China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, is fulfilling an intense international agenda just before a scheduled summit with US President Donald Trump.
The move is seen as rare and occurs amid an increase in bilateral friction between Beijing and Washington and in a context in which the Chinese economy shows signs of losing strength in different sectors.
One of these trips made by Xi is to Egypt, which he has not visited for more than a decade. According to the Financial Times newspaper, the Chinese dictator would be investing in a strategy to present Beijing as a more reliable partner than Washington, which maintains a prolonged and costly war with Iran in the Middle East.
A letter from the leader of the Asian giant, published by the Egyptian press this Wednesday (2), says the following: “China is ready to work with the Egyptian side to take advantage of Egypt’s unique location to connect the Arab world and reach the entire African continent.”
Beijing is directly involved in the construction of the African country’s new administrative capital, while Chinese technology giant Huawei launched a cloud service in 2024 that promises to “bring artificial intelligence, large Arabic language models and databases to Egypt.”
Xi’s international agenda began this week, when he participated in a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The security forum, led by China, Russia and Central Asian countries, also includes India, Pakistan, Belarus and Iran.
After visiting Egypt, he is expected to head to India next week, where he will participate in the BRICS summit in New Delhi, and the following month he will meet Trump in Washington, in return for the Republican leader’s visit to Beijing in May.