Xi Jinping absent from the UN General Assembly and moves to Washington: Beijing puts bilateral negotiations of the great powers out of the multilateral stage

The high-level week of the United Nations General Assembly is about to begin in New York, with 130 heads of state and government expected to attend. Chinese President Xi Jinping did not choose New York, but will travel to Washington this week to meet with U.S. President Trump. Reuters on September 20 that the arrangement was observed in the context of U.N. funding, war mediation and institutional pressure: China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a payer of the Second General Assembly, had chosen to participate directly in China-US bilateral negotiations, while its top leaders were absent from the biggest multilateral diplomatic event of the year.

It reflects a realistic ordering in China’s current diplomacy: when core interests such as tariffs, rare earth, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and supply chains need to be negotiated directly with the United States, Beijing attaches greater importance to bilateral channels of leaders that can produce concrete exchange outcomes than to the general speech of the United Nations General Assembly.

Beijing still highlights multilateralism, but top-level diplomacy is increasingly emphasizing bilateral mechanisms for direct transactions.

China has long placed the United Nations at the centre of its “true multilateralism” narrative and has criticized unilateral sanctions, group politics and U.S.-led “small multilateral” arrangements. China is also the second largest contributor to the United Nations regular budget. According to data released by the United Nations in September, China paid $6.414 billion in regular budget contributions this month; the U.S. paid $7.25 billion after the dispute, but still owed considerable amounts. Beijing continued to emphasize the authority of the United Nations at the institutional level and used the Security Council, the Peace and Development Agenda and global Southern cooperation to expand its influence.

But the choices at the level of leaders showed another side. Xi did not go to New York this time, but went to Washington to discuss trade, AI security, critical minerals and security issues directly with Trump. The Sino-U.S. financial team has also been consulted in New York. For Beijing, the decision-making power is mainly in the Sino-U.S. policy agency, not the United Nations. Multilateral platforms can provide legal and international narratives, but can not replace bilateral negotiations to decide on tariffs, chip export control or rare-earth licenses.

This shows that Chinese diplomacy’s “multilateralism” and “management of big-power relations” are taking on different functions.

At the United Nations, China can shape itself as an important player in developing countries, the global South and the existing international order, emphasizing sovereignty, non-interference and development rights; at a summit with the United States, Beijing deals with hard issues that directly affect domestic industries, technology and strategic security.The two are not necessarily contradictory, but they reflect different diplomatic logic: the former pursues rules, alliances and narrative space, the latter pursues enforceable exchange of interests and risk control.

This division of labor also explains why Xi’s absence from the United Nations is symbolic, but not China’s withdrawal from the United Nations. China still sends senior officials to attend and continues to participate in issues such as the Security Council, climate, development finance and peacekeeping. It’s truly worth observing that when multilateral institutions are competing with the Chinese and U.S. powers in a resource conflict, Beijing’s highest level prioritizes where time is invested. The answer is pretty clear: Washington, not New York.

The U.N. itself has also amplified this choice.

When the UN General Assembly was convened this year, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine continued, and the United Nations faced fiscal austerity and mediation capabilities were questioned.The Trump administration cut part of UN funding and withdrew from several agencies, while subsidizing funds under default pressure to maintain voting rights.

However, if the world’s major powers are increasingly inclined to solve the most important strategic issues outside of the United Nations, the UN’s institutional authority will face another erosion: not a formal withdrawal of members, but a major deal being transferred to leaders’ summits, bilateral mechanisms and small-scale negotiations.

In terms of the “outside of the Red Wall”, it is more worth analyzing how China operates two sets of international influence channels at the same time.

One channel relies on the United Nations and the global South to expand institutional influence through development, sovereignty and multilateral discourse; the other channel focuses on the United States, the European Union and neighboring major countries to negotiate directly with market access, supply chains, key minerals and national security as codes.

Xi Jinping’s absence from the General Assembly does not prove that Beijing abandoned multilateral diplomacy, but it clearly shows that under the current framework of China-US competition, the highest level of attention is more inclined to invest in bilateral negotiations that can directly change the outcome of the policy. The key to future testing of this strategy is not whether or not a UN General Assembly speech appears, but whether Beijing can simultaneously maintain its multilateralist narrative, establish a controllable competition mechanism with the United States, and avoid the conflict of two sets of diplomatic logic.