China’s Geopolitical Strategy Unfolds amid Global Chaos: Keys to Xi’s Multilateral Summitry

We are living in a time of extraordinary uncertainty and flux in international relations. The radical transformation of US policy under President Donald Trump, together with the administration’s unpredictability, is causing turbulence around the globe. At the same time, the world has been transitioning toward a multipolar power balance, and relationships among the various poles are unsettled. We have seen the outbreak of war in the Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as serious clashes between India and Pakistan. These conflicts are intricately interconnected and involve the major and emerging powers in various ways. The world’s power centers seem to be jockeying ceaselessly for support amid an ongoing global realignment. Through strategic regional diplomacy, President Xi Jinping is doing his utmost to turn this dynamic situation to China’s advantage.

How Trump Is Helping China

The policies of the second Trump administration have not been an unmitigated disaster for China. To be sure, the Trump tariffs pose a challenge, but it can be met to some degree through a combination of retaliatory tariffs and limits on rare earth exports. Besides, China has reduced its dependence on trade with the United States, partly through its efforts to shift to an economy powered by domestic demand and partly through cultivation of trade with other regions, such as Southeast and Central Asia.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trade policies have allowed China to pose as a champion of the global free trade system as it attacks America for undermining that system and depriving developing economies of opportunities for development. Beijing has been wooing both the developing world and those industrial countries particularly hard hit by the Trump tariffs (including Japan) in hopes of enlisting them in a “joint struggle” against the United States. Xi Jinping’s April tour of Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia) and the regional diplomatic initiatives discussed below are all part of this offensive, as are Beijing’s assiduous efforts to strengthen and deepen key strategic partnerships through two-plus-two and three-plus-three ministerial meetings.

Other Trump policies have played into Beijing’s hands as well. Massive cuts to USAID (United States Agency for International Development) programs have dealt a serious blow to social infrastructure in the developing world, creating a foreign-aid vacuum into which China can step in order to augment its own clout in the developing world. By using budget cuts to kill the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, while dialing back criticism of China’s human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and elsewhere, the Trump administration has made it that much easier for China to boost its own global “discourse power.” Even if Trump follows through on his threats to expel Chinese students from American universities, the policy could end up benefitting China by keeping its young talent at home.

Washington’s China Hawks on a Leash

Of course, the Trump administration is anything but predictable. Adding to the opacity of its policies are the ideological rifts between the White House and its foreign-policy and security team. For example, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took an extremely tough position on China at the 2025 IISS Shangri-La Dialogue on Asian security, held in Singapore May 30–June 1. Yet neither Trump nor Vice-President J.D. Vance has shown much interest in countering China’s regional ambitions through such frameworks as the AUKUS security partnership (with Australia and Britain), the Quad forum (with Australia, India, and Japan), or the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (with Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand). In fact, one hears precious little from the Trump administration about Indo-Pacific strategy in general.

Since Trump took office, the influence of Washington’s top-level China hawks has grown weaker and weaker. It has become clear, moreover, that none of these senior officials is able to stand up to Trump. Some observers believe that this state of affairs presents a golden opportunity for China on the security front.

On May 12 this year, Beijing released a white paper titled “China’s National Security in the New Era,” which outlines clear directions for security policy in the coming decade. While reaffirming China’s commitment to the basic policy of “holistic security,” the document develops the idea of “common security,” meaning security cooperation with other countries. In the Astana Declaration issued last June at the 2025 China–Central Asia Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (the Kyrgyz Republic), Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan pledged concerted efforts geared to security in the energy, food, and digital domains.

China’s Regional Strategies

Amid the transition to a multipolar world and the ongoing realignment that transition has triggered, China appears to be deploying a region-by-region geopolitical strategy. This was on vivid display at two recent multilateral summits. One was the first leaders’ conference between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), and China, held in Kuala Lumpur in May 2025 (attended by Premier Li Qiang). The other was the aforementioned China–Central Asia summit in Astana (attended by President Xi Jinping).

These diplomatic initiatives are thought to have two major purposes.

First, they are intended to counter the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) initiative promoted by Japan, the United States, and others. That intent was certainly a driving force behind the ASEAN-GCC-China summit. China has been critical of the FOIP vision articulated by the governments of Japan, the United States, and Australia, but it has responded positively to the less threatening ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), which envisions a pivotal decision-making role for ASEAN in the broader region. In any case, China has now established a regional framework rooted in Southeast Asia and the Gulf states, which are also seen as central to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Within this framework, China, ASEAN, and the Gulf states have embraced principles and targets of cooperation that differ significantly from those pursued by the United States and its FOIP partners. For example, the joint statement issued by the summit downplays many of the developed world’s economic-security concerns—most notably, dual-use advanced technology—and focuses more squarely on energy and food security,

Second, such initiatives are meant to counter moves by India, an emerging rival power. Although border clashes between China and India have subsided in recent years, relations are strained, largely as a result of tensions between India and Pakistan, with which China has close ties. One reason Beijing chose to meet with ASEAN and the Gulf states on the one hand and the Central Asian nations on the other is that such a summit with the South Asian powers is not currently feasible.

At the Group of 20 summit held in New Delhi in 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden announced the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) initiative, a proposed route from India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. India has also stepped up negotiations for a free trade agreement with Europe, and Prime Minister Modi recently visited Cyprus. The ASEAN-GCC-China summit can be seen as an effort by Beijing to counter diplomatic progress by India on the western front. This reveals a multi-faceted geopolitical strategy focused on India and other emerging powers as well as the industrial world.

Platforms for Expansion?

At the same time, China’s regional initiatives seem inspired by other ideas, especially when viewed in conjunction with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), ASEAN Plus One (China) and ASEAN Plus Three (Japan, China, and South Korea), and the expansion of the BRICS group (currently consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates).

First, let us consider the significance of the decision to hold the ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Malaysia. As indicated by the summit’s joint statement, the conference embraced the views of a group of Gulf states that have strongly condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, even while working to mediate peace in the Middle East. Malaysia, as a Muslim nation, was doubtless the ASEAN country most likely to support this posture. Malaysia itself is eager to cooperate with the Gulf states in order to improve its chances of gaining admission to the BRICS framework. China may be trying to ride the wave of this cooperative climate between the Gulf states and countries like Malaysia.

One might also posit that Beijing is creating multilateral forums to serve as links between China and various regional frameworks. The precursor to the SCO was the Shanghai Five, consisting of China and four countries that border it: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. It was renamed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with the addition of Uzbekistan in 2001, and it has expanded further over the past eight years. The BRICS grouping is also growing rapidly. Under the circumstances, Beijing may have felt the need for a framework linking China more directly with its Central Asian neighbors; hence the China–Central Asia Summit.

While China enjoys close relations with ASEAN, its ties to the Middle East could use strengthening. For Beijing, the ASEAN-GCC-China summit was a means of leveraging its relationship with ASEAN to draw closer to the Gulf states, making use of the interregional links among Muslim countries.

In this way, China is continually adapting and fine-tuning its regional strategies as multi-polarization progresses. But it remains to be seen how the countries of each region receive these advances. Simply as a Chinese alternative to US dominance, Beijing’s vision of a new international order is unlikely to come to fruition.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: From left to right, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, and Premier Li Qiang of China at the ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Kuala Lumpur, May 27, 2025. © AFP/Jiji.)