The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Chinese Leadership Concerns: Xi Ditches the G20 Summit || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

With China facing economic slowdown, trade wars, and a slew of other things, an intervention (aka the G20 Summit) is exactly what Xi needs right now.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/xi-ditches-the-g20-summit

Hey, everybody, Peter Zinian, here coming to you from Colorado. It's Monday the 4th of September, and the news out of China is that Chairman Xi Jinping will not be attending the upcoming G20 summit in India. There's a lot going on in the world. I'm generally not a big fan of the G20, but if you consider the Chinese economic slowdown, trade wars, and all kinds of other things, it's a good time for leaders to actually be meeting face-to-face to do things. Some people are saying that this is Xi spurning the G20 in favor of things like Bricks, but remember that he didn't show up to the opening ceremony of the Bricks and the Business Forum, which is arguably the most important part of the Bricks Forum as well.

What we're seeing here instead of any political decision to favor or denigrate any particular forum or angle of policy, is instead the general ongoing and accelerating failure of the Chinese leadership system to cope with this situation. find themselves in. Over the course of the last 12, 13 years, Chairman Xi is basically progressively purged every part of the political system. At his first five years, he went, called an anti-corruption push, and he went after all the regional power centers. In the next five years, he went after the two factions that actually put him in power, that of his predecessors, Jiang Jimin and Hu Jintao. And the last couple of years, he's going against anyone who has basically had an opinion or shown any competence who might be a theoretical successor. And we're not.

now at a point where there's no one left. So if something pops up that Xi thinks needs to be dealt with, he is now the only one who can deal with it. So he sent his premier, Li Kwang, who has got the personality and the competence of a block of wood, to sit in for him where he'll basically just be reading policy papers and not actually engaging in any sort of meaningful negotiation on anything while Xi does whatever it is he feels he needs to do. And remember, he's still a person. So this might not be policy related. It could be personal. But Xi is now found himself in a very similar situation to that of Donald Trump and Barack Obama that he just doesn't trust anyone to do anything. And so not a lot is going to get done that's going to get done confidently. And even if

he is the smartest person and the best manager on the planet, he can only be at one place at a time doing one thing at a time. And as a result, Chinese policy at every other field at best stalls. not a good sign. All right, that's it. Take care.