What does China hope to gain from its post-Covid diplomatic push?
A steady stream of world leaders have descended upon Beijing over the past month, from French President Emmanuel Macron and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen to Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - a sign that Chinese diplomacy is back after years of Covid-19 isolation.
The dignitaries have also included the leaders of Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who is visiting China from Tuesday through Friday.
The country is also slated to host major diplomatic meetings, including the China-Central Asia summit in Xian next month and the third Belt and Road Forum, expected to take place in autumn.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
Many see China's diplomatic efforts as a way to regain the influence it lost during three years of pandemic restrictions and to reassure the rest of the world it is committed to opening up and playing the role of a major world power in global affairs.
Meanwhile, issues such as the origins of Covid-19, human rights, trade practices and relations with Russia have clouded Beijing's ties with the West.
Analysts said China is ramping up its diplomatic offensive as it seeks to reassert itself as a key force in an increasingly multipolar world order and to boost its resilience amid growing China-US tensions.
"I think the ultimate focus of [China]'s diplomacy is to counter the United States, that's why they have had a series of these diplomatic activities," said Pang Zhongying, a Sichuan University professor who specialises in globalisation.
In March, President Xi Jinping told a closed-door meeting of deputies to China's top legislature that Western countries, led by the US, had implemented "all-round containment and suppression" against China, bringing unprecedented challenges for the country.
Beijing has increasingly focused on closer ties with the developing world and advocated for its own development model as an alternative to the Western one.
Last month, it proposed the Global Civilisation Initiative, building on its earlier global development and security initiatives to oppose bloc confrontations and support collective security and development.
Pang said China had become more involved in global and regional affairs, as shown when it brokered the Saudi-Iran peace deal and proposed a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine in a departure from its long-held non-interventionist foreign policy.
Xi has made a few overseas trips since resuming face-to-face diplomacy in September. He took part in the China-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan and travelled to the Middle East for first-of-their-kind summits with Arab and Gulf countries in December, signing dozens of agreements in fields ranging from energy to technology.
His trip to Moscow last month came under close scrutiny as the West continued to accuse China of supporting Russia economically during the Ukraine war.
Taylah Bland, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said China's current diplomatic approach was twofold: first to build up its domestic resilience amid geopolitical instability, and second to make new strategic partnerships and reassure the world that it is "still a global player and formidable force" after Covid-19 and a twice-a-decade leadership transition that concluded in March.
But she said China was not seeking to replace the US in the world order.
"China is not looking to replace the US entirely. I would think that China is hoping to establish itself more strongly in a multipolar world and is making strategic relations with countries it sees itself working well with and having a mutually beneficial relationship with," she said.
"Its work in beginning to increase the usage of [renminbi] in deals is a testament to this endeavour."
Beijing has been accelerating internationalisation of the Chinese currency to boost its resilience in the international monetary system and provide an alternative to the US dollar as it increases trade with the world.
Last month, the Export-Import Bank of China offered its first yuan loan to Saudi Arabia, while France became the first Western country to settle a liquefied natural gas deal with China in the currency.
Brazil and China also struck a deal recently to use their own currencies for future trade ahead of Brazilian President Lula's visit to China last week.
Lula, a strong advocate of BRICS, a group of fast-growing emerging markets that also includes Russia, China, India and South Africa, looked to expand Brazil's trade ties with China, its largest trading partner.
Lula and Xi also agreed to set up a working group to cooperate on semiconductors, and in recent weeks Brazilian officials have stated that they welcomed Chinese semiconductor investment and technology in the country.
The US has ramped up tech restrictions against China since last year, banning semiconductor exports to China and lobbying allies such as the Netherlands and Japan to join its containment efforts. Beijing has sharply criticised the measures and is working to become more technologically self-reliant.
Niu Haibin, director of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said the strengthening of ties between China and influential developing countries such as Brazil amid US containment was "symbolic" in an increasingly multipolar world.
"Developing countries play an increasingly important role in the current world order," he said.
"Facing pressure to pick a side between the US and China in recent years, [many developing countries] still firmly choose to stand with China, or try to strengthen and maintain economic relations and other cooperation with China.
"This actually reflects that the strengthening of relations between China and developing countries is mutually beneficial and is an independent choice based on the wills of both parties."
Chong Ja Ian, professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, suggested that China's outreach efforts showed that Beijing wanted to find ways to "break out" from the US-led containment strategy.
Chong said he expected Beijing to deepen ties with countries that could provide key technologies and resources, including parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been China's largest trading partner since 2020. Beijing has looked to the resource-rich region to diversify its supply chains to mitigate risks brought by the pandemic and calls for decoupling amid tensions with the West.
During Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's visit to China last month, the two countries agreed to upgrade their ties, paving the way for more hi-tech cooperation including in training, innovation and research and development.
China's Huawei has vowed to increase its investments in Africa, where the company has built massive information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. The tech giant has been banned from 5G networks in major Western countries because of national security concerns.
Chong said China was also placing a greater emphasis on Europe. Top European officials to visit Beijing in recent weeks include French President Macron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, and von der Leyen, who is president of the European Commission.
"Beijing's diplomatic push may also encounter more success if it's more careful about foreign investment and is more willing to restructure and write down debt owed to it by the poorest states," Chong said.
China has long been accused of engaging in "debt trap" diplomacy in developing countries that have taken part in its Belt and Road Initiative - a massive infrastructure programme that seeks to connect Asia, Africa and Europe.
As Beijing expands its economic footprint through the belt and road, concerns have mounted about the growing debts of African countries as well as national security risks associated with Chinese investments in Europe.
Charles Dunst, senior associate at strategic advisory firm The Asia Group, said Beijing's diplomatic campaign was likely to be most successful among developing countries, where Chinese funds and money would trump concerns such as alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.
He added the efforts might find success in Europe too, especially as some leaders there had voiced disinterest in adopting a China policy that was too closely aligned with Washington's.
Macron and von der Leyen's trip to China raised many eyebrows as EU countries have grown more divided on their China approach.
Macron doubled down on his support of "strategic autonomy" for the EU, saying the bloc should not follow US policy on Taiwan or get "caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren't ours".
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, emeritus professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University and a specialist in China-EU relations, said Beijing's strategy was clearly attempting to drive a wedge between the EU and the US.
"The good news for Xi is that he has been successful with Macron's France and now the EU is more divided and, as a result, weaker and therefore more ready to make concessions than before," he said.
"The bad news for Xi is that most EU member states are now very suspicious of Macron's China policy and much more critical of his so-called European strategic autonomy than before his and Ursula's trip to China.
"Russia and China are stronger than before ... France and China are closer to each other but more isolated than before from the rest of the developed and democratic world."
Pang, the Sichuan University professor, said it was too early to assess the effects of China's campaign, and added the key question to consider in Beijing's diplomatic strategy was how to avoid a "new Cold War" with Washington.
"If the problems [with the US] cannot be solved, the world's economic system could very possibly turn into an opposing bipolar or multipolar system. And if you want to avoid a new Cold War like this ... there's a lot of work to be done in [China's] diplomacy," he said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
