Xi’s Long COVID Isolation: What China Lost
For nearly 32 months, Xi Jinping did not leave China. That carried high costs for Beijing’s foreign policy.
On September 14, Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Kazakhstan for a brief visit. The overnight trip would not have been especially remarkable – Xi has traveled to Kazakhstan four times since assuming China’s top leadership post in November 2012 – were it not for one thing: It was Xi’s first time setting foot outside China in 970 days.
On January 18, 2020, Xi wrapped up a two-day trip to Myanmar. That trip also seemed fairly typical diplomatic fare. At the time, however, what would become known as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading rapidly through Wuhan, China. Five days after Xi returned home, on January 23, 2020, the lockdown of Wuhan began. China largely closed itself off from the outside world, severely curtailing flights and visa issuances.
Xi himself would not leave the country for two years and nearly eight months.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Xi averaged trips to 13 foreign countries each year, attending at least four international summits (always the APEC, BRICS, G-20, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization summits, and often others, like the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference or the U.S.-hosted Nuclear Security Summits in 2014 and 2016). In 2020, Xi visited just one country and attended no international summits before the pandemic took hold; in 2021 he did not leave China at all.