#6
Putin Seen To 'Win Over' Beijing Student Audience
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
4 December 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Report by Vladislav Vorobyev:
"Speaking Chinese Is in Fashion. Vladimir Putin Apologises to Beijing University Students for Not Yet Being Able To Explain Himself in Their Native Language"

At least a thousand people had met in the big auditorium, lit by just eight lamps in the style of Chinese lanterns, of the Beijing university rector's building to hear Vladimir Putin. Although graduates of the old Soviet higher education establishments had also been invited to the meeting, there was still a majority of students in the audience.

Prior to the Russian president's arrival the public were entertained with Russian folk songs. The Chinese audience heard "Kalinka" and "Moscow nights". Outside, the smog was dense. People who could not get into the meeting were walking up and down under an open sky in respirators. The various university faculty buildings looked more like mirages with oriental motifs than a real educational institution. Before Vladimir Putin entered the auditorium, one of the professors read out instructions from the rostrum on the rules of behavior during the meeting. Among other things, those present were asked not to make jokes.

When they entered the auditorium the Russian president and the PRC chairman were greeted with prolonged and sustained applause. And when the Chinese leader responded by also clapping his hands, the noise became simply deafening. As host, Jiang Zemin was the first to speak. He referred to the Russians as "an eminent nation" which was constantly "building a new, great Russia".

The audience welcomed Vladimir Putin with no less enthusiasm than the PRC chairman. The president began by describing how last year, at Moscow State University, Jiang Zemin had talked with students in Russian: "I have to apologise. I am not yet able to address you in Chinese. Although I would be very pleased to be able to do so".

"In a short time", Putin continued, we have traveled a long way -- from stereotypes to mutual understanding and a high level of trust. From the most generalized understandings to relations of real strategic partnership". As he said, "we can and must depend on mutual support".

The president also told the students about his meeting the day before with new Chinese Communist Party Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao: "I believe that there is every possibility that we can establish equally good personal relations with the representatives of the 'fourth generation of leaders' as we have had with their predecessors". "The scale of the tasks that we are outlining today is huge", Putin stressed.

The meeting at Beijing university lasted for exactly an hour. Following his speech the Russian Federation president answered three questions -- there was simply no time for more in a program scheduled down to the minute. Nevertheless, this was long enough for the head of state to win over his audience. Putin's frank manner of speaking, to which oriental people are unaccustomed, served him well: The Chinese young people were enchanted. Recalling that Jiang Zemin not only spoke Russian but also knew verses by many Russian poets by heart, a woman student from the faculty of Russian philology asked the president how well he was acquainted with Chinese culture. "In the state leaders' club, as the young people say, in that constant get-together, Jiang Zemin is respected and even loved. I am never going to catch him up", Putin replied.

He told them once again about his daughter, who "quite unexpectedly" had began to study Chinese seriously. "For me", Putin stressed, "that is one more, very close channel of information about China". As if to confirm the student's words, Jiang Zemin began to speak in passable Russian: "The Russian president also speaks excellent German, and English".

Two other students had time to ask about the reforms in Russia and the president's attitude to the eastward expansion of NATO. Vladimir Putin was given a standing ovation. The Chinese cannot, by the way, be called an unemotional people: At the end of the meeting they applauded again, very loud and long. From Beijing university the Russian delegation set off for the Badalin section of the great wall of China. For us journalists a plane was already waiting to take us to Delhi. The Russian president's official visit to India began yesterday evening.

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