Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, visited only seven countries during his decade as China’s top leader. Since Xi took the reins in 2012, he has visited more than 30.

This year alone he visited Pakistan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, the United States, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Turkey, France, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

“Xi is absolutely a high-profile foreign-policy president,” said Xie Tao, a professor of international relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “Rather than only bringing in business contracts for Chinese enterprises, Xi wants to gain more political influence (abroad).”

Experts say that Xi has embarked on a long string of ambitious foreign projects to shape perceptions of Beijing both at home and overseas.

Domestically, he may hope that a dramatic foreign policy agenda will divert attention from widespread concerns about a protracted economic slump – China’s economy grew 7.3 per cent in 2014, its slowest annual pace since 1990.

Internationally, he wants to show that China’s political clout can match its economic power, allowing the country to challenge the United States as a geopolitical superpower.

“When China’s internal economic growth is slowing down, Xi and the Communist Party have to show Chinese people that China is playing a bigger role externally,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Beijing’s foreign policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“I don’t see a physical war between China and the U.S. in the near future, but the competition between the two countries will definitely grow more and more fierce,” he added.

Xi has developed several high-profile international institutions to rival those of the West, signalling that his ambitions stretch beyond the next few years. His multi-billion-dollar Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Beijing-based alternative to the World Bank, has attracted US allies as founding members. His One Belt One Road initiative, an ambitious development strategy, involves plans to establish trade routes throughout Asia and Europe.

Xi has signed US$130 billion in business deals while abroad this year, worth more than the total gross domestic product of many small nations. The deals include a US$7.7 billion deal with the Toulouse, France-based aircraft manufacturer Airbus to buy 70 commercial passenger planes; a US$5 billion deal to build a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas; and a US$3 billion deal to build two “ecological parks” in Wales.

Yet Xi has complemented his deal-signing with increased aggression in the South and East China seas, raising tensions with neighbours including Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.

Beijing is attempting to bolster its claims by building artificial islands made of dredged-up sand in disputed maritime territory near the Philippines.

In October, the United States — which does not recognise China’s claims — sent a guided missile destroyer within 12 nautical miles of the islands as a “freedom of navigation” exercise, drawing harsh rebukes from the Chinese foreign ministry.

In September, Xi held a big military parade in central Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Although many Chinese saw the display –– which included 12,000 troops and dozens of tanks, missiles and planes –– as a reassuring sign of national strength, many foreign observers saw it as an unnerving display of military might.

Commentators have called Xi the strongest Chinese leader since Mao Tse-tung and say that foreign leaders have taken note of his unusually powerful position.

“In the Hu era, other countries sometimes weren’t so sure whether to listen to Hu or China’s Foreign Ministry, [especially] when the two sides weren’t in perfect consensus,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China in Beijing. “But everyone now knows that if you want to deal with China, you need to deal with Xi Jinping”.

This year, a group of Harvard University researchers showed that 12 out of 16 historical instances in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power have resulted in war.

Xi himself addressed the theory – called the Thucydides Trap — head on in Seattle during his US state visit this year.

“There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap,” he said. “But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”