Shunning global summits, President Xi visits flood-stricken area in north-east China

BEIJING - Eschewing face time with foreign leaders at global summits this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday visited the homes of villagers in a rural part of north-east China battered by floods.

In the village of Longwangmiao in Heilongjiang province, Mr Xi called on local residents to triumph over their difficulties and work towards returning life to a more normal footing, according to state media reports. He also inquired about their losses and supply of daily necessities.

From late July to early August,

record rainfall laid waste to vast swathes of northern China,

flooding cities and farmlands unused to powerful storms more common in the south, but Mr Xi did not visit any of the disaster-hit areas until this week.

Inspecting rice crops and homes in Longwangmiao that had been battered by remnants of Super Typhoon Doksuri,

Mr Xi skipped an Asean summit in Indonesia this week.

He will also miss the chance on Saturday and Sunday to meet United States President Joe Biden at a Group of 20 (G-20) conclave in India. But Mr Xi did attend

a meeting in late August with leaders of the Brics group of major emerging economies

– Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – in South Africa.

Associate Professor Alfred Wu of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore said that Mr Xi’s speed in visiting disaster-stricken areas in China has usually been much slower than that of his immediate predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, a possible consequence of Mr Xi’s centralisation of power.

“These delays are common in Xi’s regime, it is not a good look for him,” Prof Wu said.

“We know that the floods started in July, but he probably got the information late, and then in August he was busy with Brics, so only now has his agenda cleared.”

China has not explained why Mr Xi, who had attended every G-20 summit since coming to office more than a decade ago, was not leading Beijing’s delegation to New Delhi. It has said only

that Premier Li Qiang will represent China.

By comparison, Mr Xi left China for five overseas visits in 2022 – when the country’s borders were effectively closed because of pandemic controls – and a dozen in pre-Covid 2019.

Reuters, citing foreign diplomats in China, previously reported that Mr Xi’s absence at the upcoming G-20 could be a sign of Beijing’s increasing coolness to the West and its allies.

Instead, some Western leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and senior officials like US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2023 had to go to China to see Mr Xi.

Mr Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of think-tank The Conference Board’s China Centre for Economics and Business, said that from a geopolitical perspective, attending the Brics summit in South Africa was a higher priority for Mr Xi than the G-20.

“There is not only no strategic goal to be achieved at the G-20, but there is also a risk that the US and its allies use the meeting to criticise his government,” Mr Montufar-Helu said.

“It is more of a priority for him to pay attention to the domestic situation, given the impact of the economic slowdown and natural disasters on people’s livelihoods.” REUTERS