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Associated Press

This year’s list of the world’s best-travelled heads of state included a surprising upstart.
Naturally, the old guard of presidential travel made a strong appearance: President Barack Obama travelled to 11 countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin to 14 and French President François Hollande to more than 50.
Then there was Chinese President Xi Jinping, who visited 14 countries in 2015 – making him not only a top political globetrotter, but also China’s best-travelled top leader since the Communist party took power in 1949.
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.”


How Hong Kong can take on a more frontier role in China’s development

Can Beijing and Washington shield their planned state visits from Taiwan tensions?

Japanese business leaders shelve annual China trip as tensions mount

China’s Wang Yi takes aim at Japan in call with South Korean foreign minister

Xi Jinping

Jet-setting Xi: With 14 global trips this year, China’s president is the country’s most-travelled leader since foundation of communist state

(150923) -- SEATTLE, Sept. 23, 2015 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) chats with a Boeing employee aboard a 787 plane which will soon be delivered to China's Xiamen Airlines during his visit to the Boeing Company's commercial airplane factory in Everett of Washington State, the United States, Sept. 23, 2015. (Xinhua/Li Tao) (wf)

China President Xi Jinping chats with a Boeing employee aboard a 787 plane which will soon be delivered to China's Xiamen Airlines during his September visit to the Boeing Company's factory in Washington state, US. Photo: Xinhua

Power trips: Which Asian leader racked up the most flights in 2015?

In this handout photograph released by The Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) on December 12, 2015, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (centre L) are given a traditional welcome upon their arrival in Varanasi. Japan will build India's first bullet train under a sweeping tally of agreements made following talks in New Delhi on December 12, deepening a partnership Prime Minister Narendra Modi said would "shape the course of Asia". Later the two leaders visited the Indian premier's parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, India's holiest city. AFP PHOTO/PIB -----EDITORS NOTE---- RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO/PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU" ---- NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

Shinzo Abe (left) and Narendra Modi spent plenty of time abroad.

China’s zombie war: can Xi Jinping win the battle to eradicate industrial overcapacity?

A worker operates a furnace at a steel plant in Hefei, Anhui province August 18, 2013. Momentum is growing in China to allow market forces to end a titanic capacity glut in heavy industry that a decade of state interventions has failed to resolve, according to speeches made by high-ranking officials this month at a closed-door event. The speeches indicate that China's reform-minded cabinet is considering a dose of deeper structural reform to remedy bloated, inefficient and debt-laden sectors such as steel. REUTERS/Stringer (CHINA - Tags: BUSINESS POLITICS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

China’s steel industry is flooded with overcapacity but many steelmakers have kept their furnaces running, even at a loss. Photo: Reuters

New world order: Xi bent on securing bigger role for China in global affairs, analysts say

President Xi Jinping walks past an honor guard with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in Beijing on Wednesday.  Xi has called for new mechanisms and rules to govern global political and economic cooperation. Photo: EPA

Chinese Opera performers attend a Chinese lunar New Year celebration in London, where President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit next week. Photo: Xinhua

China flexed its military muscle at a recent parade in Beijing commemorating victory over Japan at the end of the second world war. Photo: Xinhua

US president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama with Chinese president Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan before the State Dinner at the White House last month. Photo: Reuters

King Abdullah II of Jordan meets Xi Jinping at the UN in New York last month. Photo: AFP

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Jet-setting Xi: With 14 global trips this year, China’s president is the country’s most-travelled leader since foundation of communist state

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