PM Pedro Sánchez's Tsinghua Speech: A Masterclass in Diplomatic Rhetoric

On Monday evening after dinner, I met my good friend Julio for a quick beer before a scheduled phone call. As a Spaniard working in Beijing as an EU diplomat, Julio had been invited to attend Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s speech at Tsinghua, and gave me an excellent and detailed account of it that had me eager to read it. I looked around for a copy of it online, but was only able at last to find one this morning. The translation below comes from La Moncloa and was translated from the original Spanish by Claude, and has not been checked by a native Spanish-speaker, so apologies for any mistakes or inelegant renderings.

It’s a marvel of the rhetorical art. The Mateo Ricci cartographic framing of it — he leads with and, in a coda, comes back to the famous Jesuit who arrived in China in the late 16th century — was inspired, and I doff my hat and sweep it low to the speechwriter who came up with it. It’s such a perfect device to talk about geographic recentering, perspectival change, and cultural cross-pollination.

He moves into a well-chosen set of riffs on the Spanish empire and China, reminding his audience that the two civilizations were already in active commercial exchange during the Ming dynasty — and doing so in a way that subtly flatters Chinese historical self-understanding. He’s not condescendingly acknowledging China’s “rise”; but something more like, you were already great, and we knew it. That’s a meaningful distinction, and a Chinese academic audience would feel it immediately.

The speech’s structural architecture is where the real rhetorical craft lies. Sánchez builds his argument around three pillars — multilateralism, balanced trade, and the provision of global public goods — and in doing so he pulls off something fairly difficult: he delivers pointed criticisms of Chinese behavior while keeping the overall register warm, collegial, even admiring. Think of it less as a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, and more as a pill wrapped in jamon iberico. The treat is real, the medicine is real, and the patient swallows both.

The multilateralism pillar is the cleverest, because it hands Beijing something it genuinely wants — a full-throated European endorsement of multipolarity and a call for Western powers to relinquish their outsized representation in global institutions in favor of the Global South — while simultaneously making the implicit argument that China, as a major beneficiary of the rules-based order, has obligations to uphold it. The call for stronger multilateral institutions is music to Beijing’s ears; the implication that this includes adherence to international law in Ukraine is the catch. But Sánchez buries the Ukraine needle so deftly between layers of warm affirmation that it barely registers as a rebuke. He doesn’t say China should pressure Russia; he says China should do what it is already doing — demanding that international law be respected — only more. It is criticism structured as encouragement, which is perhaps the most face-saving form criticism can take.

The trade imbalance section is the speech’s most exposed nerve, and Sánchez handles it with impressive care. He arrives at it only after having established himself as a genuine believer in multipolarity and a critic of Western insularity — in other words, after having demonstrated that he is not lecturing from a position of assumed superiority. By the time he mentions that Spain’s trade deficit with China represents 74% of the country’s total deficit, my sense is he has earned enough goodwill in the room to say it plainly. And he frames it not as an accusation but as a structural problem that threatens the very multipolar order he and his hosts both profess to want. The logic is elegant: protectionism and isolationism (read: rightwing populism) in Europe are fed by trade imbalances; trade imbalances are therefore a threat to Chinese interests too. You, Beijing, have a stake in fixing this.

The closing Ricci reprise is beautifully done. It’s a callback that gives the speech a satisfying circularity. But the masterstroke is the invocation of the Artemis mission. Sánchez conjures the image of astronauts seeing the Earth as a borderless blue sphere from a distance no human had previously achieved, and uses it to make a case for cooperation and shared planetary stewardship. What he conspicuously does not say is that Artemis is a NASA program — which is to say, an American program — and that China is explicitly excluded from it because of the damn 2011 Wolf Amendment. Whether by design or by inspired omission, the effect is to lift a symbol of American technological ambition and redeploy it in service of a speech about multilateral cooperation delivered in Beijing. The Americans built the rocket; the Spanish Prime Minister pocketed the metaphor. Bravo.

The whole performance reflects a Spain — and by extension, perhaps a Europe — that is thinking carefully about how to navigate this post-Rupture world in which Washington’s reliability can no longer be assumed, and in which Beijing’s partnership, however complicated, cannot be refused. Sánchez came to Tsinghua to persuade rather than to lecture, and to find ground rather than draw lines. Whether or not the Chinese side found it equally compelling, as a piece of diplomatic rhetoric it deserves to be read with attention and, yes, a measure of admiration. What are you hearing from your Chinese interlocutors and out there on Chinese social media?

Here’s the speech:

Speech by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez

Tsinghua University, Beijing, 13 April 2026

Respected President and Chancellor of Tsinghua University,

Professors,

Students of Tsinghua University,

Da jia hao.

It is a true honor to be in this temple of knowledge. A global reference in teaching and research. A place where human beings explore the limits of science and our imagination. And where we also find, at those limits, new ways of cooperating and of prospering.

Allow me to begin by speaking precisely about that: about science, and also about imagination. With a story that took place not far from here, more than four centuries ago.

In 1583, an Italian Jesuit named Matteo Ricci arrived in China. In his austere luggage, he carried several books, an astrolabe, and a map of the world.

It was a European map. Correct in its proportions, highly advanced in its level of detail, but biased in its perspective. Because what it did was show the world as the West saw it: with Europe at the center and Asia on its right margin. At the ends of the earth. Upon seeing it, the cartographers of the imperial court asked the Jesuit why China appeared at that far edge of the map. And the European scholar understood for the first time that the Mediterranean Sea was the center of his world, but not of others’. Every world had its own center, and so Matteo Ricci remade his map entirely. This time, using the Pacific Ocean as its axis and capturing within it the entire Eurasian continent.

More than 400 years have passed since then — more than 400 years. And yet there are still, unfortunately, people who continue to see the world as it appeared in that first map, distorted by Ricci. I say distorted because I know the world was not like that. I know that in the year 1583, China was already a great power representing one quarter of the world’s population and global GDP. That it traded with half the planet. And that it led science and technology in many fields.

I know this because at that time, Spain — as the University President has kindly reminded us — was also a great empire. An empire that exchanged raw materials and manufactured goods with the Ming Dynasty through the Manila corridor. And that crossed the oceans with magnetic compasses, muskets, and sternpost rudders — all technologies of Chinese origin.

The Spain of that era knew of China’s greatness. It knew that Beijing was not on the periphery of the world, but was one of its centers.

And present-day Spain knows this too. It knows that China is rebuilding its greatness. That it is already the world’s leading exporter of goods and fourth in services. That its industry and science are transforming the fight against global warming and reducing poverty. And that, as such, China is called to play an essential role in the future of the world.

That is why, for me, dear President, professors, it is a genuine honor to address this center of thought as a Spaniard, and also as a European.

There are those who insist on interpreting reality in zero-sum terms. On narrating the growth of some as a loss for the rest. Or on arguing that deepening certain relationships implies renouncing others.

But I believe this reading is not only wrong. It is also dangerous, because it is paralyzing. Because it makes us prisoners of the past and limits the possibilities the future offers us. Because it falls into the error of assuming that the world we see — the world of old maps — is the only possible world.

In my view, what is happening today is not a transfer of hegemonies. It is a multiplication of poles — not only of power, but also of prosperity. And this is wonderful news for Europe. Because for the first time in contemporary history, progress is germinating simultaneously in many places across the planet. Places, moreover, that do not resemble one another. That do not share the same culture. Nor the same political system, nor the same social conditions. And that do not need to ask anyone’s permission to grow. This is happening here in China, in Asia. But also on the African continent, and in a region very close to Spain: Latin America.

The multipolarity I describe is not a hypothesis. It is not a wish either. It is already a reality. The new reality in which the world lives. And therefore we must accept it. We cannot change it. We can only choose between denying it or embracing it.

And the Government of Spain — all of Spanish society — chooses to embrace it. It does so from realism, also from pragmatism, and without any doubt from responsibility. But I would like to underscore that we do so also from hope. Because we believe that if Spain, Europe, and China were able to prosper together in the past, there are no reasons to think we cannot do so again.

Evidently, it will not be easy. We know that. There are matters that also divide us. Issues on which we do not share the same view. In which we compete. Where we also disagree. Points on which we will not agree — perhaps we will never manage to agree.

But humanity advances when we build upon what unites us. Not when we deepen the trenches that divide us. With that spirit we work from Spain with many other countries — Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico. And of course also in our relations with China.

Spain’s proposal, therefore, is clear: to build a relationship based on mutual respect. A respect that allows us, among other things, to cooperate in every possible domain. To compete where necessary. And to manage our differences when they are unavoidable.

And Spain defends this same vision everywhere in the world and in every capital. It does so in Madrid, our capital. In Brussels, the capital of Europe. And it does so in the rest of the world in the same way.

But for that vision to work, and for the world to prosper under the new multipolar order, we will need three very important things in the months and years ahead. Three elements I would like to share with all of you.

The first is that efficient multipolarity is not possible without a strengthened multilateralism.

There are those who believe the multilateral system is dead. We are seeing, unfortunately, many cases in the media — crises, wars taking place in the world. They think that indeed, this multilateral world is dead, that it belongs to the past. And I want to say here that I deeply disagree with that analysis. And I do so forcefully.

I believe that the instruments of global governance functioned in the twentieth century and are more necessary today than ever. That rules and cross-border cooperation are the only tools that will allow humanity to overcome the climate emergency and the other challenges of this era.

I believe the multipolar world needs a robust multilateral system — not to impose a single vision, but to turn the crucible of our perspectives into a strength for all of humanity. Not to eliminate our differences, but to deal with them peacefully and with respect.

Because multipolarity without rules leads to rivalry, and from rivalry only wars, trade conflicts, and ruin arise.

That is why Spain calls for a profound renewal of the multilateral architecture. We must make it more efficient, more transparent, more accountable, and also more inclusive and plural.

Because if multilateralism wishes to remain useful, it must change and better reflect the balances of power and the sensibilities of today’s world. We cannot allow the past to suffocate the future of multilateral bodies.

This is why I believe the West must relinquish part of its share of representation in favor of global stability and the trust of countries in the Global South.

This is why I believe we must transform the United Nations as soon as possible — with a much stronger General Assembly, a more representative Security Council, and a more democratic decision-making system in which all regions truly have a voice and a vote, and middle powers can also play a unifying and harmonizing role, which is what is expected of them.

And from Spain we also believe it would be fitting that, for the first time in history, a woman should lead the United Nations Secretariat.

The second element I wish to share with you is that this new multipolar order must function with trade relations that are balanced and reciprocal. We cannot move from the imbalances of the twentieth century to different ones in the twenty-first.

For that development to be stable, sustainable, and healthy, the multipolar order will need a more horizontal and fairer economy — one in which there are no losing regions and winning ones, but truly global supply chains that create employment and wealth at every latitude of the planet and share negative externalities proportionately.

Why do I say this? Because the European Union is doing its part. One can debate whether it does so quickly enough or slowly, with difficulties — certainly, I acknowledge that — but it is doing its part.

In the last decade alone, we have signed trade agreements with 25 countries. We have increased our imports from the so-called Global South by 80%, and we have created more than 25 million jobs annually outside our borders.

We need China to do the same. To open up, so that Europe does not have to close down. To help us correct the current trade deficit we have with it.

A deficit that is not balanced — one that grew again by 18% just last year — and that is unsustainable for our societies in the medium and long term. It is unsustainable because of the isolationist movements it fuels and the grievances and social hardship it causes. To give you a sense of scale: our trade deficit with China already represents 74% of our country’s total deficit.

I therefore believe it is important that we correct this, that we cooperate, and that we jointly build a globalized, balanced economy that generates shared prosperity.

The third element we will need for the multipolar order to function is greater engagement by the major and middle powers in managing and providing what academics call global public goods — for example, the fight against climate change, security, defense, and the struggle against inequality.

In short, emerging powers and established powers alike must provide these global public goods.

Size implies not only power, but also a responsibility that cannot be delegated. Because the great problems of the twenty-first century do not require visas — they cross borders and belong to all of us.

I think, for example, of the fight against climate change, or the challenges posed by global health, the development of responsible artificial intelligence, nuclear arms control, the eradication of poverty, and the safeguarding — as I mentioned — of global health. These are areas in which funding has fallen by 23% in just the past year — 23%.

Without the collaboration of the great powers, and of course China, these objectives are not merely difficult — they are simply unachievable. I know China is fully aware of this and is doing a great deal, and I welcome that. But I believe China can do more. For example, by demanding — as it is already doing — that international law be respected and that the conflicts in Lebanon, Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, and also Ukraine come to an end. Because international law is the foundation of everything. By sharing its technology with the most disadvantaged countries. By canceling debt and contributing to the financing of the system through participation in debt-swap mechanisms.

Naturally, Europe will also have to redouble its efforts, especially now that the United States has decided to withdraw from many of these fronts. Europe’s contribution is and will be essential. I therefore humbly ask that you see it in the same light — that you do not fall into Matteo Ricci’s error and allow yourselves to be deceived by maps.

Because Europe may appear small on a world map, but in reality it is quite the opposite. The figures are these: the European Union is at this moment the world’s largest trading bloc and the second largest economy. It is also the top recipient of foreign direct investment. It is the second most innovative ecosystem. It has a highly qualified workforce. It is the second most productive economy on the planet and the first in levels of life satisfaction, social cohesion, and wellbeing.

I do not say this to boast, nor to conceal our many shortcomings — of which we have plenty. What I wish to say is that Europe is a key actor in the stability, prosperity, and peace of the world, and that without a united Europe — and therefore without a fragmented one — there can be no stable international order and no prosperous future for humanity. Nor can there be one without the participation of this great country, China. That is why we are called to understand one another and to cooperate.

Dear professors and students, let me now conclude.

Four centuries after Matteo Ricci arrived in China and had to correct his map, humanity is still searching for the most accurate angle from which to see the world as it truly is — not as power or prejudice dictates.

A few days ago, four American astronauts traveled farther from the Earth than any human being has ever done. And from there, they obtained perhaps that angle. From there, they saw the Earth for what it truly is: a sphere with no edges and no borders.

A unique, unrepeatable blue sphere, in the most hostile environment to life that could possibly exist. We human beings are the result of that miracle. Perhaps the only such miracle in the universe. And therefore our duty is to understand one another and to cooperate so that this miracle may continue to flourish.

Thank you very much. Xie xie.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​