China turns inward: Xi Jinping, COP26 and the pandemic, opinion news and headlines

(Financial Times) In early 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping strode onto the stage of Davos high in the Swiss Alps, shocking the world’s financial and political elites by defending globalization and a free economic order.

Accompanied by the largest delegation of high-level Beijing officials in history, Xi Jinping appeared in the spiritual home of global capitalism, marking the first time a Chinese leader has personally attended the World Economic Forum. After the election of US President Donald Trump and Breckett, he calmly provided leadership and stability to the crumbling facade of Western legitimacy.

Returning to Beijing 10 months later, Xi Jinping began his second five-year term as the leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), consolidating his vision of China’s new position in the global order: “Now is our time to stand. In the middle of the stage.”

But last week, when world leaders gathered in Glasgow for the COP26 climate summit, Xi Jinping—many believe that China’s strongest leader since Mao Zedong—is missing. His apparent absence in Glasgow drew prompt condemnation from Mr. Joe Biden. The American president claimed that China has “ridden” the climate challenge and that Beijing has undermined its efforts to “establish a new role as a world leader”.

For many experts, however, Xi Jinping’s decision to stay at home since the pandemic began reflects a deeper shift: China appears to be turning inward in response to severe domestic pressure and growing hostility abroad.

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University, said: “The pandemic has always been a booster for Xi Jinping’s China to move inward and partially decouple from the West.” “For a while. Since then, China has had many forces at work, all moving in the same direction: decoupling and isolating China to better protect her from foreign hostile forces or ideas. The primary goal of all this is to strengthen and consolidate the one-party dictatorship to ensure that The Chinese Communist Party has ruled forever.”

In the depths of Zhongnanhai, the leading compound in Beijing, Xi Jinping is planning an unparalleled reform of China’s business landscape, and he is also struggling to deal with the rising Covid-19 cases and severe energy shortages. Looking overseas, he saw that Mr. Biden was steadily rebuilding alliances between democracies worried about China’s growing military power.

In this context, Xi Jinping’s withdrawal from the international arena has aroused domestic and foreign questions. How far can China retreat? What does this trend mean for cross-commercial, climate change, geopolitical, and cultural engagement with the world’s most populous country?

COVID-19 isolation

Nearly two years after the coronavirus pandemic erupted from Wuhan, while most of the rest of the world reopened and reconnected, China was planning a different path.

The outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant first discovered in Inner Mongolia last month has spread to about two-thirds of China’s provinces, but only caused 800 infections. Beijing is deploying a familiar script: travel bans and large-scale testing, targeted lockdowns and quarantine.

Most of the accounts from all over China reflect sober cooperation with the rules. But there are also signs of quiet frustration, as well as rare confusion and panic.

On October 31, after a single case related to a Chinese theme park was discovered a day ago, 30,000 revelers who attended the Halloween party were locked in Shanghai Disneyland for several hours for testing. A few days later, after three positive cases of coronavirus infection were reported in the eastern city of Changzhou, the school closed and crowds poured into supermarkets desperately hoarding supplies and food.

Cui Ernan, a Chinese analyst at consulting firm Gavekal, said that the rapid containment of each cluster in recent weeks “will only increase the confidence of decision makers in their approach.”

However, Ms. Cui said that Beijing’s current local vaccine technology cannot yet support a zero-tolerance policy, which has become obvious. “The technical panacea for the complete elimination of Covid may never be realized,” she pointed out.

China’s “zero tolerance” policy has successfully curbed the death toll-the official statistics are less than 5,000, compared with 730,000 in the United States and 140,000 in the United Kingdom. However, with the re-tightening of lockdowns and travel restrictions, although nearly 80% of China’s 1.4 billion population have been fully vaccinated, there are few signs of a clear exit strategy.

It is now approaching the third year of the coronavirus era—with the question of China’s vaccine effectiveness pending—some of the long-term effects of its quarantine have surfaced.

Isolated from the outside world, and there are more and more reasons to be self-reliant, the development of localization in China is slow and may be irreversible.

The survey shows that more and more Chinese consumers prefer local brands to foreign brands, and Chinese job seekers would rather work for successful Chinese companies than for multinational companies. These trends are consistent with Xi Jinping’s “dual cycle” plan—that is, expanding domestic production while shifting the focus to output for domestic consumption.

“Xi Jinping has invested a lot of political capital in achieving and maintaining’zero new crown virus’, so it is not clear how they will guide the public to understand that they need to endure it at some point,” said Mr. David Weber, a Hong Kong activist investor. “It is suitable for dual circulation, suitable for the great (Internet censorship) firewall of the party, because the vast majority of people can no longer travel, cannot be exposed to foreign ideologies and different views of China. This may be suitable for Xi Jinping’s beautiful.”

The outflow of foreigners from China has also accelerated. In the past two years, strict visa and quarantine regulations have made many people’s foreign lives in China no longer sustainable. A Western corporate executive working in Shanghai said that this moment seemed “critical” in the context of China’s connection with the outside world.

“Will China look at this and say:’Due to the restrictions of the new crown virus, we have lost all these foreigners, maybe we don’t need them, let’s do it alone?'” he asked. “Of course it is possible.”

Beckoning in the third semester

Today, the highest political body of the Chinese Communist Party will hold a meeting to lay the foundation for Xi Jinping to continue to serve as the chairman of the party and the president of the country after two terms. For China, the Sixth Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee has a distinct historical response: Mao and Deng Xiaoping both used the meeting to ensure their long-term rule as transformational leaders.

Xi Jinping’s third term now seems to be a fait accompli for many people. This marks a huge change compared to 2012 when the newly appointed leader ignited hopes for economic reform and further opening up. In tracking the leader’s transition to isolation, some believe that the root cause lies in the early actions taken by Xi Jinping after he took over as the leader nearly a decade ago.

Others, however, said that Western countries, mainly past US presidents, are not without responsibility.

Professor Kabestein of Hong Kong Baptist University pointed out a series of policies aimed at freeing China from dependence on foreign technology and reducing its economy’s dependence on external markets. “Let Hong Kong be part of this strategy: better inoculate China with the poison of Western ideology…and tame or rebuild Hong Kong’s civil society according to the Chinese Communist Party’s standards,” he said.

Dr. Yu Jie, a senior researcher at the Chatham Institute, a think tank in London, said that Beijing’s actions are a “direct derivative” of US policy toward China. Xi Jinping and his senior deputies learned their lessons from their time dealing with former President Trump and his “painful” trade war.

“Turning internally is not a package plan. The Chinese government has now carefully selected… strategically important areas, (in these areas) Beijing firmly insists on’self-reliance’,” she said. “Beijing is considering the party’s survival by building economic resilience and preparing for further deterioration in relations with the United States.”

Xi Jinping and Biden are expected to hold a virtual summit before the end of the year. This is the first sign that the relationship may thaw since Biden took office. But Chen Jie, professor of international relations at the University of Western Australia, pointed out that for Xi Jinping and China, under the leadership of the US president, the international situation will only become more hostile.

“The United States and major EU countries have simultaneously stepped up their condemnation and countermeasures against China on the issues of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and the South China Sea… It is very difficult to conduct overseas visits in this atmosphere.”

Can cooperation be saved?

In the months leading up to the Glasgow Conference, climate movement groups and governments including the United States called on China, the world’s largest polluter, to make greater ambitions.

Mr. Biden’s climate envoy, Mr. John Kerry, hopes that although the United States has convened countries to challenge China’s rise, the global effort to save the planet from increased greenhouse gas emissions can be carried out separately.

However afterwards Mr. Biden’s attack on Mr. Xi last week, Obviously, the climate is inseparable from the tensions between the United States and China. Without Xi Jinping or Mr. Biden’s sudden correction, the prospects for meaningful dialogue and cooperation between the two most important countries in the world will still be severely limited.

“The United States and the Soviet Union tried to reduce their nuclear warheads, not because they were friends of each other, but because they saw the huge benefits of simultaneous operations,” said Li Shuo, a Greenpeace energy expert based in Beijing. “There is no such trust between Washington and Beijing now.”

Nonetheless, for many authoritative experts, the absence of the leader of the world’s largest polluter does not mean that Xi Jinping has given up his promise to overhaul his coal-dependent energy system. China may be turning internally, but it is expected to spend US$3.4 trillion (S$4.6 trillion) in reducing emissions in the next ten years, more than the United States and the European Union combined.

“The fact that Xi Jinping did not attend is by no means’going away’,” said Ms. Priscilla Lu, the head of Sustainable Investment for Asia at DWS and an advisor to the Green Finance Committee of the People’s Bank of China. “He knows this is political, he is walking into a forum that he cannot win. Action is more important.”

• Additional reporting by Emma Zhou and Xinning Liu in Beijing and Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai