Xi Jinping’s US Visit Sparks Questions Over His UNGA Absence

Readers of The Diplomat who follow Asia‑Pacific affairs are likely aware that Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. today for a highly anticipated summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Per the White House itinerary, Xi will touch down at Andrews Air Force Base on September 23, where President Trump will greet him personally. The following day, a formal welcome ceremony will take place at the White House, leading into the summit and a state dinner. On September 25, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will host Xi and his spouse for tea before both parties visit the National Archives to view documents that highlight the history of U.S.–China relations. Afterward, Xi and his delegation will depart for home.

The most striking omission from this schedule is any visit to New York, where the United Nations General Assembly is convening its 81st session. Leaders from around the globe—including senior officials from Bangladesh, Japan, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Mongolia, South Korea, and Vietnam—are traveling to New York specifically for the UNGA, as noted in The Diplomat’s coverage.

Meanwhile, Xi’s trans‑Pacific journey across the United States does not include a side trip up the coast to attend the UN’s premier annual gathering.

Instead, Vice President Han Zheng will represent China in New York from September 24 to 26 at the UNGA. According to Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, “On the margins of the general debate, Vice President Han will take part in the High‑Level Dialogue marking the fifth anniversary of China’s Global Development Initiative and will meet with the UN Secretary‑General, the president of the 81st UNGA session, and leaders of relevant nations.”

These are engagements that Xi appears to have declined to attend personally, even though New York is only an hour’s flight away.

Xi’s failure to attend the UNGA appears to contradict China’s repeated insistence on the United Nations’ central role in global governance. A June 2026 Chinese white paper on global governance describes the UN as the “core” of the international system, stating that “the United Nations is the primary platform for practicing multilateralism and advancing global governance” and that its leading position must be upheld and strengthened, not diminished.

During the same press briefing in which Guo announced Han’s visit, he reiterated that “the United Nations is the core platform for global governance, and the UNGA general debate offers a crucial chance for states to forge political consensus and coordinate multilateral action.” Yet if the UN and its General Assembly are truly pivotal, why does Xi choose not to attend?

Since assuming leadership in late 2012, Xi has attended the UNGA only once—in 2015, when he marked the UN’s 70th anniversary and delivered his sole in‑person address to the assembly.

That appearance coincided with his final state visit to the United States, during which he combined a UNGA stop with a summit alongside then‑President Barack Obama. Consequently, his decision to forgo a similar UNGA visit in 2026 stands out sharply.

In 2021, Xi delivered a video message to the UNGA announcing China’s Global Development Initiative; he has not given a live speech before the assembly since then.

Most notably, Xi skipped the 80th UNGA session in 2025. China places considerable significance on round‑number anniversaries, often linking overseas trips and bilateral milestones to those dates. Xi’s personal attendance at the UN’s 70th anniversary was consistent with a pattern dating back to Jiang Zemin in 1995, whereby Chinese leaders have marked each decennial UN milestone. His absence from the 80th anniversary therefore drew particular attention.

As I noted at the time:

Instead [of attending the UNGA], Xi stayed in China, where he “extended festive greetings” for the farmers’ harvest celebration and visited Urumqi to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Those events were duly splashed across the front-page headlines of People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. Premier Li Qiang’s presence at UNGA received just a one-line mention on the front page for September 24.

Xi has also ceased to unveil China’s major global initiatives at the United Nations. While he introduced the Global Development Initiative at the UNGA in 2021 via a virtual address, he opted in 2025 to launch the new Global Governance Initiative—which is even more closely aligned with the UN’s mandate—at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in China a month prior to the UNGA.

Likewise, China established the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), described as “an independent intergovernmental body aimed at fostering international cooperation and global governance on AI,” opting to create it outside the UN framework instead of seeking legitimacy through the United Nations. The announcement came at China’s own AI conference, not at the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance that took place a month earlier.

Meanwhile, as the Trump administration cuts U.S. funding to the United Nations, China has not increased its contributions to offset the shortfall. Beijing’s assessed payments to the UN remain habitually delayed and amount to only a small fraction of what the United States contributed before Trump took office.

Regardless of China’s rhetorical affirmation of the UN’s core role in global governance, Beijing demonstrably favors directing attention, resources, and prestige toward forums where it wields greater influence—such as China‑led bodies like the SCO and bilateral engagements like the summit with Trump.

Nikkei Asia suggested that Xi’s omission from the UNGA aims to portray China as an equal to the United States, a signal that could be weakened by his mingling with leaders of smaller states in New York. This observation is significant: despite China’s advocacy for a multipolar system in which every nation enjoys equal voice in global governance, Beijing ultimately reverts to a different approach when strategic interests are at stake.

As China’s top diplomat frankly remarked in a heated ASEAN meeting in 2010, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s simply a fact.” Likewise, as Trump has frequently demonstrated, one advantage of being a major power is the latitude to bypass the United Nations when pursuing national objectives elsewhere.

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