Diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics by a number of countries, including the United States, represents an attempt to hold back China's development, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd December, 2021) Diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics by a number of countries, including the United States, represents an attempt to hold back China's development, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
"What caused this? (I mean) the diplomatic, political boycott of China. It is an attempt to curb the development of the People's Republic of China. There are no other motivations and there cannot be such," Putin said during an annual end-of-year press conference.
The president stressed that one of the former US presidents told him that the blockade of the Olympics in Los Angeles and in Moscow had been a huge mistake.
"Here the US continues to make the same mistake," Putin noted.
In addition, the Russian president said that it was impossible to contain Beijing's development and expressed his confidence that China would inevitably become the world's first economy.
"They cannot hold back the development of China. The Chinese economy is already larger than the US one in terms of purchasing power parity. China will inevitably become the world's top economy in all other respects. But you have to understand this," Putin said.
