00:00And we know President Vladimir Putin, who you just mentioned, is also attending.
00:05So the world will really be interested in the seating arrangements and the behind the scenes talks.
00:12So what can we actually expect, John?
00:15Well, the seating arrangements, I think, are predictable.
00:18The Chinese are stick to protocol and you will see them apply an almost mathematical formula to the seating on the podium.
00:25The real news is what happens behind the scene.
00:28This is the first time I think ever that Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been together.
00:37And I think for Xi, the temptation to have a trilateral meeting of the three will be irresistible.
00:44At that meeting, I suspect that he will do two things.
00:47Firstly, he will remind both Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin that China has power of life and death over both their countries.
00:55If China withdraws support from Russia, its war machine drives to a halt.
00:59If China withdraws support from North Korea, its economy collapses.
01:03That will be the first thing.
01:04The second thing is that China really does not like Putin's war against Ukraine.
01:10It's messy.
01:11It's disruptive.
01:12It's expensive.
01:13It weakens a key Chinese ally.
01:15And it costs a lot of lives.
01:16And one of the fascinating possible outcomes of this is that whereas Donald Trump has manifestly failed to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine,
01:26the Xi Jinping, who has got many more levers over Russia than Trump ever had, that he might actually move to do just that, perhaps even apply for a Nobel Peace Prize.
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