures to halt and reverse the loss of wetlands globally”.
The text “recognizes the important role played by civil society and non-governmental stakeholders, in particular women and young people, as well as local communities, in the implementation of the convention” of Ramsar. A paragraph not totally trivial from the pen of China.
Support for Russia
But the ministerial conference held on Sunday by video gave rise to an incident. According to our information, China, which translated the speeches into different languages, censored the passages concerning Ukraine which appeared in two speeches: that of the representative of France, made by the consul general in Wuhan, and that of the Ambassador of Slovenia, carried out from Geneva. The French text said: “Wetlands are among the richest ecosystems on the planet. They are also among the most endangered. Crises do not spare them. Conflicts do not spare them. In this respect, France condemns in the strongest terms the unprovoked and unjustified aggression perpetrated against Ukraine. It constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.. This passage has not only not been translated into Chinese or English, but the interpreters would have substituted innocuous remarks for it.
On October 27, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, spoke by telephone with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. “China will firmly support the Russian side, under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, to unite and lead the Russian people to overcome difficulties and eliminate disturbances, achieve strategic development goals and improve the place of the great power of Russia on the international scene”, says the Chinese account.