U.S.–China & China's Diplomacy

The U.S.–China political channel remained shut through mid-October. No leader call, no readout, no working-level meeting appears in this window; the only U.S.-facing traffic is friction — the Justice Department's seizure of seven internet domains it links to Chinese hackers ¹ — and Taiwan, where the Taiwan Affairs Office kept relitigating the September 24 summit's WWII-history item against Lai Ching-te's objections ². The news is structural rather than bilateral: between October 14 and 22 Beijing ran two senior circuits at once, and neither touched Washington.

Li Qiang's calendar is the clearest signal. He visits Uzbekistan October 17–18 and Tajikistan October 18–20, attending the 25th SCO Heads of Government Council, then flies to Russia October 20–22 for the 31st China–Russia regular premier's meeting — the latter timed to the 30th anniversary of the strategic partnership and the 25th of the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness ³. Note the language the MFA chose: Uzbekistan is an "all-weather comprehensive strategic partner" riding a "golden period" after the August Xi–Mirziyoyev meeting in Bishkek; Tajikistan is bound by a treaty of permanent good-neighbourliness signed in May. This is diplomacy that runs on treaties, anniversaries and fixed annual mechanisms — the precise opposite of an ad hoc, leader-level U.S. channel that can be switched off.

Wang Yi's simultaneous mission covers the other flank. As Xi's special representative he attends the seventh CICA summit in Baku on October 15 — framed around the "four global initiatives," "Asian governance" and an "Asian community of shared future" — then makes his first formal visit to Azerbaijan in seven years and swings through Croatia, Montenegro and Bulgaria October 14–20 ⁴. CICA is the one pan-Asian security forum with no U.S. seat; two of the four bilateral stops are NATO members. That is presence inside Europe's periphery, not a bridge to it.

The same MFA briefing paired Wang's travel with the first named use of the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (反外国制裁法) against third-country officials over Taiwan: Paraguay's communications minister Villate and Belize's foreign minister Fonseca, punished for hosting Taiwanese officials and spreading "Chinese cyberattack" claims ⁴. The mechanism matters more than the two names — Beijing is building a punitive instrument aimed at Taipei's remaining Latin American partners.

On money, the de-escalatory track with Brussels and the substitution track with the Gulf both advanced. Pan Gongsheng and Lan Fo'an met the EU trio — Dombrovskis, Lagarde, Pierrakakis — in Bangkok around the IMF/World Bank annuals, arguing that global imbalances cannot be corrected through exchange rates and must be shared by surplus and deficit countries, with China "investing in people" under the 15th Five-Year Plan ^5,6. Lan added "true multilateralism" against unilateralism and protectionism without naming Washington, and the MFA called the second China–EU trade and investment consultation "positive progress" after the hybrid-vehicle compromise ⁷. In parallel, Pan chaired the fourth China–GCC central bank governors' meeting on October 14 and renewed the Qatar currency swap ⁸, while CSRC chairman Wu Qing hosted Mubadala's Khaldoon Al Mubarak on October 12 to expand the fund's China investment ⁹. A funding channel that bypasses dollar markets and U.S. policy risk.

Beijing is also working the inbound-investment side at subnational level. Shanghai mayor Zhu Zhongming met Hillhouse's Zhang Lei and a delegation of multinational executives and overseas investors on October 18, pitching AI-plus-manufacturing, AI-plus-life-sciences and a "marketised, law-based, internationalised" business environment ¹⁰. That is aimed squarely at the multinationals that sit between Washington's export controls and China's market — keeping them invested is itself a form of leverage.

The Global South circuit continues on rails: Djibouti's Omar and Congo's Banda in Beijing October 19–25, Botswana's President Boko on a state visit, Indonesia joining as a first founding member of the World AI Cooperation Organization, and the poverty line wrapped in the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Partnership Alliance (全球减贫与发展伙伴联盟) ^7,11. The counter-signal still cuts against reading this as clean decoupling: a Global Times piece timed to Rubio's second India trip argues Washington uses "strategic commitments to take you hostage, then economic coercion to suppress you," noting the February U.S.–India trade framework is unsigned nine months on ¹² — an argument that presumes a U.S. relationship worth contesting. The MFA even pushed a China–U.S. desert-control story ¹³. The limit is economic: the IMF cut China's 2026 growth forecast to 4.5 percent, and the MFA declined to engage ¹³.