By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times – 8 November 2021
The most important invited guest at COP26 did not show up. As president of China, Xi Jinping leads a country that emits more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. But, unlike other world leaders, Xi did not give a speech to the climate summit. Instead he submitted a written statement of less than 500 words for the conference website.
Xi’s dismissive attitude to the climate talks was not so much Middle Kingdom as middle finger. But the Chinese leader’s refusal to travel to Glasgow for COP26 — or to the G20 summit in Rome, before it — is part of a broader pattern of national self-isolation.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, China has installed one of the world’s strictest systems of border controls and quarantines. Foreigners or Chinese citizens entering the country must go into strict quarantine for a minimum of two weeks. Extra controls apply if they enter Beijing, where the leadership resides.
This system has in effect made it impossible for foreigners to visit China without staying for several months, or for most Chinese people to travel abroad. Xi himself has not left China for almost two years. The last time he saw a foreign leader in person was at a meeting with the president of Pakistan in Beijing in March 2020. Xi’s forthcoming summit with President Joe Biden will be held by video.