Trips promote equality and coexistence

In a year of rising geopolitical uncertainty, President Xi Jinping's overseas visits in 2025 highlighted a sustained focus on neighboring countries as a priority in China's overall diplomacy, and a crucial pillar in advancing the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.

From Southeast Asia to Central Asia, and from Russia to the Republic of Korea, Xi's itinerary showed that China has sought not only to promote a vision of equality and coexistence with its neighbors, but also to translate that vision into concrete cooperation through trade, connectivity and development partnerships, analysts said.

As articulated at the Central Conference on Work Related to Neighboring Countries held in April last year, China's relations with its neighboring countries are at their best in modern times, and are also entering a critical phase of deep linkage between the regional landscape and global changes.

Against this backdrop, Xi's first overseas trip of 2025 took him to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia, as Southeast Asia stands at a crossroads where momentum for multilateral cooperation and openness remains strong, while protectionist headwinds continue to pose challenges to the region's development.

During Xi's five-day visit, China and its partners upgraded bilateral frameworks for building a community with a shared future, highlighting growing political trust.

China also signed more than 100 bilateral agreements in total with the three countries, covering strategic cooperation, people-to-people exchanges, infrastructure connectivity and shared development goals. The trip also helped accelerate negotiations on the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0, completed in May and signed in October.

In April, when meeting with Hun Sen, president of the Cambodian People's Party and president of the Senate in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, Xi said that as Asia stands at a new starting point of collective rise, China will continue to follow the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness and the policy of developing friendship and partnership with neighboring countries.

In May, ahead of his arrival in Russia, Xi wrote in a signed article published in the Russian Gazette newspaper: "We must leverage the certainty and resilience of our partnership of strategic coordination to jointly accelerate the shift toward a multipolar world and build a community with a shared future for humanity."

In June, during the second China-Central Asia Summit held in Astana, Kazakhstan, after Xi and the heads of state of the five Central Asian countries signed a treaty on eternal good-neighborliness, friendship and cooperation, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed support for Xi's proposal to build a community with a shared future with neighboring countries, noting that the concept was concretely reflected in the treaty adopted at the summit.

In October, when speaking at the first session of the 32nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Gyeongju, the Republic of Korea, Xi said that the Asia-Pacific faces growing uncertainties and destabilizing factors in its development.

"The rougher the seas, the more we must pull together," he said, stressing efforts to build an Asia-Pacific community.

Matteo Giovannini, an Asia-Global Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, said that the idea of building a community with a shared future reflects China's attempt to respond to geopolitical pressure with cooperation rather than confrontation.

"In practice, it emphasizes mutual security, shared development, and long-term stability, seeking to reduce strategic mistrust through interdependence," he said, noting that this vision can offer neighboring countries an alternative pathway focused on stability and development rather than alignment choices.

Analysts noted that the Chinese president's 2025 itinerary also marked a new stage in building a community with a shared future with neighboring countries, raising expectations of more amicable and cooperative relations in the region.

China has now established the goal of building a community with a shared future with 17 neighboring countries, achieving full coverage of this vision across the Indochina Peninsula and the Central Asia region.

Luo Yongkun, a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of International Relations, said that China's approach to building a community with a shared future with neighboring countries is rooted in the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness. "This vision aims to promote shared development opportunities, expand cooperation with neighboring countries and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes," he said.

Giovannini, from the University of Hong Kong, said that what distinguishes China's approach is its emphasis on development partnership rather than zero-sum competition. China's neighborhood diplomacy is more pragmatic and outcome-oriented, focusing on tangible cooperation that delivers visible benefits, he said.

mojingxi@chinadaily.com.cn