Xi's visits can help ease West's anxiety

The insight of the Greek historian Thucydides on the Peloponnesian conflict is often quoted in reference to the relations between China and the West: "Athens' rise and the alarm it inspired in Lacedaemon made war inevitable."

In the context of the 21st century global politics, as the Chinese renaissance affirms itself as the world's major factor of change, the apprehension it generates around China and, beyond, in the West, has to be defeated before it induces the follies of confrontation.

On the occasion of Xi Jinping's first visit abroad as the president of the People's Republic of China, a trip organized around a meeting in Moscow with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the Fifth BRICS Summit in South Africa, while observers will certainly insist on the collective rise of the non-Western world, the new Chinese leader could also use this moment of international exposure to send long term messages of cooperation and inclusiveness apt to address the growing Western anxiety. Whatever the itinerary, Xi's inaugural foreign trip, at the opposite of being divisive, will display the strongest possible support for a more cohesive international community.