By all accounts, Xi Jinping has been a somewhat reluctant foreign traveller since the COVID-19 pandemic. He has preferred instead to receive foreign leaders in Beijing. The contrast with American presidential diplomacy is striking. Between 2021 and 2025, US presidents made 51 visits to other countries, compared with only 25 by Xi Jinping.That pattern has changed dramatically this month. Xi has embarked on his busiest spell of foreign travel in more than seven years: to Kyrgyzstan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, to Egypt on a state visit, to New Delhi for the BRICS summit and, later this month, he plans to be in Washington for a summit with President Donald Trump.These may appear to be four unrelated diplomatic engagements. But taken together, they represent a demonstration of China’s diplomatic reach at a moment when the international system is under extraordinary strain. Xi is projecting China as a stable, predictable and economically consequential power in a period when many countries are coping with wars, sanctions, trade restrictions and the uncertainties generated by the Trump administration.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.The message is particularly directed at the Global South. The SCO summit in Bishkek put Xi alongside Russia, Iran and the Central Asian states. His visit to Egypt allowed him to engage an important West Asian and African power at a time when American policy in the region is generating considerable uncertainty. His presence in New Delhi brought him to the centre of the enlarged BRICS grouping, whose membership and political significance have grown substantially. And then comes Washington on September 24.The sequencing matters. Xi is demonstrating the nature and reach of China’s relationships before sitting down with Trump. As one American analyst put it in the Washington Post, China wants the US to see that it has “diplomatic depth and strategic options.” That there is an alternative vision of a world order which is being slowly, but assiduously being built.This is also a message that Beijing offers stability while Washington offers uncertainty. The proposition is not entirely altruistic. China wants to translate diplomatic influence into economic and technological advantage. Trade, investment, infrastructure and technology are central to the pitch.Speaking in New Delhi at the BRICS summit, Xi focused on the need for accelerating “high quality development and greater BRICS cooperation.” He spoke of an AI-empowered new industrialisation and invited members to join the Chinese led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO). He called on the grouping to play a “due role” in bringing peace to West Asia and promote global peace and stability amidst the intense geopolitical turbulence.China is entering a new phase of economic competition with the US.. Beijing has increasingly sought to demonstrate that it can withstand American pressure and continue to build domestic capacity in strategic sectors. The development of Chinese AI is one example. The broader objective is to establish Chinese technology as an affordable and credible alternative for countries that cannot or do not wish to depend exclusively on American technology.China’s strategy is therefore one of strategic patience. Beijing does not necessarily need to resolve its major differences with Washington immediately. It needs time – to build technological capabilities, diversify markets, deepen alternative economic relationships and reduce vulnerabilities to American pressure.The experience of the recent oil confrontation is instructive. Despite American efforts to use sanctions and pressure on countries dealing with Iran, China has retained considerable room for manoeuvre because it had quietly built up a massive strategic stockpile and so when the conflict came, it sharply reduced its purchase of oil in the world market that helped in keeping prices down and also benefited the world at large. The lesson for Beijing was the importance of anticipating and preparing for American coercive steps.This helps explain China’s approach to Trump. The relationship has certainly experienced repeated confrontations over tariffs and trade. But the pattern has also demonstrated something important: when Beijing responds forcefully, Washington has often shown a willingness to step back and negotiate. China has consequently learned that what works is a strategy that combines firmness with patience.The May Trump-Xi summit in Beijing brought this approach to a new level. The US agreed on the Chinese formulation of a “constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability”. The Chinese interpretation of this phrase is significant. Foreign Minister Wang Yi subsequently explained that strategic stability meant cooperation as the mainstay, moderate rather than zero-sum competition, manageable differences and an enduring relationship in which conflict and war would be avoided. Crucially, he linked this to respect for each other’s “core interests”, social systems and development paths.This is very different from a conventional trade truce. Beijing is attempting to establish a framework for managed competition with the United States over the longer term, along with setting up associated guardrails. It wants Washington to accept that China is not a country to be contained or compelled to change its political system, but a rival power whose interests and status have to be accommodated.Importantly, China has maintained a rhetorically restrained and even neutral posture on the Iran war, upholding the “constructive strategic stability” framework. Even while criticising the US and Israel, it has helped in brokering the April ceasefire and efforts to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. Whatever behind the scenes backing it may be providing, it also accepts the (officially stated) US goal of ensuring that Iran does not get nuclear weapons.The economic side of this understanding is already visible. China has stepped up purchases of American agricultural products, particularly soybeans. In the week before Xi’s planned Washington visit, Chinese buyers purchased about one million metric tonnes of US soybeans. Following the May 2026 summit, China confirmed a firm commitment to purchase 200 Boeing jets, as the first tranche of what could eventually be a 750 jet order. At the same time, Xi is likely to arrive in Washington with a substantial business delegation, signalling that its economic relationship with America remains too important to be sacrificed to geopolitical rivalry.In this screengrab from a video released on Sept. 12, 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unseen, on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit, in New Delhi. Photo: YT/@NarendraModi via PTI.The India dimension is equally important.Xi’s presence in New Delhi, therefore, went beyond the BRICS summit. It gave him an opportunity to put the Chinese leadership’s stamp on the gradual normalisation of India-China relations. The fact that Xi was in India for the first time since 2019 makes the symbolism particularly powerful.Ahead of his New Delhi visit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing was prepared to approach relations with India from a “strategic height and long-term perspective”, strengthen communication and cooperation, properly manage differences and become “friends enjoying good neighbourliness and partners helping each other.” The language is significant because it reflects Beijing’s recognition that the relationship cannot remain permanently frozen by the consequences of the 2020 Galwan confrontation.There has been tangible movement since the disengagement arrangements of 2024. Direct flights have resumed, the Kailash-Mansarovar yatra resumed, border trade restored, visa restrictions have eased and economic engagement has begun to recover, even though major differences remain. Both countries still maintain substantial military deployments along the Line of Actual Control, while a permanent boundary settlement, Chinese ties with Pakistan and the trade imbalance remain unresolved.For India, however, the thaw should be viewed pragmatically. Better relations with China are in India’s interest if they reduce the possibility of renewed confrontation along the LAC and permit the two countries to restore some economic and diplomatic space. But normalisation cannot mean returning to the pre-2020 relationship without addressing the fundamental sources of mistrust. Primary among these is the unsettled boundary dispute.For Xi, India also has a larger significance. New Delhi is an important member of the Global South, a founder of BRICS and a country that has consistently resisted being drawn into exclusive blocs. A more stable relationship with India would strengthen Beijing’s claim that China can work with countries whose interests do not coincide with its own and that the Global South need not be organised around an American or Chinese camp.This is ultimately what Xi’s unusual September travels are about. China is not presenting itself as an alternative superpower in the crude sense of seeking to replace the United States everywhere. Rather, it is offering a different model of international engagement: economic interdependence, infrastructure and technology, political stability and a preference for managed competition over confrontation.Whether other countries accept that proposition remains uncertain. China’s economic problems, its assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, its disputes with India and its close relationship with Russia all complicate the image of China as a neutral stabilising power. BRICS itself remains deeply divided on several major geopolitical questions.But Xi clearly believes the present turbulence gives China an opening. His unusually busy travel schedule is therefore not simply a return to international diplomacy after the pandemic. It is a strategic campaign to demonstrate that China has friends, markets, technology, economic resilience and diplomatic alternatives.So, Xi’s most important diplomatic message will be delivered not in Washington but before he gets there. By travelling from Central Asia to Egypt, India and then the United States, he is demonstrating that Washington, in Beijing’s calculation, is simply one – albeit the most important – part of a much larger global strategy.Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.