Communist Party chiefs from border regions such as Xinjiang and Yunnan play leading role in campaign to woo Central and Southeast Asia.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang declared last month that China had “pressed [the] acceleration button” in diplomacy. In the weeks that followed, Beijing launched a diplomatic charm offensive to strengthen its ties with neighbours, with the leaders of China’s frontier provinces taking centre stage. Ma Xingrui , the Communist Party chief in China’s far western region of Xinjiang , kicked off the campaign with a four-day, three-country trip to Central Asia in late March. Meanwhile, Wang Ning, party boss of Yunnan province, crossed the border by foot into Vietnam’s Ha Giang province for his first official visit to the country. He continued his eight-day tour of Southeast Asia with stops in Laos and Myanmar . Liu Ning, the party chief of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China, also embarked on a trip to Southeast Asia at the end of March, visiting Vietnam , Singapore and Malaysia during the 10-day tour. Also in late March, Jin Guowei, deputy governor of the northeastern province of Liaoning, led a delegation to Japan and South Korea. The visits by provincial leaders followed the lifting of China’s Covid-19 pandemic restrictions in early January, ending three years of isolation, and the completion of a twice-a-decade leadership transition in mid-March. Observers say the push to bolster relations with nearby countries now sits at the heart of China’s foreign policy. “Over the past three years, interactions were less frequent, so now it’s an opportunity to resume such engagement,” said Wang Jian, director of the Institute of International Relations at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “It’s impossible for leaders from the central government to visit so many countries in one year, and these provinces can take advantage of the culture and geographic closeness to implement the central government’s policies.
