China’s Xi seeks new diplomatic inroads with Asian leaders

BANGKOK — Chinese President Xi Jinping has used his first face-to-face meetings with America’s Asia-Pacific allies since 2020 to try to forge diplomatic inroads as Washington pushes back against Beijing’s influence in the region.

Xi has not backed away from China’s longstanding claims to Taiwan and most of the South China Sea. But his comments to various leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok this week have focused more on Beijing’s pivotal economic role for its neighbors.

As China’s stature has risen, its diplomacy has grown more nuanced than the high-handed approach that has sometimes sparked resentment in the past.

“Xi Jinping’s diplomatic engagements and the supporting chorus of propaganda messages have sought to put forward a softer, smiling facade in what appears to be an effort to reduce friction and tensions, particularly with the U.S. and European countries that have become increasingly critical, frustrated and committed to competing with China,” said Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

In his address to the annual summit of APEC, whose 21-member economies ring the Pacific, Xi said that “China is ready to pursue peaceful coexistence and common development with all countries on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.”

China will “continue to share our development opportunities with the world, particularly with the Asia-Pacific region,” added Xi, who has garnered a reputation as an ardent nationalist who would always put China’s interests first and never surrender “one inch” of Chinese territory.

Thompson said Xi’s reappearance on the world stage after staying in China for more than two years during the pandemic “was reassuring for many countries that have sought to establish contact with the top, perhaps the only decision-maker in China.”

The APEC forum is the third of three high-level summits in Asia where the U.S. has been pushing the message that Washington is a reliable economic and security partner, as it seeks to counter China’s growing influence.

In a speech to a business conference Friday on the sidelines of APEC, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris assured Asian leaders “the United States is here to stay.”

“And there is no better economic partner for this region than the United States of America,” she said.

Sometimes leaders in Tokyo and Beijing can…