Seems like a tempest in a teapot to me. Can anyone explain whats wrong with a gentlemen assisting a lady with a shawl?
Geez, check out this blatantlymisleading freeze frame.
Here it is in context. Completely relaxed moment. Putin has a heavy jacket on too.It must have been cold.
Whats up with this? Do the Chinese have some phobia about being offered a shawl? 
btw, Putin must of been in a good mood. He even gave Obama a pat on the shoulder.
I get the vague sense that it’s a more intimate act than we might perceive… that only a husband or family member should do so.
It seems like just a friendly gesture to Westerners and I’m sure Putin meant it that way. But apparently it’s perceived differently in China.
From what I’m reading, in China doing things like this for a wife is considered part of the husband’s role. And that’s been reinforced lately because the Chinese media has made a point of showing Xi doing little personal services like this for Peng to reinforce their public image as China’s first couple.
So to Chinese eyes this was Putin doing something for Peng that people would normally see Xi doing - which made it seem a lot more intimate than was intended.
Yeah…I’m seconding this.
I’m a “westerner” living in a “Chinese” society…
**As a westerner, **I would think nothing of offering my coat to a friend - even to the extent of “forcing” it on her IF I knew she was cold and just being polite to refuse. However, as a “westerner” I would never place my coat around an "acquaintance, or worse, the wife of a business contact without first asking very politely for permission. It strikes me as rather presumptuous. I also feel, that in this sort of situation at an International Political summit, it is something of a “power play” for a foreign leader to “force” a jacket on another leaders wife (it seems obvious he didn’t ask / offfer) - it seems at best insensitive, and at worst a rather deliberate insult / attempt to usurp the power of China’s leader.
In short - I can see why the censors would be pissed, think annoyance on the part of China would be fully justified and also think the China first lady handled it with decorum. Not to mention that Putin is being an overbearing boor.
That clears it up nicely. Thank you for setting me straight.
I think it’s sort of like when Dubya gave the German president a shoulder massage that time. It implied a level of intimacy that was not there.
The shawl gesture. The pat on Obama’s shoulder…
Russians can be very charming and disarming in this respect. It’s usually quite genuine and equally calculating.
And then come the foot massages.
…in the Turkish baths.
As a female Westerner living in a Western society, if a guy who’s not allowed to take them off put clothes on me I’d be pretty pissed. But then, Putin has long struck me as one of those people who overstep other people’s boundaries all the time and if you say anything, it’s you who is being “too sensitive”, he was “just being friendly!”
This was political theater on a world stage. It will play well at home for him. Even better if the west continues to react provincially.
I think even in the West, if a woman’s husband (or gay man’s husband for that matter) is sitting right there then taking the liberty of doing his manly/spousal chivalrous duty is insulting and in Putin’s case, I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t a deliberate case of pissing on another man’s leg, as it were.
