China’s Quarantined Diplomacy

Originally, EU leaders were supposed to be in Beijing from March 30 to 31 for a summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting has been postponed.

That, in turn, will likely necessitate a delay in the next planned summit of the so-called “17+1” grouping, which brings 17 Central and Eastern European countries together with China. That meeting was set for April, but even if the pandemic has stabilized by then it will probably need to be pushed back. The EU has been insistent that its official summit with Li precede a meeting between China and the 17 European countries, many of which belong to the EU. 

As if that weren’t enough, the postponement of the China-EU summit – and the previous cancellation of planned economic talks in Brussels in February – will seriously jeopardize hopes for a major China-EU bilateral investment treaty to be signed at a September summit in Leipzig, Germany. There’s less and less time for the necessary negotiations, not to mention less and less energy as governments scramble to address the COVID-19 crisis at home.

Clearly, the knock-on effects of the novel coronavirus are wreaking havoc on China’s diplomacy priorities for 2020. As one EU official told Reuters, “China has been paralyzed. Everything is complicated by the coronavirus.”

COVID-19, a disease caused by a novel strain of coronavirus, first appeared in Wuhan in late 2019. After initial attempts at a cover-up, by late January Chinese authorities had pivoted to a draconian response: enforced quarantines of entire mega-cities, shutting down schools and businesses for weeks on end, and using high-tech surveillance methods to track people at risk of exposure (as Maya Wang detailed earlier in this issue). Those methods seem to have worked – as of the end of March, China was reporting zero new cases of domestic transmission.

But even as China began to return to some semblance of normalcy, the rest of the world was being hit hard. By March 25, there were over 440,000 cases of COVID-19 around the world, with Italy, the United States, and Spain among the hardest hit. Countries from India to Fiji have gone into full lockdown mode, shuttering businesses and transportation in a bid to stop the virus in its tracks. As a result, even if China were ready to plunge back into its regularly scheduled diplomatic efforts, it would be hard pressed to find partners who have anything but coronavirus on their minds.

The diplomatic casualties of the outbreak are already significant. China has had to cancel two events that it is attempting to build into globally recognized names: the Boao Forum for Asia, which China bills as the “Asian Davos,” and the China Development Forum. Each of these are opportunities for China to showcase its economic openness and success to the world – particularly crucial messaging amid a global economic downturn (also worsened by COVID-19), as well as growing discontent around the world with China’s heavy-handed economic interventions.

On the bilateral front, however, schedules have been even more disrupted. China and Japan called off a planned state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in March. It would have been Xi’s first state visit to Japan since assuming office in 2013, and thus a celebratory sign of repaired ties. Now the great celebration will have to wait – probably until fall, if not later..

Similarly, Xi was also expected to visit South Korea sometime in the first half of 2020, another public olive branch between two countries that have had strained ties. China, furious over Seoul’s 2016 decision to deploy a U.S. missile defense system known as THAAD, struck out economically, slashing tourism to South Korea and penalizing Korean firms in China. Xi’s visit to South Korea was supposed to be the culmination of three painstaking years of rebuilding ties. Now that prospect is in question.

China’s diplomatic calendar hasn't been entirely barren, however. Xi received Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga in Beijing on February 5 and February 27, respectively. But both visits were such aberrations that Xi extolled his counterparts for their “special” visits.

The same went for what should have been a routine visit from Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, who was in Beijing on February 26. Under normal circumstances, Beijing hosts a revolving door of foreign ministers – in February 2019, for example, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed his counterparts from Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and India. Foreign ministers from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia visited in March 2019. In February and March of 2020, however, thanks to COVID-19, Dačić was the lone guest for Wang to host. That inspired Wang to heap special praise on the Serbian minister, noting that “Dačić is the first foreign minister received by China since the outbreak of the epidemic… Serbia's act of support is deeply appreciated by China and will always be remembered by the Chinese people.”

The pace of diplomatic exchanges was so slow that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs resorted to putting out press releases for Xi’s and Wang’s phone calls with their foreign counterparts – something the ministry generally doesn’t bother to publicize.

Those phone calls – and all the other diplomatic activities China was able to salvage – were dominated by talk of the epidemic. Every meeting and conversation began by outlining China’s appreciation for its partners’ support and giving an overview of the disease control measures Beijing has in place. In perhaps the most telling example of Beijing’s diplomatic priorities being forcibly shifted, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (FMM) held in Laos in February was overshadowed by a hastily arranged China-ASEAN FMM on Coronavirus Disease.

The COVID-19 themed FMM was an attempt to turn lemons into diplomatic lemonade. Since business-as-usual wasn’t in the cards, China sought to find another way to reassert its indispensable role in Southeast Asian affairs – if not through cooperation over the region’s most important river, than through sharing information about what was soon to be declared a global pandemic. Wang was having trouble finding ministers who would travel to him, but he took full advantage of the China-ASEAN meeting to lay out Beijing’s talking points on COVID-19: namely, that China’s response was exemplary, that its economy will not suffer lasting impacts, and that the disease necessitates even closer cooperation with China.

“China has taken the most comprehensive, rigorous and thorough measures, built an effective prevention and control network to cut off the spread of the virus, and shown the world how fast China can act to treat the patients,” Wang told his ASEAN counterparts. “China's actions have gained time for the world and proved that it is a responsible major country.”

He also added that China and ASEAN should turn “the challenge into an opportunity and [foster] new areas of cooperation.” 

That’s exactly what Beijing is attempting to do at the moment, but there’s no denying that its priorities and goals for 2020 have been upended. Even if China is looking to get back to normal, the rest of the world won’t be ready for some time.