World leaders descend on Beijing as 2026 kicks off, hedging against U.S. disruptions

BEIJING — Countries that shunned China during its trade dispute with the U.S. are now sending their leaders to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping — and are keen to strike business deals.

At least five national leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have visited Xi in January alone. Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi is due to make the trip next week — the first by a South American leader since U.S. President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife in early January.

The Canadian and British leaders’ trips are the first in at least eight years, while a visit by Ireland’s prime minister on Jan. 5 was the first in 14 years. China had closed its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic and only reopened them in earnest in early 2023.

“These visits reflect managed, selective resets under rising U.S. policy uncertainty, rather than a strategic pivot to China,” said Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Keeping communication channels open with Beijing is increasingly seen as preferable to disengagement,” she said, “particularly as the gains from selective resets with China become more visible, and U.S. policy has grown less predictable.”

Since taking office 12 months ago, Trump has wielded tariffs not just on China but a slew of U.S. trading partners. In recent months, he’s increased efforts to ramp up U.S. influence over Venezuela, Iran and Greenland.

It’s an opportunity for Beijing, which has sought to portray itself as not only a partner for developing countries but also as a stabilizing force for the world.

“Maintaining distance from the United States indicates that these countries value ties with China’s large economy,” Cui Shoujun, an international studies professor at Renmin University of China, said in a phone interview Thursday. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

European and other countries may still need to align with the U.S. on security issues, but they are now increasing economic engagement, Cui said.

Large business delegations often accompany national leaders when making state visits. Nearly 60 British companies and cultural organizations sent representatives to accompany the U.K. prime minister on his China trip. British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca used the state visit to announce plans to invest $15 billion in China through 2030.

Similarly, during Carney’s visit, Canada agreed to cut tariffs on a limited number of China-made electric cars to 6.1% from 100%, in exchange for lower Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola seeds.

Global businesses have also long been keen to sell to China’s large consumer market, the second-largest in the world.

For their part, Chinese leaders have urged visiting nations to create fair environments for Chinese businesses operating or investing locally. Many Chinese companies, such as electric car makers, have accelerated global expansion plans as domestic growth has slowed.

Beijing has increasingly made clear its efforts to build technological self-sufficiency and hold its own on the global stage.

Earlier this month, the head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s international affairs department wrote in the official party newspaper that China’s modernization efforts break a “Western-centric” model and gives developing countries a new choice.

But the overarching question remains tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Some of the visiting nations still count the U.S., not China, as their largest trading partner.

The five countries with leaders who visited in January — Ireland, South Korea, Canada and Finland — have a combined gross domestic product of $8.71 trillion, or less than half of China’s $18.74 trillion GDP, as of 2024 World Bank figures. The U.S. remained far larger with a GDP of $28.75 trillion.

China was the first major economy to retaliate against Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025. The two countries reached a fragile one-year trade truce in late October, with Trump expected to visit China in April.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China hosted an appreciation dinner on Thursday evening in Beijing while Starmer was visiting, which included representatives from the Chinese side. In an opening address, Chair James Zimmerman urged both Trump and Xi to create a vision for greater global stability.

The potential for the two leaders to meet as many as four times this year marks “a moment for sustained leadership and meaningful progress that should not be missed,” Zimmerman said.

One of the opportunities for Trump and Xi to meet — as well as draw other world leaders to China — is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which China is hosting this year. The APEC forum is set to hold a senior officials’ meeting in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou early next month, ahead of the main economic leaders’ meeting in November.

But visiting leaders still must straddle a fine balance when dealing with China.

This week, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Canada if Ottawa “makes a deal” with China and said it was “very dangerous” for Britain to do business with China. In a nod toward European industry interests, French President Emmanuel Macron threatened China with tariffs a day after he returned from his state visit in December.

“These trips are a hedging strategy,” said Jack Lee, a foreign affairs analyst at consultancy China Macro Group.

“They keep the China channel open as a way to preserve strategic optionality,” he said. But he cautioned that trust, especially between the EU and Beijing, remains limited.