BEIJING—A fleeting exchange between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin at a Beijing convention center on Monday offered a peek into the awkwardness that can prevail when world leaders are gathered in one place.
Following Chinese leader Xi Jinping into an ornate room, Mr. Putin turned his head in the direction of his U.S. counterpart and remarked, in English, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Mr. Obama coolly agreed without looking at Mr. Putin, ignoring a slap on the back from the Russian leader as the pair prepared to take their seats on either side of their Chinese host, according to reporters who witnessed the scene.
It was hardly the only chilly encounter to emerge as 19 leaders gathered for the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which Beijing was hosting for the first time.
Few moments at the summit were colder than a handshake between Mr. Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday. State broadcaster footage showed a stone-faced Mr. Xi turning to face the cameras before Mr. Abe’s interpreter was finished translating his greeting.
Mr. Xi looked “like a man meeting his ex-wife’s new boyfriend,” said John Delury, a professor at South Korea’s Yonsei University. A cartoon version of the encounter, depicting Mr. Xi as a put-upon Winnie the Pooh limply pressing the flesh with a hapless Eeyore, quickly went viral on Chinese social media.
President Obama reacts coolly to Mr. Putin’s pat on the back. ALEXEY DRUGINYN/RIA NOVOSTI/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Awkward moments in diplomacy can occur even when ties between countries are friendly, as Mr. Putin demonstrated before Monday night’s fireworks display shown live on China’s state broadcaster. Seated next to Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan in an outdoor viewing area, the Russian leader draped a garment over her shoulders, only to watch her remove it and hand it to an attendant moments later.
“The charisma of China’s first lady can’t be resisted, and it conquers Putin,” went one of a number of responses online.
China’s leaders have gone out of their way to make the APEC event memorable. Factories were shut down to ensure blue skies, a brand-new exhibition center was built an hour’s drive north of the city, and famed Chinese film director Zhang Yimou was enlisted to choreograph a welcome ceremony replete with fireworks and ethnic-minority dancers.
The pageantry was impressive, even by Beijing standards and particularly for an event normally remembered chiefly for the traditional host-country outfits the attendees wear. But the summit also made it clear, sometimes glaringly so, how ill at ease many of the region’s leaders feel in each other’s company.
Relations between Presidents Obama and Putin, never particularly warm, have grown only more frigid following events in Ukraine.
Philippines leader Benigno Aquino III has irritated by Mr. Xi by challenging China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea with a tiny navy patched together out of U.S. castoffs.
Mr. Abe, meanwhile, has angered both Mr. Xi and South Korean leader Park Geun-hye on a range of issues having to do with Japan’s wartime history and claims to islands that Beijing and Seoul also claim.
After his encounter with Mr. Abe, Mr. Xi looked similarly grim in a photo op with Mr. Aquino before Monday night’s welcome banquet. It came as the invited leaders paraded across a stage at the National Aquatics Center dressed in stylized Chinese tunics with standing collars that some commentators likened to the uniforms worn by characters in the 1990s TV show “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
By contrast, when Mr. Putin swaggered across the stage, Mr. Xi smiled and gestured at their identical purple tunics as if it were a coincidence they matched.
Mr. Abe and Ms. Park, meanwhile, didn’t schedule a formal meeting, though Chinese organizers sat them next to each other at Monday’s welcome banquet. The pair used the unplanned opportunity to discuss a “broad range of topics,” according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.
Analysts and former diplomats cautioned against reading too much into the stiff encounters, noting that such meetings are often scripted and calculated to appeal to audiences back home.
“Showmanship rules,” said Donald Keyser, a retired State Department official who prepared briefing books for Ronald Reagan ’s visit to China in 1984. “If there are not actually rehearsals, there will certainly be discussion of such things as body language, whether to smile or not, what kind of handshake to attempt.”
Mr. Keyser noted that the chill between Messrs. Xi and Abe, who met for less than 30 minutes following their handshake, appeared to have dissipated somewhat when they stood together before the cameras again on Tuesday.
Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Sydney and a former British diplomat in Beijing, said part of the awkwardness in Beijing may have been the result of China’s approach to the handshake protocol, which tends to be “very mechanical.”
That’s not necessarily a bad thing when compared with the approach of British Prime Minister David Cameron , according to Mr. Brown. “He tends to cover female leaders with slobbering kisses,” he said. “So I guess we have to thank the Chinese leaders for saving us from that.”
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