China swipes Trump over Ukraine ahead of national congress

Chinese is capitalising on chaos in the West, with state media crowing over the row between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that it showed the dangers of relying on the US.

China's President Xi Jinping will capitalise on the disarray in the western alliance this week. Picture: AFP.

President Xi will seek to capitalise on disarray in the western alliance this week when he uses the annual meeting of the Chinese parliament to promote his strategy of taking on the United States and resisting attacks from President Trump.

Xi is expected to outline modest goals for the economy, supposedly the topic of the gathering, as China continues to suffer the after-effects of the pandemic and a crash in the property market.

He is also likely, however, to send subtle – or, as in recent years, increasingly unsubtle – messages to the rest of the world about the attractions of the Chinese political model compared with the chaotic version of democracy practised in Trump’s America.

Chinese state media has been crowing since Friday’s row in the White House between Trump, JD Vance, his vice-president, and President Zelensky of Ukraine, saying that it showed the dangers of relying on the US.

The headline of the main editorial in yesterday’s Global Times, an English-language Communist Party newspaper, read: “In a turbulent world, the value of China’s two sessions gains increasing prominence.”

The “two sessions” is the informal name for the simultaneous annual meetings of the National People’s Congress, the main parliamentary body under China’s constitution, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body.

Although the Congress gets to vote on big developments, it has never opposed the party’s proposals. Under Xi, who has centralised rule more than any leader since Chairman Mao, it has been mainly used as a showpiece.

The key event is the “work report” setting out the achievements of the past year and plans for the year ahead. Although it will be presented tomorrow by the prime minister, Li Qiang, reports on the drafting procedure make clear that it is the collective voice of the politburo, and above all of Xi himself.

Until the explosive events in Washington over the past fortnight, most observers were focusing on what economic growth targets Xi would set.

Last year’s target of “around 5 per cent” growth in gross domestic product was met exactly, according to official figures, as this target usually is. Many economists privately say that real growth, at least in big cities, was substantially lower as consumers refused to spend money when the value of their properties had fallen fast. Two big property companies have collapsed since the pandemic and a third, Vanke, is being bailed out by the government.

The “work report”, and in particular the press conferences by the foreign and finance ministers that accompany the Congress, have new significance in the light of Trump’s revolution in American policy-making.

Most directly, Trump has announced additional 20 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports to the US, on top of those already in place. Trump’s tariffs are intended to punish China for what the US calls its failure to crack down on exports of fentanyl, a drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans, and its ingredients. Trump also threatened a wider trade war, however, to protect US manufacturing and his security advisers justified his abandonment of Ukraine by citing a need to focus on the future threat from Beijing.

Xinhua, the state news agency, opened the fightback this week with an article lambasting Trump’s treatment of Kyiv – particularly the deal for Ukraine’s mineral resources that was agreed but not signed – as “colonialist” and “nothing more than a sophisticated repackaging of the logic of pirates”.

Alfred Wu, an analyst of Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore, said the “two sessions” under Xi had become even less of a forum for discussion of policy and more an opportunity to send propaganda messages to the Chinese people. For this reason, he said, there would be a focus on artificial intelligence successes, including the release of the cut-price Deepseek generative model, but also on criticising the US.

Two weeks ago Xi held a conference for the heads of some of China’s most successful tech companies, including Deepseek, to counter fears that entrepreneurs were leaving to escape government control and the economic downturn. The message was that China was still better than the alternative. “They want to focus on domestic issues, but by boosting people’s confidence,” Wu said. “They can still send out a message that makes people feel good.”

The Times