BEIJING (AP) — After a long absence from major foreign gatherings, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will leave his country’s COVID-19 bubble and venture next week into a radically replaced world marked by escalating confrontation.
Xi will attend the G20 assembly of trading and emerging countries in Indonesia, followed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand. He will meet personally with other leaders, and on Monday he added the U. S. president. U. S. President Joe Biden in his first meeting, face-to-face conversations since Biden took office in January 2021.
The Chinese leader has most commonly relied on video speeches to convey China’s message to the UN and other forums since 2020. The era saw a sharp deterioration in China’s relations with the West due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, the army’s threats against Taiwan, and Beijing’s tacit for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More broadly, China and the West are breaking apart. Usa. The US and Europe criticize China more critically, with Germany blocking investment in its companies, while Chinese leaders have shown their determination to go their own way.
Bruce Dickson, an expert on Chinese politics at George Washington University, described a “growing fear, concern and anxiety that China needs to be a spouse to other countries. He needs to advance his own agenda, regardless of the opposition. “
More moderate voices in Beijing and Washington advocating for greater relationship are being pushed aside. “It’s an effort to figure out who can devise the toughest policy to resist China’s efforts,” Dickson said.
After a state in neighboring Myanmar in January 2020, Xi remained in mainland China for more than two years.
He first gave the impression of a brief stopover in Hong Kong on the 25th anniversary of his return from British rule on July 1 and a brief vacation to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in September for a regional summit.
Xiong Zhiyong, a professor of foreign affairs at China Foreign Affairs University, expects Chinese leaders to make more travel as the pandemic subsides globally.
“The existing external scenario is too complex and national leaders will have to have the opportunity to discuss,” he said. “Online exchanges are not enough. Meetings between leaders are vital and irreplaceable. “
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz traveled to Beijing to meet with Xi earlier this month. But under China’s “zero COVID” policy, it remains difficult to enter China, while the interior is limited anywhere a serious outbreak occurs.
In addition to Biden, other Xi leaders will meet at the march with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, French President Emmanuel Macron, Senegalese President Macky Sall and the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday he would ask Xi to lift billions of dollars in industrial barriers if met, while Biden said earlier this week that he planned to talk about emerging tensions between the United States and China over industry, the self-governing island of Taiwan and China’s relations with Russia.
China did not condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accused the United States and NATO of forcing Russia’s hand. It also fired missiles at Taiwan and appeared to repeat a military blockade of the island after U. S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
China also disrupted talks with the United States on a variety of issues in the wake of Pelosi’s trip, adding climate, a domain where cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases is highly important to efforts being discussed in the current United Nations climate. talks in Egypt to restrict the effect of climate change.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday that “the United States works with China to handle differences well, promote mutually favorable cooperation, avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations, and bring China and the United States closer together. Relationships on the right path to a healthy and stable relationship. “development.
Xi is doing this after consolidating his grip on force in China last month at a long-standing Communist Party primary assembly. He won a third five-year term as leader and the party’s top bodies were full of his loyalists, indicating that his foreign and domestic policy technique will continue.
China’s doubling of its defense budget over the past two decades and the militarization of islands in the South China Sea have raised questions about its declared policy of “peaceful ascent. “America and China’s wrath.
At the APEC assembly in Thailand, Mr. Xi will deliver a speech on China’s proposals to deepen Asia-Pacific cooperation and promote economic and regional growth, Zhao said.
He is also expected to tout his global progression initiative, a rename change from his signature “Belt and Road Initiative,” which has been criticized for burdening poor countries with large debts and giving China perspectives on very important ports and other infrastructure from Southeast Asia to Europe. . .
Although Xi has eliminated domestic political challenges, he faces developing threats on the economic front.
China’s expansion has collapsed under pressure from strict antivirus campaigns that have disrupted trade and supply chains, as well as a major debt crackdown on the real estate sector, which has been an engine of expansion.
Dickson said Xi-Biden’s assembly at the G-20 could simply ease tensions. But he added: “I have to say now that it’s hard to see any willingness from either country to stabilize things and save them time. “downward spiral to continue. “
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Yu Bing, a researcher with the Associated Press, contributed to the report.