Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next week for the first time in nearly seven years, with talks expected to focus on strengthening ties and reasserting China’s influence over its nuclear-armed neighbor. The visit follows recent meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government in the College of Arts & Sciences and an expert on Chinese foreign policy, says the flurry of diplomacy reflects Beijing’s effort to project strength amid mounting domestic pressures.
Carlson says: “In the span of three weeks, Chinese President Xi Jinping has hosted Donald Trump in Beijing, received Vladimir Putin, and is now poised to visit Kim Jong Un, his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years. Official Chinese media have proclaimed that Beijing is ‘fast emerging as the focal point of global diplomacy.’ In each of these cases Xi’s counterparts appear to be living in his world: Trump went to Beijing with historic-low approval ratings and seeking a trade deal; Putin came mired in Ukraine with an economy surviving on Chinese trade; and Kim Jong Un governs the world's most isolated state. In such company Xi looks every inch the kingmaker.
“But behind the diplomatic theater, China faces a prolonged property market collapse that has wiped out household savings, stubbornly weak consumer demand, and youth unemployment approaching 17%. A generation of young Chinese has embraced ‘tang ping,’ or ‘lying flat,’ as their answer to a system that no longer delivers. Xi understands that foreign spectacle is most necessary when domestic conditions are most anxious.
“The world's axis may be tilting toward Beijing. Whether it stays there is a different question.”
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