Mandatory stop and visit in Beijing

China and its President Xi Jinping are displaying an unusual diplomatic and economic activity, which definitively confirms the pre-eminent role to which the great emerging superpower has jumped. One after another, the leaders of countries and regional groupings of all stripes visit Beijing to try to win the favor of the powerful guide of China's destiny and, consequently, of a large part of the world. 
Xi Jinping gets first-hand information, inquires and warns, thus impressing on public opinion that the world cannot go on without his approval. Among the visitors, there is the logical diversity of objectives, from those who consider themselves fully satisfied with getting a photo with such a powerful host, to those who aspire to push him to initiatives that tend to the solution of the general problems that beset to a greater or lesser extent the whole of humanity. 
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, made a stopover and spent the night in Beijing, taking into account the warning of his European colleagues that he should not be the voice of the EU. Bilaterally, beyond the good words, the prospects for trade between the two countries, clearly unfavorable for Spain, did not improve either.
In joint and separate interviews, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, and the French Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, also failed to achieve anything substantial in their main declared objective: "to make Russia see reason", so that Vladimir Putin is convinced once and for all that he will not win the war in Ukraine, and that prolonging the hostilities, in addition to destruction and suffering, will make the presumed agreement with which the war is to be settled increasingly difficult.

With his usual ambiguity, Xi Jinping did not commit himself to anything, not even to talk to the Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelenski, dismissing the matter with "I will call him when the conditions are right", an implicit recognition in passing that the war arsenal being used up in the sticky, already thawed black lands of Ukraine is still far from being exhausted. 
If Von der Leyen insisted that the imbalance of 400 billion euros in the annual EU-China trade flow is unaffordable for "The 27", Macron did not make the trip in vain since he sponsored with XI the signing of important contracts, which in the opinion of the French leader "will further strengthen cooperation between France and China". 

New Iran-Saudi Arabia relations, sponsored by China

The stopover in Beijing of the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Farhan, and Iran, Hossein Amirabdollahian, was of the utmost importance. Both staged precisely in the Chinese capital the resumption of their diplomatic relations and the reopening of their respective embassies, making it clear by choosing this scenario that they have all the blessings and congratulations of China, which thus scores one of its greatest diplomatic successes in recent times. 
It also means that Xi Jinping will pay special attention to what happens from now on in the Middle East region. It is easy to deduce that the first consequence of this renewed Iranian-Saudi "friendship" is that both will join forces to make life less easy for the West. The first blow has been the cut in the daily volume of OPEC+ oil production and the consequent increase in the price per barrel to be paid by the consuming countries. The second blow also affects the geopolitics of the region, and more specifically the Abraham Accords, a framework of cooperation that has so far enabled the Emirates, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan to formalize their relations with Israel. It is doubtful whether Arabia, after the re-establishment of relations with Iran, will continue along this path, as was predicted from the very inception of the Agreements, backed by the United States. 
The long war in Yemen and even the unresolved war in Syria point to different developments than when Iranians and Saudis supported different sides in these conflicts. Incidentally, both sides are demonstrating to the world that they at least recognize China's ascendancy and superiority as an arbiter and mediating power in these and other conflicts. This consideration will also necessarily lead to stronger strategic ties between Tehran and Riyadh and Beijing. 
Xi is now waiting for Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, to recover from his pneumonia and to visit him soon in the Chinese capital. A meeting all the more decisive as the leader and one of the creators of the so-called Sao Paulo Forum maintains his ascendancy and moral authority over a Latin America sliding to the left, including the extreme left, and above all with a growing dependence on Chinese imports and investments, which have slowly but surely displaced those of the European Union, which until yesterday enjoyed the primacy of relations between the two shores of the Atlantic.