As clock counts down to Trump summit, Xi boosts global clout with diplomatic blitz

His summit with US President Donald Trump is just over two weeks away, but already this month Xi Jinping has had one of his busiest stretches of diplomatic travel in recent years.

First he wrapped up the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and then he made a state visit to Egypt.

Xi is expected to head off again later this week to visit New Delhi for the Brics summit before he travels to Washington. Beijing has not yet confirmed those two trips, in line with its practice of making official travel announcements at the last minute.

Observers say the flurry of diplomatic activity is not only about making progress on bilateral ties but also an effort to strengthen China’s negotiating hand with the United States.

Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said the summit with Trump was important but Xi’s diplomatic sequencing emphasised that China’s foreign relations did not “revolve around a single axis centred on Washington”.

“What Bishkek, Cairo and New Delhi truly offer is a demonstration to Washington that China possesses substantial space for strategic manoeuvre and a broad network of international partners,” Sun said, adding that the diplomatic itinerary highlighted Beijing’s emphasis on multilateralism and global governance.

This was echoed by Julian Gewirtz, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs.

“Xi appears to see an opportunity to show that China has friends and options around the world at precisely the moment Washington is alienating many of its allies,” Gewirtz wrote in a Substack post on August 28.

The SCO summit – which brings together key Central Asian nations and powers such as Iran, Russia and India – is widely viewed as a platform for Beijing to project its strategic influence outside Washington-led institutions.

In a veiled swipe at the US military alliance system, Xi praised the SCO at the summit for charting a path of peaceful coexistence “without alliance, confrontation or targeting any third party”.

And, without naming the US or Israel, the leaders issued a joint statement condemning military strikes on Iran for violating international law and posing “serious risks to international peace, security and stability”.

They also backed the right of Iran as an SCO member state to a peaceful nuclear programme under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Trump has repeatedly insisted Tehran abandon all nuclear capabilities, a demand Iran has rejected.

Gewirtz said Beijing’s diplomatic whirlwind was intended to show China could build an “international ecosystem less centred on Washington while managing – and extracting benefits from – Washington itself”.

“Xi will spend September cultivating institutions and relationships meant to expand Beijing’s influence across Eurasia and the Global South, then fly to Washington to be welcomed by an American president eager to celebrate their relationship.

“For Xi, that sequence is not a contradiction. It is the point.”

Sun, of Tsinghua University, noted that the diplomatic tour, which covered vital pillars of China’s diplomacy, could also improve Beijing’s strategic environment when negotiating with Washington.

China’s deepening energy and infrastructure ties across Eurasia yielded tangible leverage which Washington could not ignore if it expected Beijing’s cooperation on issues regarding Russia, Iran, critical minerals and global supply chains, he said.

He pointed out that the diplomatic blitz created a posture “with greater room for imagination” for his US visits, as Xi would arrive in Washington not merely as a leader defined by the US-China rivalry, but one fresh off a series of major multilateral and bilateral diplomatic engagements.

“What truly enhances China’s negotiating power is not how many countries take its side diplomatically, but whether China can convince the US that even if bilateral negotiations run into trouble, China still retains sufficient economic partners, diplomatic manoeuvring space and policy options,” Sun said.

Last week, during his first visit to Egypt in a decade, Xi urged Middle Eastern countries to build a self-led security model and “independently take charge of their own future”, nudging them to cut reliance on Washington without positioning Beijing as an alternative security guarantor.

The trip took place as tensions flared again over the US-Israel war with Iran, which has prompted regional US allies to rethink their strategic ties with Washington.

China and Egypt also deepened their defence cooperation, conducting their second joint air force exercise from mid-August to early September.

Jesse Marks, founder of Middle East consultancy Rihla Research and Advisory, said Washington would see this as a potential risk given that Cairo had historically been a primary recipient of US defence aid, although bilateral relations had been strained in recent years.

Zhang Chi, a senior researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World, said that while China and the US aimed to stabilise their ties, Beijing’s risks and challenges remained and it needed to “unite all viable forces to rally momentum behind leading ‘true multilateralism’”.

He said polls from this year showed a broader trend of China’s global favourability outpacing that of the US.

“Capitalising on this strategic window – particularly converting favourable public sentiment into [other countries’] positive China policies – will be a major task for Beijing,” Zhang said.

While some view the coming Brics summit in Delhi as a diplomatic opportunity for India to ease tensions with the US and expand China-India cooperation on global conflicts, Marks doubted the outcomes from Cairo and Delhi would be “sufficient to tip the scales away from Washington”.

“China and its ties with Pakistan are still India’s largest regional concern, and SCO ties do not resolve that. China may want to wedge between India and the US, but that can only go so far,” he said.

“Same with Cairo, because Cairo’s largest regional concerns will not be solved by China, but they will be directly shaped by the US.”