China’s isolationism is a symptom of Xi Jinping’s weakening influence

As world leaders gathered in Glasgow this week for COP26, there was an notable absence amongst world leaders. Despite China’s carbon emissions remaining the highest in the world, threatening to undo international commitments to climate change, President Xi Jinping has chosen to stay home.

This is the latest of several recent international conferences that the leader of the world’s second largest economy has not turned up to. China is quickly gaining a reputation for itself as a superpower reluctant to lead from the front.

Less than a year ago, President Xi sat down in Beijing to sign an investment agreement with the European Union, only for frictions over political sanctions to put the deal on pause. Since then, President Xi has not taken up an invitation to meet EU leaders. And China no longer feels compelled to cooperate with the United States on anything other than its own terms. He has yet to meet President Biden in person and seems unlikely to dos o any time soon, despite the prospect a ‘virtual summit’ tentatively agreed by both countries.

One could say that the US and China have reversed their roles on the geopolitical stage. Only five years ago, in a speech at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, President Xi announced himself as the guardian of a multinational order, while President Donald Trump dragged the US into an “America first” retreat.

“[Xi] no longer feels that he needs international support because he has so much domestic support, or domestic control,” says Victor Shih, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told the New York Times. “This general effort to court America and also the European countries is less today than it was during his first term.”

However, according to prominent Chinese dissident and exiled CCP critic Guo Wengui (aka Miles Kwok) Xi’s increasing isolation suggests a weakening grasp on his authority at home rather than a growing confidence or complacency induced by China’s economic might.

As Machiavelli wrote, “he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against.” The legitimacy of the CCP - and the security of President Xi’s future as China’s lifelong ruler - is at least partially dependent on China’s international status in the wake of the pandemic. China is now finding itself increasingly isolated, diplomatically and economically, at a time when global public opinion is hardening against it.

At the start of the pandemic, the CCP’s hold on power seemed to rest on its ability to control the virus. Its initial attempts to cover up the outbreak in Wuhan gave rise to an astonishing wave of public fury. Now, the government is afraid of any challenge to its narrative of pandemic triumph, tested by the fires of dissent in a looming energy crisis, a slowing economy, and a lagging birth rate. The aggressive military posturing in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang serves to cast into sharp relief President Xi’s inaction amongst the international community.

This is not the behaviour of a confident world leader, but an anxious authoritarian. Having worked to undo the capitalist reforms of his predecessors and consolidate his own power, he focus remains staunchly at home. Beijing is increasingly centralising the market, with crackdowns on China’s tech firms, an outright ban of all cryptocurrency activity, and a culling of pop artists, social media influencers and foreign brands reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.

Historically, stasis means decay in Chinese political regimes. The fall of the Ming Dynasty, the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, came because of its isolationism. To Sinologists, there are growing similarities between the actions of the Xi and Ming regimes: a sudden and aggressive expansion of military power, the endorsement of ethnic Han Chinese nationalism, and the long retreat of the emperor from public eye.

After a stunning century of growth and expansion (much like China has experience since the reforms of Deng Xiaopeng) the Ming Dynasty collapsed because of its internal political malaise. Strife among the ruling elites and corruption in the court contributed to the atrophy of the public sphere. Disturbed by increased influence of the European powers in China, overseas explorations yielded to turning inwards, as the idea that everyone outside of China was barbarian and unworthy of engagement – an outlook later termed ‘Sinocentrism’.

Nations whose refuse to deal with the outside world are badly positioned to overcome the challenges that inevitably arise from it. In the past this turned China into a theatre for European imperial ambition. While China was never conquered by any other power (except the Japanese takeover of the northern territory of Manchuria during World War II) from the sixteenth century on, the European powers gained many concessions and established several colonies which undermined the emperor’s own power.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a similar fate could befall China for President Xi’s absence in the G20 summit in Rome and now, Glasgow, two events aiming to shape the global agenda for decades to come.

For China, these are missed opportunities - countries will be more likely to rally around the US and EU led efforts on climate or economic recovery. It is unlikely that the Chinese delegations will have the same authority to negotiate without their leader, and will have to settle on significant compromises, our outright defeats.

History can only tell us so much - it would be a far reach to condemn modern China to repeat he mistake of the past. But isolationism will only serve to weaken Xi’s hold on China’s future.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes