Xi's "tea diplomacy": brewing harmony

by Xinhua writer He Fei

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for tea at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday evening, adding a warm personal touch to the conclusion of Putin's 25th visit to China.

This was the second tea gathering Xi had arranged for a visiting head of state in just a few days. Earlier during U.S. President Donald Trump's widely-watched state visit to China, Xi invited Trump to the Zhongnanhai compound, where they took a leisurely stroll before sitting down for private talks over tea.

While cultural elements often feature in Xi's diplomatic interactions with world leaders, chats over tea have emerged as a signature part of his diplomatic style for cultivating personal rapport with visiting dignitaries.

TEA CHATS

Over tea served in bright yellow porcelain tea sets, Xi and Putin reflected on the outcomes of the visit and envisioned the future development of bilateral cooperation.

Xi expressed his confidence that with unremitting efforts from both sides, China-Russia relations will surely build on the momentum of high-quality development and scale new heights.

Voicing thanks to Xi, Putin described his tightly scheduled visit as "successful" and "fruitful." Earlier in the day, the two leaders agreed on further extending the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, signed 25 years ago. They also witnessed the signing of 20 cooperation documents ranging from economy and trade to media and education.

This was not the first tea chat between the two presidents. Two years ago, Xi and Putin met over tea by the water at Zhongnanhai, with both of them foregoing ties in a relaxed atmosphere.

During his visits abroad, Xi was also invited by foreign leaders for chats over tea, notably in countries with a shared tea-drinking culture. When he travelled to Moscow in May last year, he joined Putin for a tea chat at the Kremlin.

A known tea connoisseur, Xi views the beverage as more than just a personal preference. Originating in China and enjoyed globally, tea serves as a crucial ambassador of Chinese culture -- a sentiment the president frequently expresses.

Tea symbolizes hospitality and respect, creating a calm and refined atmosphere for open dialogue. Besides Putin, many other foreign leaders have attended Xi's tea sessions, including French President Emmanuel Macron and top Vietnamese leader To Lam.

Xi often presents premium tea and exquisite Chinese tea sets as diplomatic gifts to foreign guests at high-profile gatherings hosted by China. At the 2017 BRICS Summit in Xiamen, for instance, he gifted curated boxes containing five representative, premium tea varieties from east China's Fujian Province.

A TEA CONNOISSEUR

A champion of traditional culture, Xi has taken a keen personal interest in the growth of China's tea industry and frequently encourages tea-centric cultural exchanges.

Fujian, where Xi served as a local official early in his career, boasts a tea-growing history of more than 1,600 years and produces a diverse array of varieties, including black, white and oolong tea.

"I worked in Fujian Province for 17 and a half years," Xi once said. "During my years there, I mainly drank Gongfu tea," he added, referring to the traditional Chinese brewing method known for revealing the evolving flavors of the tea leaves from one infusion to the next. "But I didn't have that much leisure time," he joked.

Decades of local governance experience in Fujian and later in east China's Zhejiang Province, famed for its Longjing tea, equipped Xi with a profound, first-hand insight into tea culture and the industry.

In 1988, Xi became the party chief of Ningde, then an underdeveloped prefecture in Fujian. A grounded and dedicated local official in his thirties, he traveled extensively across Ningde's counties and townships, recognizing how the humble tea leaf could help alleviate poverty and unlock local economic potential.

Tanyang, a tea-growing village in the prefecture, is the cradle of a black tea that gained international renown more than a century ago and was once favored by the British royal family.

Villagers recalled that Xi arrived plainly dressed and wore a warm smile throughout his first visit to Tanyang. He asked detailed questions about tea planting and processing while speaking with the village chief, then climbed a nearby tea-covered hill in a light rain, his shoes caked in mud.

Over several follow-up visits, Xi championed scientific management techniques to upgrade tea yields and quality, urging locals to build a strong brand identity that would restore the tea's historic popularity. Today, Tanyang and dozens of neighboring villages have successfully cast off poverty, transformed by the economic power of their native tea leaves.

Throughout his subsequent tenures as provincial leader of Zhejiang and later as Chinese president, Xi has frequently inspected tea farms across various provinces. He has been pushing for coordinated efforts to promote tea culture, advance the industry, and integrate technology into the sector -- underscoring the beverage's vital role in China's cultural heritage, rural revitalization and green development.

BREWING HARMONY WITH TEA

Xi once offered an intriguing breakdown of the Chinese character for tea to reveal its rich cultural connotations. By separating its strokes, he illustrated how the character portrays a person nestled between grass above and a tree below -- a linguistic reflection of the ancient Chinese philosophy of harmony between humanity and nature.

For the Chinese leader, tea serves as more than a beverage that adds warmth to cordial bilateral talks; it is a medium through which diverse cultures engage and connect.

During a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, Xi recounted flourishing exchanges facilitated by tea along an ancient trade road.

"Around 400 years ago, the Great Tea Road that connected the two countries went past Kazan, through which tea leaves from China's Wuyi Mountain region found their way into many Russian households," Xi said.

The trade artery took shape in the 17th century and spanned about 13,000 km at its peak, bearing witness to the spread of tea culture for more than two centuries, and forging enduring bonds between peoples along the route.

"China says 'harmony in diversity,'" meaning "we can be different, but very importantly, we have to engage in a conversation -- tea symbolizes that," said Gary Sigley, a country and region studies specialist in the Australian Studies Center of Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Tea, as a bridge of dialogue, illustrates how distinctive cultures can enrich one another through reciprocal exchanges.

"China is the birthplace of tea, while Britain has elevated afternoon tea culture to its finest expression," Xi said in an address delivered at a banquet for his state visit to Britain in 2015.

Xi holds that civilizations are equal and inclusive. He once compared tea and beer to illustrate the harmonious coexistence of Eastern and Western civilizations.

"The Chinese people are fond of tea and Belgians love beer. To me, the moderate tea drinker and passionate beer lover represent two ways of understanding life and knowing the world, and I find them equally rewarding," he said when addressing the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, back in 2014.

Whether through the Chinese ideal of preserving harmony without uniformity or the Western emphasis on unity in diversity, the key, as Xi has said, is for all to "work together for all flowers of human civilization to blossom together." Enditem