China’s President Xi is Playing GO – and Winning
Following his recent visit to Moscow, where China’s President Xi Jinping held lengthy meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Xi stated in parting that global power dynamics are shifting, in an evolving multipolar world, and that “together we should push forward changes that have not happened for 100 years.” Xi got the messaging right, but the date wrong. His recent diplomatic forays – since September 2022 – in Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and last week’s hosting of France’s President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing, show that in Xi’s mind, it’s really 1793. For that is the date of Britain’s mission to China by Lord George Macartney, an ill-fated and failed diplomatic journey, which cemented the Middle Kingdom’s role as an empire to whom foreigners should pay tribute. For Xi, a multipolar world is but the first step in his narrative of soaring ambition in which China becomes by 2049, the most powerful nation in the world, undoing a century of humiliation by the West.
The West keeps on underestimating Xi and China, especially after Xi’s recent appointment to an unprecedented 3rd term as General Secretary and President. While Xi faces many challenges, such as Taiwan, economic recovery from COVID as China re-opens, an aging population, the middle income trap, and shifting military alliances in Asia (e.g. AUKUS), his recent diplomatic engagements once again suggest that he is playing GO, while the West – especially a polarized, divided America – struggles to play checkers or tic tac toe. Xi is strategic, and he keeps on winning. We underestimate Xi and his strategy at our peril.
It is easy for western observers to downplay Xi’s successes. But his trip to Kazakhstan revealed a supremely confident Xi, establishing his position and that of China in central Asia, formerly Russia’s backyard and part of the former USSR. His trip to Saudi Arabia, with his subsequent endorsement and brokerage of the historic diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran was masterful, leaving a bitter America on the side lines, where CIA Director William Burns (in his recent trip to Riyadh) reportedly expressed the White House’s displeasure and frustration – no fist bump photos noted here! – to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Xi’s trip to Moscow showcased his friendship with Russia’s President Putin (whom he has now met with on 40 occasions), but it also highlighted Xi’s increasingly dominant role in their “no limits” friendship. Xi’s friendship with Putin allows China to buy Russian oil and gas at cut-rate prices, while maintaining a strategic posture that a mortally weakened Russia is dangerous for China’s long-term interests…
