Leader finally leaves China for summit as tensions rise

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is leaving his country’s Covid-19 bubble and venturing abroad into a dramatically changed world marked by rising confrontation.

Xi will attend the G20 meeting of industrial and emerging market nations in Indonesia followed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand.

He will meet individually with leaders, including US President Joe Biden tomorrow in their first in-person talks since Biden took office in January 2021.

Xi has relied mainly on speeches by video to deliver China’s message to world forums since 2020.

The period has seen a sharp deterioration in China’s relations with the West over the Covid-19 pandemic, a crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, military threats against Taiwan and Beijing’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bruce Dickson, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University, said there is a “growing fear, concern and anxiety that China doesn’t want to be a partner with other countries.”

“It wants to push its own agenda regardless of the opposition to it”.