A New Perspective on Diplomacy in China After the Covid-19 War and the Challenges It Entails for China, in the Light of China’s Confidence
I just returned from visiting China for the first time since Covid struck. Being back in Beijing was a reminder of my first rule of journalism: If you don’t go, you don’t know. Relations between our two countries have soured so badly, so quickly, and have so reduced our points of contact — very few American reporters are left in China, and our leaders are barely talking — that we’re now like two giant gorillas looking at each other through a pinhole. Nothing good will come from this.
Hint: The new, new thing has a lot to do with the increasingly important role that trust, and its absence, plays in international relations, now that so many goods and services that the United States and China sell to one another are digital, and therefore dual use — meaning they can be both a weapon and a tool. Just when trust has become more important than ever between the U.S. and China, it also has become scarcer than ever. The trend is bad.
Since late last month the Chinese leader has hosted heads of state and government chiefs from Spain, Singapore, Malaysia, France and the European Union – an unusual pace of diplomatic activity that comes as countries look to Beijing as the global economy sputters in the wake of the pandemic and war in Ukraine.
On Friday, that list grew to include Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is expected to sign a host of bilateral deals with Xi – and, like several of the leaders before him, arrives with hopes of making progress toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
But for Xi, this revolving door of visiting leaders – making the trip even as China has refused to condemn the Russian invasion – is also an opportunity to assert his vision for a global order not dictated by American rules – and push back against perceived threats.
Three years of scaled-back diplomacy due to China’s strict Covid-19 controls coupled with economic challenges, entrenched competition with the United States and rising European concerns about Beijing’s foreign policy have left Xi under pressure to act.
“(Chinese leaders) believe it’s time now for China to make its strategic plans,” said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
The US and its European allies have become closer because of the war in Ukraine, which Beijing has watched uneasily. Now analysts say playing up its economic partnerships and exploiting differences between the two sides of the Atlantic is important.
Speaking to Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong late last month, Xi stressed that Asian countries together should “firmly oppose bullying, decoupling or severing industrial and supply chains,” while he urged Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to “resolutely resist the Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation.”
The Chinese side said that the Prime Minister of Spain warned him that the EU had to uphold strategic independence in its relations with China.
China and France both have a tradition of independence, and China and France advocate for a multi-polar world, the Chinese President said last week when French PresidentEmmanuelMacron visited Beijing.
After a day of meetings in Beijing, the two men met in the southern commercial hub of Guangzhou, where they drank tea and listened to traditional Chinese music before a state dinner.
It seems that Europe should be able to develop an independent defense and intelligence capabilities that do not rely on Washington.
What Beijing Can Do with the State Visit of Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Other High-Low-Density Brazilian Leaders?
The leftist Brazilian leader, who ushered in a boom in China-Brazil trade ties during his first stint in power some two decades ago, is traveling with a delegation of business leaders, state governors, congressmen and ministers, and expected to close a raft of bilateral deals from agriculture and livestock to technology.
The former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was inaugurated as the head of the New Development Bank of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) region during the state visit of Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.
A researcher at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington said that Lula would be a fan of the BRAZIL acronym and would want to avoid automatic alignment with the US.
The Brazilian leader went to the White House for less than 24 hours, but he is expected to get a warm welcome in Beijing.
Duarte said Beijing may use the lacking of deliverables from that meeting to position itself as a more appealing alternative for bilateral cooperation.
Some leaders like the French President, think that China’s President, Xi, could be a potential ally to push Putin toward peace.
“It will be difficult for China to respond positively to some of the requests made by either the Americans or Europeans, because doing this would produce the risk of making the Russians upset,” said Li in Singapore.
France and China agreed to several points in their meeting, including the protection of women and children and opposition to attacks on nuclear power plants, but not to the position that China has already stated.
What Beijing does with these initiatives comes down to a bottom line that is important to the world view of Xi, say observers.
“Russia is the only major power that shares a lot of (China’s) views on how the world and the global system should look and how various political issues should be handled. He said Russia was important for China.
That point was highlighted in another moment on Xi’s recent diplomatic agenda: his travel to Moscow in March for his own state visit – the first since he stepped into a third presidential term that same month.
And while China’s diplomacy – and deals – in the past week may not have been heavily impacted by the optics of that relationship, analysts say how Beijing handles the conflict will continue to affect views on China globally.
A professor at the National University of Singapore said that peoples perception of China’s influence over Russia has helped it to get more attention, and more support, than it otherwise would have.
He believed that the test would be whether or not Xi could exert any influence over Putin in terms of ending the war.