What Xi really wants from Trump

On Sept 24, US president Donald Trump met Chinese president Xi Jinping in Washington. As leaders of the two most powerful countries, they preside over the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. But if Trump assumes that this means China’s foreign policy revolves around relations with the US, he is gravely mistaken.

Xi is both a disciplinarian and an ideologue. He requires China’s foreign-policy establishment to pursue a global strategy based on the principles of “Xi Jinping Thought,” which shape how China assesses its national interests and responds to pressure from the US.

Chief among these principles is that preserving Xi’s leadership and Communist Party rule takes precedence over all other national interests. Close behind is enhancement of China’s global standing.

China’s defiant response to Trump’s tariff war reflects these priorities. In effect, Xi’s approach makes it nearly impossible for China to capitulate to American pressure.

What, then, does Xi’s China want? Its ultimate objective is enshrined in what Xi calls the “China Dream of National Rejuvenation,” to be fulfilled by 2050. As Olivia Cheung and I explain in our new book China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping, achieving this goal requires a dual pivot.

The first pivot, and the current focus of Chinese diplomacy, is to secure overwhelming support from the Global South for China’s foreign-policy agenda.

Xi has rationed his overseas travel since the Covid-19 pandemic, making his recent appearance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, his state visit to Egypt, and his recent visit to India particularly telling.

The second pivot is to seize Taiwan. Given Taiwan’s position within the first island chain in the Pacific Ocean and its importance to America’s strategic interests in the region, annexing it would demonstrate China’s supremacy over the US, marking the advent of Chinese global pre-eminence and the fulfillment of the China Dream. Such a mission cannot be launched until China is certain of success, and the 2050 deadline suggests Xi is in no hurry.

By courting the Global South, China seeks to forge a “common destiny for humankind” under its leadership, a Xi formulation that is regularly—and often deliberately—mistranslated by the Chinese government and media as “building a community of shared future”.

To achieve this objective, Xi promotes the “democratisation of international relations,” aimed at transforming the existing international order into a China-centric one.

In Xi’s conception, the liberal international order is of, by, and for an elitist West that represents a minority of United Nations member states and the global population. Western dominance is thus inherently undemocratic.

By contrast, the Global South—of which Xi insists China is and will remain a part of—encompasses most of the world’s countries and people.

Making the UN and other multilateral bodies accountable to the Global South would achieve the “democratisation of international relations” and enable China to shape the future international order.

More Global South countries are autocracies than democracies, which suggests that many of their leaders may find the prospect of America’s international leadership giving way to China—which regularly reassures them of their right to govern as they see fit—quite appealing.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative offers another incentive in the form of development loans without the accountability and transparency imposed by Western democracies and the multilateral development institutions they control.

The US cannot engage China effectively without recognising what drives Xi’s overtures to the Global South and his determination to transform the international order from within.

Crucially, China’s goal is not just to end American hegemony but also to discredit the idea that democracy represents the best path forward for the developing world.

It has no interest in helping the US rectify its foreign-policy mistakes. In fact, it benefits when the US is seen as a threat to global peace, security, and prosperity.

The Iran war is a case in point. While China did not want the US to attack Iran, it is benefitting significantly from the Trump administration’s use of force and its failure, despite overwhelming military superiority, to achieve any of its objectives.

The more the US alienates its traditional allies, disrupts the global economy, and harms countries in the Global South, the easier it is for China to win support.

Xi’s top priority in meeting Trump was to ensure that the summit is seen as a great success. Reaching a trade deal comes second. Helping the US extricate itself from its self-inflicted Middle Eastern mess was not even on his agenda.

If pressured, he is likely to push back hard. Nevertheless, he has every reason to engage Trump positively, deliver good optics, and benefit from America’s litany of unforced errors.

Steve Tsang is director of the SOAS China Institute at SOAS University of London.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.

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