Cold Shoulders and Effusive Smiles in Beijing's Diplomatic Wonderland
From Cheshire Cat-like grins to gloom invoking Eeyore the donkey, the diplomatic menagerie surrounding an annual Asia-Pacific summit meeting left observers with a "through the looking glass" sense of the absurd.
A week of summitry in Beijing offered insights into the diplomatic relationships -- strained as well as warm -- and the shifting dynamics of power between globetrotting leaders.
Ahead of a private dinner at the exclusive Zhongnanhai leadership compound near the Forbidden City, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping strolled through the grounds each accompanied only by a single aide, and neither of them in a tie, as the host pointed out ornate architectural features.
But despite their open collars they still appeared buttoned up, and while Obama touched Xi's shoulder at the opening of Wednesday's press conference, when they made a joint climate announcement, they remained far apart on several other issues.
Earlier, Beijing put on a spectacular welcome ceremony for the arriving leaders, who wore Chinese-style tunics.
But Obama's noticeable chewing of what was widely believed to be nicotine gum riled Chinese netizens, who saw it as disrespectful.
Winter is coming to the Chinese capital, and at a fireworks display Russia's Vladimir Putin briefly slipped a brown blanket over the shoulders of Xi's wife Peng Liyuan -- a former People's Liberation Army singer who held a general's rank.
Peng gave the gesture a cold shoulder, immediately standing up to have her aides replace it with her own rather more stylish black coat, but the moment still provoked online praise for Putin's gallantry -- along with lurid reports that the divorced Russian leader was "hitting on" her.
"Putin is a real lady killer," said one Chinese poster, "always being very nice to other people's wives".
Relations between the men from Moscow and Washington were frostier, though, with Obama barely responding when Putin said to him "It's beautiful, isn't it?" as they walked, on either side of Xi, into a colonnaded teakwood room with elaborate wall carvings and an inlaid ceiling.
They met three times for a total of 15 to 20 minutes during the day, a White House official said, with some of their most intense disagreements -- including Ukraine and Syria -- on the agenda.
For sheer effusiveness there was little to match Abbott's ecstatic grin as he clasped Xi's hand for several seconds when the Chinese leader welcomed him to the gathering of 21 member economies which range from Peru to Papua New Guinea.
But the most awkward of all the encounters was undoubtedly Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's handshake at their long-awaited first official summit meeting in Beijing on Monday.
It came as the two countries appeared to be making efforts to reduce high tensions over Japanese aggression in World War II and competing claims to a set of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
Xi did not smile or speak, turning away from his visitor to face the cameras even before the translator had finished speaking, and looked distinctly unimpressed.
Netizens quickly compared the pair to Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore -- Abe taking the role of the miserable, downtrodden donkey of the AA Milne novels -- drawing on last year's comparisons with Xi and Obama at Sunnylands in California, when the U.S. President was cast as Tigger.
"We can see that both leaders are doing their best to look bored and disinterested -- in effect saying, 'This is not a big deal'," body language expert Nick Morgan told AFP.
"This is a low-trust, cold greeting. This is not the greeting, obviously, of two old friends! And second, the Chinese leader is taking up more space; he is dominant. He has invaded the Japanese leader's 'territory' -- his hand reaches further into the personal space of the other.
"Point one to the Chinese. But it's a long game both are playing."
