Xi Jinping has hosted more than a dozen leaders this year, as ‘middle powers’ look beyond the US | Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping met with Bangladesh’s new prime minister on Friday; He was the latest in a wave of world leaders to visit Beijing this year as the Chinese leader expands his influence and economic ties and seeks to “shift the balance of power away from the west”.

Xi’s meeting with Tarique Rahman came less than two weeks after the Chinese leader welcomed former president Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military chief, to Beijing.

In May, Xi hosted leaders from the United States, Russia, Brunei, Serbia, Tajikistan and Pakistan, while a number of foreign ministers also came to China for low-level meetings.

More than a dozen world leaders, including presidents and prime ministers, have visited so far this year, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Britain’s Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump.

“The long list of world leaders traveling to Beijing to meet Xi reflects a growing recognition of China’s growing global influence,” said William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Many of the leaders visiting China this year, including Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, have described their trips as a chance for “middle power” countries to forge an independent relationship with Beijing in an increasingly capricious U.S. environment.

Yang said China could use such visits “to support the alternative multipolar world order it advocates and undermine these countries’ trust in the United States.”

At a time when, from the perspective of many countries, the United States is declining from its leading position on the world stage, China is presenting itself as a source of stability and credit for many poor countries.

And despite Trump’s flashy state visit, Beijing has not hesitated to court leaders of authoritarian and Global South countries.

Myanmar’s military chief and president were given the red carpet treatment in Beijing. The Chinese leader signaled “firm support” to Min Aung Hlaing’s regime before reiterating his commitment to the “principle of non-interference” in the war-torn country’s “internal affairs”.

Min Aung Hlaing, accused by UN experts of overseeing war crimes and genocide in Myanmar, appeared to be a happy man. Only his second foreign trip since cementing power over the south-east Asian country in a widely condemned election six months ago, he has grown increasingly isolated since overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically elected government in a 2021 coup.

But that has caused little concern for Beijing, which signaled with this week’s visit that it “recognizes the legitimacy of the Myanmar military’s rule in Myanmar,” according to Ja Ian Chong, a professor at the National University of Singapore and a non-resident fellow at Carnegie China.

This approach could be seen as part of Xi’s broader project to influence the international order, so “no country has the right to tell others how to manage their internal affairs,” according to Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at Soas University of London.

“Interaction with less flamboyant leaders in less wealthy countries is what the strategy is all about,” Tsang said. “[Xi is] “It fundamentally shifts the balance of power from the hands of advanced democracies to the Global South led by China.”

Earlier this month, Xi adopted a similar playbook while avoiding another thorny issue while visiting Kim Jong-un on a rare foreign trip. Although strong opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program had previously been voiced, this issue was conspicuously absent from the readings. While Beijing’s silence was seen as a tacit acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear weapons status, stabilizing relations took priority.

Chinese state media are keen to present Beijing as the new center of global diplomacy. In May, the Global Times published an article saying that Trump and Putin’s back-to-back visits “highlight both the intensity of China’s diplomatic calendar and its expanding influence on the world stage.”

This is despite the fact that Beijing’s influence is limited when it comes to actual resolution of international crises. Although initially thought to have pushed Iran into ceasefire talks with the United States, Beijing has not been a peacemaker in this conflict. Although Beijing may help broker a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, China does not have a decisive influence on Tehran.

When it comes to the war in Ukraine, the 12-point political solution plan published by China in 2023 has long been forgotten and overshadowed by Beijing’s persistent support for Russia’s invasion.

Additional research by Yu-chen Li