My Take | Xi Jinping is voice of reason to calm a world in chaos

All is not well under heaven. Tariff Man is back. China’s exports are, of course, Donald Trump’s primary target. But he is also turning his trade weapons of mutual destruction on its closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico.

European leaders are worried the incoming White House will throw Ukraine under the bus. They cheer as the old White House of Joe Biden decides to risk a third world war and let Kyiv fire long-range missiles well within Russian territory. In return, Vladimir Putin is threatening to unleash nuclear bombs while his North Korean pal Kim Jong-un has sent troops to fight Ukraine in a show of strongman solidarity, if nothing else. No one seriously expects North Korea to make much of a difference in the outcome of the war other than as another one of Kim’s gestures to thumb his nose at the West.

Meanwhile, armed to the tooth by Washington, Israel has gone on a rampage, raining down death and destruction across the Middle East, in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and pounding its chest outside the gates of Iran. World leaders are flying in and out of each other’s capitals to pressure each other to spend more of their gross domestic product on defence than most can hardly afford. Across the Taiwan Strait, a defiant island leader and his recalcitrant party cause provocation at every turn whose end goal can only be, as they seem to think, independence.

In the midst of it all, Xi Jinping looks like the only global statesman calling for peace and calm, promoting globalised trade while warning against trade barriers and mercantilism by the United States and some of its allies that are already undermining world trade and globalisation.

At the Apec and G20 summits in South America, he passed on that message to world leaders relentlessly, trying to convince those who would listen that upholding the free-trade system – well, one that has made his country and others rich – is better than making war. He and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president and fellow Brics leader, have presented their joint peace proposal for Ukraine, only to be completely ignored by Brussels and Washington, while the same Western leaders, with a straight face, accuse Beijing of not pressuring Putin to end the war!

Xi is, of course, worried about Trump’s return, so is everyone else. But his allies Putin and Kim aren’t helping either with their aggressive bromance. Beijing cannot possibly countenance the former’s nuclear threats or the latter’s involvement in Ukraine.