Hutong Cat | Xi Jinping has been WFH — for 2 years. The world waits

Aung San Suu Kyi was still Myanmar’s high-profile state councilor; the World Health Organization was tweeting to tell the world what a coronavirus was, and more than 5.4 million people in the world didn’t know that a viral pandemic was about to claim their lives.

So, as it turns out, for two years, and more, neither Xi nor Premier Li Keqiang or any of the remaining members of the elite seven-member Communist Party of China (CPC) Politburo Standing Committee have boarded an international flight.

In fact, the last time Xi granted an in-person appointment to a foreign leader was in March 2020, when he met Pakistani President Arif Alvi, in Beijing.

Xi’s physical absence from the world stage has come under focus and criticism, especially, his decision not to attend the G20 Summit and the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, held last October.

A primary criticism is this: The prolonged absence of face-to-face meetings between world leaders – especially with prime ministers and presidents who are not at China’s beck and call – eliminates the possibility of frank exchanges, which usually happens on the sidelines and pull-asides at summits. Which every now and then leads to progress or unties a problematic knot in ties.

A seemingly unplanned meeting between Indian PM Narendra Modi and Xi on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Hamburg in July 2017 led to the resolution of the Doklam standoff in late August.

The meeting between the two leaders took place though Beijing had denied the possibility days before.

Conversely, an in-person meeting between Modi and Xi in either 2020 or 2021 could have, may have, directed the ongoing military border standoff in eastern Ladakh – the worst in decades — towards a resolution.

Xi’s physical absence at key multilateral events including at COP26, experts say, damaged prospects.

An analysis of the Chinese top leadership’s foreign visits between 2013 and early 2020 by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)’ China Power, indicates the importance China gave to foreign visits. “As China’s top leader Xi Jinping’s foreign travels are most significant. Between 2013 – when he became China’s President – and 2020, Xi Jinping made 98 in-person visits to 69 foreign countries. This is comparable to the total number of visits made by US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump throughout this period (103), but is significantly lower than the number of visits made by Russian President Vladimir Putin (144) or the UK Prime Ministers (222). Notably, however, Xi has travelled to more countries than these other leaders,” the CSIS report said, adding Xi made 39 visits to countries in Asia, accounting for nearly 40% of his total visits from 2013-2020.

Li frequently represented China abroad between 2014 to 2019 as well, making a total of 55 visits to 45 countries.

The CSIS report charts Xi’s and Li’s pre-pandemic tour itinerary. Since the pandemic infected the world, leaders of all major countries have drastically cut down on foreign tours.

Xi has instead taken to, what official news agency Xinhua, rather creatively, calls, “cloud diplomacy”, appearing at bilateral and multilateral meetings in his virtual avatar.

Xi’s “tight schedule of cloud diplomacy” in 2021 comprised 79 telephone calls with leaders of foreign countries and international organisations, and 40 appearances at major diplomatic events via video link.

In 2020, Xi had 87 similar meetings and phone calls and attended 22 bilateral or multilateral events virtually.

A great example of cost-cutting and cutting down on emissions as Xi is not flying around in national carrier Air China’s 747-8i but is China’s global image bearing the cost?

Not really, said Bonny Lin, CSIS’s Senior Fellow for Asian Security and Director of the China Power Project.

“In some ways, the virtual environment may have allowed China to increase its outreach to more partners. While virtual engagements cannot fully substitute for in-person engagements, Beijing has been very active diplomatically and has also pushed back strongly against criticism of how it handled the pandemic,” Lin said.

It’s possible that Xi’s decision not to travel abroad is the fountainhead of China’s internal “dynamic Covid” policy, which translates into some of the strictest anti-Covid measures in the world for its citizens – quick lockdowns, mass testing for single digit cases, and an all-encompassing health code for travel.

“Chinese leaders cannot be seen as not following the strict Covid policies they set for their people,” Lin said.

One reason for not travelling abroad could be more fundamental: Avoid exposure to Covid-19.

“I think Chinese leaders have not left China primarily because of fear of contracting Covid. For Xi, especially, he is the highest and only authority for major decision making, so his role is irreplaceable. Also, I think Xi himself truly believes in the party’s own propaganda that the rest of the world is lapsing into chaos while China remains an island of stability,” Victor Shih, expert on Chinese politics at University of California, San Diego, said.

It has also given the Chinese leader time to focus on the domestic front in the run-up to the once-a-decade CPC Congress to be held in the second half of 2021.

In 2021, Xi made 11 “inspection tours”, going to, among other places, Tibet, for the first time as the top Chinese leader, beginning his three-day tour in Nyingchi, a strategic border city near the Sino-India Arunachal Pradesh boundary.

Diplomats say policy signals emanating from Beijing suggest China is turning insular, more inward looking.

Xi not travelling abroad, however, may not be a signal of the same.

In fact, it could be a signal of a more assertive China – a China which is pitching for a global state of play in which it conducts diplomacy on its own terms. And, let top diplomats like Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi travel and engage in in-person diplomacy.

“Instead of signaling an inward turn, Xi’s decision to stay at home suggests his determination to conduct diplomacy on his own terms because he is convinced that because China is now stage-center, it can behave according to its national interests,” Suisheng Zhao, director at the University of Denver’s Centre for China-U.S. Cooperation, recently wrote for Nikkei Asia.

Maybe, inadvertently, Xi’s decision not to go abroad has raised a question: When he finally does, will it mean China’s opening up, shedding its current inhibitions on international travel? Which country will he visit first?

There’s no question about one aspect though: When Xi finally steps out of China in the future, he will set foot in a different world.

The views expressed are personal

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