China’s new world order: looking for clues from Xi’s recent meetings with foreign leaders

By Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham

There is broad consensus that Chinese foreign policy has become more assertive and more centralised in the decade since Xi Jinping has ascended to the top of China’s leadership. This has also meant that Chinese foreign policy has become more personalised and that Xi’s own diplomatic engagements offer potentially important clues about its direction.

The international order is clearly in flux and a key driver of this change, by its own admission, has been China.

After more than 100 minutes on the phone with US president Joe Biden on April 2 2024, Xi hosted the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for an official state visit and several hours of talks two weeks later on April 16 2024.

The Chinese readout of the meeting between Xi and Scholz provides some interesting insights in how China envisages its relations with a country that is strategically and economically important, but clearly not a rival in a military sense. Xi emphasised “growing risks and challenges” and the need for “major-country cooperation” to achieve “greater stability and certainty”.

The Chinese framing is, of course, self-serving. Not only does China want German companies to invest, it also wants trade to continue without the threat of punitive tariffs or the dangers of derisking (restricting business relationships), let alone decoupling (weakening economic ties).

This is not a message solely directed at Germany, but was expressed in similar terms in Xi’s meeting with US business leaders at the end of the March.

The European dynamic

Engagements with Germany, however, also have a broader European, and especially EU dimension. Germany now has its own moderately hawkish China strategy, aiming to reduce economic reliance on Beijing.

But Berlin is still considered softer than many other EU member states and therefore an important ally for Beijing within the EU and in EU-US deliberations on China policy.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-world-order-looking-for-clues-from-xis-recent-meetings-with-foreign-leaders-227927