Therefore, China ignores the summit - several reasons

Xi Jinping  

That is why Xi Jinping is absent from the G-20 summit  

Wolfgang Hansson  

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's. 

Updated 20:24 | Published at 6:16 p.m  

Columnists  

That Xi Jinping abstains from the G-20 summit in India can be interpreted in several ways.  

He feels increasingly pressured at home by the declining Chinese economy. 

He feels the pressure from an outside world that is increasingly dissatisfied with China's support for Russia's war in Ukraine and aggressive stance against its neighbors. 

Xi does not want to be scapegoated. 

After the covid pandemic, Xi Jinping has traveled abroad extensively and attended almost all major summits. He has never before missed a G-20 meeting.  

Therefore, a few eyebrows are raised when he has now announced that he will stay at home when the world's 20 richest countries meet in New Delhi.

The question is whether Xi Jinping wants to punish India, avoid being exposed to criticism from other countries at the meeting, or is simply about to lose his grip.  

Xi Jinping has been used to a lot going his way since he became China's president in 2013. The economy has boomed. China has gained an ever greater role in world politics. China even seemed to be able to ride out the pandemic fairly well despite many both long and brutal shutdowns. 

Xi made history by securing a third term and has ensured that there is no longer any upper limit to how long he can remain president. 

But lately the clouds of worry have begun to gather.  

The Communist Party's strong grip on China is fundamentally based on an unspoken pact with the Chinese people. Xi Jinping arranges continued prosperity in exchange for the people letting him tighten the thumb screws on freedom.  

But China's economy is stuttering after a temporary rapid recovery after the pandemic. Growth is predicted to be below five percent. Extremely low by Chinese standards. The real estate sector, which is so important to China, is collapsing. Far too many homes have been built that no one buys. Now giant real estate companies like Evergrande are threatened with bankruptcy. 

Darken numbers 

Low growth means fewer jobs. In China, many young people have invested in long-term education. Now they come out equipped to the teeth with skills that no one is asking for anymore. Youth unemployment was over 20 percent in June. So high that the Communist Party decided to stop publishing figures. 

If discontent begins to simmer in the young generation, it is a long-term threat to the Communist Party's power and thus also to Xi Jinping's position.  

But Xi seems to think it is more important to push his nationalist project of a bigger and more powerful China than to keep economic growth going or he no longer has the tools. 

Xi Jinping has tied himself rather tightly to Russia's Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine. Given how badly the war is going for Russia, that may turn out to have been a mistake. Not least as more and more countries vent their displeasure with China's support for Russia's violations of international law on Ukraine. 

A criticism that Xi Jinping had had thrown in his face in New Delhi.  

Shortly before the summit, China published a new standard map of its territory claiming even more of the South China Sea than before and a disputed piece of India. The map has been met with harsh criticism from India and not least in Taiwan, where the majority absolutely do not want to belong to China. Xi Jinping also had to deal with that anger at the G-20 meeting. At the same time, not many believe that the timing of the publication of the map was a coincidence.

No meeting with Biden  

 

The plan was also for Xi to have a personal meeting with US President Joe Biden in New Delhi. The meeting was seen as a chance to at least to some extent thaw the frozen relations between the two great powers. In recent months, a number of US ministers have visited China to try to pave the way for some sort of settlement between the US and China. Perhaps Xi Jinping believes that the time for that is not yet ripe and therefore chooses to stay at home. The next chance for the two to meet will be at the APEC meeting in California in November. 

 

The West, especially the EU, previously had a more benevolent view of China. The Chinese economy was seen as an engine that could keep the world economy going and China as a giant market that simply could not do without. It has turned almost 180 degrees.  

 

Today, many foreign companies see it as a big risk to invest in an increasingly totalitarian China. The example of Russia shows how fast it can go. If China makes good on its threat to invade Taiwan, many foreign companies will have to wind down their operations in China.  

 

The possibility exists that Xi Jinping, in light of the increasingly harsh tone from the West, simply chooses to isolate himself from the West and seek support elsewhere. 

 

It is now clear that Vladimir Putin does not dare to travel anywhere outside Russia or a few former Soviet republics because of the war crimes indictment in Ukraine. He also stays home from New Delhi.  

Thus, the leaders of the two great powers that today challenge the liberal world order will be absent from the meeting.