A reading of the Chinese President’s visit to Washington—and his absence from New York.
Last week, nearly 130 heads of state and government gathered in New York, taking turns at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, each bringing their concerns, wars and crises to the great hall.
An hour away by plane, Chinese President Xi Jinping was sitting at a formal dinner table at the White House.
A man had crossed half the globe to reach Washington, but did not make the much shorter journey to New York.
And the question that inevitably arises is this: Was it merely a matter of scheduling? Or was the absence itself a message—one that was not delivered from a podium?
What Was Said at the Table
The Chinese president did not come to remind the Americans that he was a competitor. He came to remind them that he was a longtime partner.
In his remarks, he invoked the Chinese porcelain once acquired by George Washington, the two countries’ alliance during World War II, and Nixon’s historic opening to Beijing. It was as if he were saying: We are not newcomers to your history. We are part of it.
He then moved from history to the future, calling on the two countries to act as responsible great powers and to seek together a new way for major powers to coexist.
At the end of his remarks, he placed his host’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” alongside his own vision of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” saying that the two could coexist side by side.
The statement may sound like a pleasant diplomatic courtesy. At its core, however, it is a declaration of equality.
It does not say: We follow you.
Nor does it say: We oppose you.
It says: We walk beside you—with equal stature.
All of this was wrapped in reassuring language: China’s rise is an opportunity for America, not a threat to it, and the shared task is to prevent the relationship from sliding into confrontation.
It is the language of a power that knows its strength has become formidable, and therefore takes care to present that strength in a calm and reassuring form.
And What Was Not Said
Yet what emerged from the closed rooms was considerably less than what was said beneath the chandeliers.
A trade truce was extended for only two months. Two separate statements were issued instead of a joint communiqué. Taiwan was present in every conversation behind closed doors, yet absent from every word spoken before the cameras.
Many observers believe Beijing saw little reason to give its host a major political victory ahead of the November midterm elections.
It came to negotiate, not to give gifts.
It left the door open to two upcoming encounters: the Asia-Pacific summit in China and the G20 summit in Miami.
The relationship, as the Chinese appear to envision it, is an extended dialogue rather than a closed deal.
What the Absence Said
To be fair, Xi’s absence from the General Assembly is not new.
Since taking office in 2012, he has attended and addressed it in person only once, in 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the organization. During the pandemic years, he addressed the assembly virtually.
Chinese officials had also indicated in advance that he attends only on major occasions, and Beijing did not even send a preparatory team to New York.
The decision, then, predates the visit. It was deliberate.
But context gives an old habit a new meaning.
For a president to be absent from New York while he is in Beijing is one thing. To be absent while he is in Washington, just an hour away, is something else entirely.
I read three messages in that absence.
First: decisions are made between two.
The podium is a place for words; the table is where decisions are made.
When America’s largest rival chooses the table and leaves the podium, it sketches an image of a world governed by a great-power duopoly, while the universal hall becomes more a stage for speeches than a place where action takes shape.
Second: prestige has its own calculus.
A state visit is an event in itself, with its ceremonies, images and messages.
Had Xi gone to New York, he would have become one speaker among dozens in a long queue, and his speech would have been compared with that of his host, who had stood at the same podium only days earlier.
The absence, in this sense, protects the image.
Third: the roles are carefully distributed.
China sent Vice President Han Zheng to the podium. He spoke about multilateralism, opposition to unilateral decision-making and respect for the sovereignty of states, addressing in particular the countries of the Global South that welcome such language.
Meanwhile, the president himself was practicing great-power diplomacy in Washington.
China tells the world what it likes to hear, while dealing with America according to what the balance of power requires.
This cannot be separated from the condition of the organization itself.
The United Nations is facing unprecedented political and financial pressures, after Washington reduced its funding and withdrew from several of its agencies. The Secretary-General is preparing to leave, with no clear successor yet on the horizon.
When someone sees a house whose walls are beginning to crack, he may prefer to knock on the door of the powerful neighbor rather than deliver a speech in a hall whose ceiling is beginning to collapse.
And What About Us?
Here comes the question that concerns me as an Egyptian more than any analysis of the great powers:
If the world is moving from the podium to the table, where does someone who has no seat at the table stand?
The United Nations, with all its flaws, has been a refuge for small and medium-sized states: a place where the voice of an emerging country is, at least symbolically, equal to that of a great power.
When the podium weakens, the voice of everyone who possesses little more than words weakens with it.
The lesson, in my view, is not that we should mourn the podium. It is that we should ask ourselves:
What makes a country worthy of an invitation to the table?
It is not eloquence.
It is economic weight, strong institutions, quality education, and the ability of society to produce knowledge rather than merely consume it.
Countries are not invited to the table because they are good at making speeches. They are invited because their absence would leave a vacuum.
In politics, as in medicine, it is not enough to read what the patient says. One must also read what the patient does not say.
Absence is a complete language. And those who cannot read it mistake silence for emptiness.
