Hong Kong CNN –
When the world’s most powerful leaders descend on New Delhi this weekend to address the many crises facing the world, notably absent will be China’s Xi Jinping, who has been in power since he came to power in 2012 has never missed a G20 summit.
As is often the case with Beijing’s opaque decision-making, no explanation was given for Xi’s apparent decision to skip a major global meeting that China had given high priority to in the past. Prime Minister Li Qiang, the country’s second-ranking leader, is expected to attend in Xi’s place.
Beijing’s reluctance has led to a variety of speculation and interpretations, from Xi’s potential health problems and domestic problems at home to a snub to host country India, whose relations with China are strained over an ongoing border dispute.
But from the perspective of China’s great power rivalry with the United States, analysts say Xi’s expected no-show at the G20 summit could also signal his disillusionment with the existing global governance system and structures, which he believes are too dominated by American influence.
Instead, Xi may prioritize multilateral forums that fit China’s own vision for the way the world should be governed – such as the recently concluded BRICS summit and the upcoming Belt and Road Forum.
“There may be an element of a deliberate snub to India, but it could also be a statement that there are various governance structures that Xi Jinping thinks are important — and the G20 may not be one of them,” said George Magnus, a fellow at Das China Center at Oxford University.
“(Xi) may have wanted to make an example of India’s G20 summit and said, ‘This is not something I will attend because I have bigger fish to fry.'”
For some analysts, Xi’s absence could mark a shift in the way China views the G20, a leading global forum that brings together the world’s top developed and emerging economies that generate 80% of global GDP.
China previously viewed the platform as a relatively neutral space for global governance and placed great emphasis on G20 diplomacy, said Jake Werner, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute in Washington DC.
Since the first summit of heads of state and government in 2008, China’s supreme head of state has always attended the meeting – including via video transmission during the Covid pandemic. And when China hosted its first G20 summit in 2016, the country did everything it could to make the event a success and demonstrate its growing influence on the world stage.
Since then, however, relations between the world’s two largest economies have been marked by increasing tensions and rivalries. Now, “China sees the G20 space as increasingly aligned with the U.S. and its agenda, which Xi Jinping sees as hostile to China,” Werner said.
About half of the group’s members are US allies, whom the Biden administration has rallied to take a tougher stance on China. Beijing also sees increasing tensions with other members – such as the border dispute with India – due to its difficult relationship with the USA, said Werner.
Beijing bristles at New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington, particularly its involvement in the Quad – a U.S.-led security group that Beijing calls “Indo-Pacific NATO.”
“China sees India in the anti-China camp and therefore does not want to add value to a major international summit that India is organizing,” said Happymon Jacob, a professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
The disagreement over the Ukraine war also casts a shadow over the summit. So far, India has failed to broker a joint statement at any of the key G20 meetings since assuming the presidency last December.
China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion and continued diplomatic support for Moscow have increased its tensions with the West.
“China has said it believes the G20 should limit itself to economic discussions. “It should not be politicized around the geopolitical fault lines that the United States and the Europeans want to push,” Werner said.
Chinese analysts agree that Beijing may see the G20 as a platform of diminishing value and effectiveness.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University, said the G20 has become a “more complicated and challenging” stage for Chinese diplomacy compared to a few years ago as the number of pro-China members has dwindled.
Xi last attended the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November last year, when he emerged from China’s Covid isolation and declared his return to the world stage. During the two-day summit, he held diplomatic meetings with 11 world leaders – including US President Joe Biden – and invited many of them to visit China.
Since then, a long line of foreign dignitaries have knocked on Beijing’s door to meet Xi, including G20 leaders from Germany, France, Brazil, Indonesia and the EU, as well as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
At the same time, Xi has made only two trips abroad this year – and both are central to his attempt to reshape the global world order.
In March, Xi traveled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin – an “old friend” who shares his deep distrust of American power. Last month he attended the BRICS emerging market summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the bloc announced the addition of six new members.
Hailed as “historic” by Xi, the expansion is a major victory for Beijing, which has long pushed to transform the loose economic grouping into a geopolitical counterbalance to the West.
Magnus, the expert at Oxford University, said the enlarged BRICS countries are an example of the alternative governance structure Beijing wants to build – it includes some of the key countries of the Global South, with China playing a central role.
In recent years, Xi has set forth his vision of a new world order by announcing three global initiatives — the Global Security Initiative (a new non-alliance security architecture), the Global Development Initiative (a new instrument to finance economic growth), and the Global Civilization Initiative (a new state-defined value system that is not subject to the limits of universal values).
Though broad in content and seemingly vague, “they are designed as an umbrella under which countries can rally around a China-led narrative that differs from the type of governance structure that prevails under the auspices of the G20,” said Magnus.
Next month, the Chinese leader is expected to host the “Belt and Road” forum to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its global infrastructure and trade initiative — a key element in Beijing’s new global governance structure.
Magnus said initiatives like Belt and Road, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — in which Beijing is either a founder or a key player — now have a much higher profile in China.
“These entities exist as alternative structures to those that China has traditionally joined and which have had to share the spotlight with the United States,” he said.
“It also sends a message to the rest of the world — not just to countries in the Global South, but also to faltering countries in the world of liberal democracy — that this is China’s concern.”