When Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and nearly 20 other national leaders gather in Shenzhen next week, they will be treated by Xi Jinping to displays of China’s marvels. Drones will swarm and sparkle overhead, fleets of humanoids will usher delegates through conference halls and ultrafast-charging electric vehicles will shuttle them between venues. The message to the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum—that China’s technology is cutting-edge—will be clear to all.
It has been written into China’s constitution and tied to every big diplomatic initiative that Mr Xi has launched for more than a decade. But there will also be a subtler message, signalling Mr Xi’s idea of how the world should look. To many observers, this language may seem obscure. It is certainly a mouthful. Yet this is not just a casual slogan. So it is worth asking what, exactly, he means by it. Chinese scholars have tried to put meat on the bones. Yang Jiemian of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies made a notable attempt this year when he declared that the doctrine deserves to be seen as a full scientific system. It offers specific goals (eg, lasting peace), has a road map defined by Mr Xi’s four global initiatives (on development, security, civilisation and governance), and is delivered concretely via Mr Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for global infrastructure-building.
The summit’s theme, “building an Asia-Pacific community to prosper together”, is a deliberate echo of his main foreign-policy doctrine: “building a community with a shared future for mankind”. Ma Zhaoxu, a vice foreign minister, has made the link explicit, tracing the theme back to Mr Xi’s calls since 2013 for an “Asia-Pacific community with a shared future”. Even China hawks face a challenge in explaining to the public why a “shared future” is threatening (the literal translation, “common destiny”, has a more chilling, deterministic edge, which is presumably why a switch was made to softer wording in English).
Alas, the content is overwhelmingly vague. Hard as it is to disagree, it comes across more like a general wish list than a specific, operable plan. Chaguan found only four forward-looking commitments. China will not seek hegemony, China will cut carbon emissions, China will modernise its economy, China will work with other countries. All are restatements of existing policy and, again, not much to go on. It sounds a lot like the professed principle of mutual non-intervention that has been the much-touted lodestar of China’s foreign policy since the 1950s. The usual criticisms apply to both concepts. China has a history of meddling, such as backing African rebel movements in the Mao era or grabbing disputed territory—look at recent encroachments on waters close to the Philippines and across the unsettled border with India. Chinese officials do little when their closest partners mess with others. They have, in effect, enabled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What has changed since the 1950s is the context. China’s economic and military power is orders of magnitude greater. It can put real muscle behind its demand for non-interference in its own politics. That is worrying—especially if it ultimately gives China cover to do whatever it wants with Taiwan. But for now, governments and businesses around the world are more consumed by fallout from America’s war against Iran and from Mr Trump’s tariffs. The immediate uncertainty is not what Mr Xi might say in Shenzhen but how Mr Trump will behave as a gravely wounded president after the Democrats’ triumph in the midterms.
A natural place to start is the Chinese government’s white paper, published in 2023, that tried to explain Mr Xi’s doctrine. Running to nearly 13,000 words, it might seem to cover a lot of ground.
Among its exhortations: countries ought to “work together in harmony and unity” and should “strengthen dialogue” while promoting “peace and development”. Students of Chinese history may feel they have seen this “shared future” before.
