China’s Xi gives up air miles for more time at home

The globetrotting Chinese President has scaled back travel plans and skipped some key summits, but continues active diplomacy — as a host.

President of China Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan wave as they arrive in Finland in 2017. Picture: AFP

Chinese leader Xi Jinping isn’t quite the frequent flyer he used to be. People are wondering why.

The most well-travelled leader in China’s history has reduced his international journeys in recent years, easing a once-packed diplomatic schedule that had honed his reputation as a globetrotting statesman.

Xi travelled to 10 countries across four overseas trips in 2024, and five nations over three trips in the first half of this year, compared with his average of visiting about 14 countries a year between 2013 and 2019, and a 20-nation peak he set in 2014. Since resuming foreign travel in 2022 after a 32-month pause during the Covid pandemic, he has yet to match the peripatetic pace he set during his first two terms in power.

This month, Xi skipped an annual summit of the Brics bloc of emerging nations after participating in the past 12 meetings — the second time in two years that he missed a major international gathering where he had been a fixture. Both times he sent Premier Li Qiang, one of Xi’s top lieutenants, to represent Beijing.

Meanwhile, a China-European Union summit originally set to take place in Brussels this year was moved to Beijing after Chinese officials signalled to EU counterparts that Xi had no plans to visit Europe this year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Xi is scheduled to meet EU leaders in Beijing on Thursday when they visit for the summit.

Xi Jinping and Princess of Wales at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in 2015. Picture: Dominic Lipinski – WPA Pool /Getty Images

Chinese officials haven’t explained why Xi chose not to travel for these events, or commented on his reduced foreign visits. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some analysts say Xi, 72, may be dialling back his travels to devolve some of the many responsibilities he wields as leader, particularly as he grows older and approaches the end of his third five-year term as Communist Party chief in 2027.

“Xi is increasingly willing to delegate the operational bits of foreign policy to his trusted interlocutors,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who studies China’s diplomacy. Xi may be doing so to better manage his energy, given his age, and to prioritise domestic issues as Beijing grapples with persistent economic headwinds such as weak consumer demand, according to Loh.

“China is certainly not taking its eyes off foreign policy,” Loh said. “But it seems to me that Xi is now content with exercising broad strategic direction and while selectively choosing his trips abroad.”

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida in 2017. Picture: AFP

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has used his foreign excursions to expand China’s economic and political reach around the globe — and stamp his mark as a world leader. These trips have often come with promises of infrastructure investment and deeper trade ties, aimed at positioning Beijing as a benign partner and strategic counterweight to Washington.

More recently, China is also trying to capitalise on what many see as a US retreat from global leadership, marked by President Trump’s moves to cut foreign aid, sideline multilateral institutions and impose tariffs on adversaries and allies alike. Xi has sought to cast China as a responsible power and a source of stability, using a mix of political, economic and soft-power tools to reshape global narratives in Beijing’s favour.

To that end, Xi has stayed active on the diplomatic circuit — as a host. China lifted its Covid border controls in late 2022, and foreign leaders have been travelling there at a frequency similar to pre-pandemic levels.

In 2023, Xi hosted at least 74 visits by foreign heads of state and government, as well as de facto leaders, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Chinese Foreign Ministry disclosures. The count, which includes repeat visits by some leaders, rose to 84 last year, compared with the average of about 76 trips that Xi hosted annually between 2013 and 2019.

Xi has welcomed leaders from more than a dozen countries so far this year, including Australia’s prime minister, who visited Beijing this month. Xi is expected to host more foreign counterparts visiting China later this year to attend diplomatic summits and a military parade.

Anthony Albanese with Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this month. Picture: Huang Jingwen/Xinhua via AP

Xi’s lieutenants have picked up the slack in foreign travel. Li, during his first full year as premier in 2024, journeyed abroad at a pace similar to that set by his predecessor, Li Keqiang, before the pandemic. Li Qiang travelled to 13 countries last year, matching the number that Li Keqiang visited in his most prolific year in 2014.

Another frequent flyer is Liu Jianchao, a veteran diplomat and chief of the Communist Party’s International Department, which handles relations with foreign political parties and socialist states. A candidate for foreign minister, Liu has travelled more often than his predecessor did since getting the job in 2022, including trips to the US and other Western democracies that past International Department chiefs generally hadn’t visited.

As China’s leader, Xi has embarked on more than 50 international trips and visited more than 70 countries, far surpassing what his predecessors did. He has also hosted visiting world leaders more frequently than previous Chinese heads of state or recent US presidents, according to data collated by Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Then-Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove with Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan in Canberra, 2014. Picture: Reuters Pool/David Gray

The Covid pandemic kept Xi in China between 2020 and 2022. During that time, he mostly relied on phone calls and videoconferencing to engage with foreign counterparts. When he restarted international travel in late 2022, Xi first visited nearby countries in Asia before venturing further in subsequent trips.

Xi’s evolving travel patterns drew attention in the fall of 2023, when he skipped a summit of the Group of 20 advanced and developing economies that India was hosting. He sent Premier Li instead.

Chinese officials didn’t say why Xi missed an event where he had been a regular participant. China had typically been represented by its president at G-20 summits since the bloc began arranging leader-level meetings in 2008.

In early July, when Xi skipped the Brics summit, Li filled in at the meeting in Brazil, where Xi had gone just seven months earlier to attend a G-20 summit and conduct a state visit.

Diplomats and analysts say that Xi’s decision to skip a Brics summit is notable given his efforts to boost the relevance of multilateral groupings where China holds greater sway, compared with institutions such as G-20, which Beijing has portrayed as too beholden to the US.

The Brics group — named after its early members of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — has presented itself as a multilateral counterweight to a US-dominated world order.

“Physical stamina is a precious political resource, and Xi knows it. As Xi grows older, he is carefully managing his travel to preserve his strength,” said Thomas, the fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Skipping the Brics summit in Brazil likely had less to do with geopolitics and more with jet lag. A 48-hour round-trip for a two-day meeting just was not worth the physical toll.”

Wall Street Journal