The Foreign Ministry of China announced on Thursday that Premier Li Qiang will represent China at the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, confirming that communist dictator Xi Jinping is skipping the event.
The G20, which brings together the world’s largest economies, is scheduled to begin on November 21. Xi is the fifth head of state to decline attendance at press time, along with American President Donald Trump, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and Argentine President Javier Milei. Trump personally announced he would not attend in protest of the ongoing massacres of Afrikaners in the country, while Putin is not attending due to the outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant in his name for war crimes in Ukraine. The other two leaders have not specified a reason for their absence.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry offered no explanation for Xi’s absence and offered words of well-wishing to its BRICS ally South Africa as a host.
“Amid rapid changes in the world not seen in a century, sluggish global economic growth, and widening development deficit in the world, the G20,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters, “needs to enhance solidarity and cooperation, jointly respond to challenges, improve global economic governance, and contribute to world economic growth and the development and prosperity of countries.”
Lin emphasized that South Africa will become the first African country to host the G20 and that China “supports South Africa’s G20 presidency and stands ready to work with various parties… to build up consensus at the summit for upholding multilateralism, building an open world economy and promoting the cooperation on development.”
South African media favorable to the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted to spin the absence of China’s totalitarian leader as a vote of confidence from Beijing, claiming that Premier Li Qiang is likely to succeed the elderly Xi.
“The Chinese will not say this, but there is a process of transition from Xi to the premier. There is a handover that has been set in motion in Beijing,” an anonymous alleged “South African official” told the country’s Sunday Times, “and the guy who is coming here is next in line to President Xi. They are more orderly in matters of transition; there is no contestation. Everybody knows that this is the guy who is next in line.”
The alleged official did not clarify where this supposition came from, nor did he take into consideration the possibility that Xi could abruptly purge Li at any given time, as he regularly does with his top ministers and military leaders. The premier who held the office before Li, Li Keqiang, died mysteriously in October 2023 of an alleged “heart attack” shortly after rumors emerged that he had questioned Xi’s leadership. The Chinese government then proceeded to arrest anyone who doubted the official version of Li’s death story, including high-ranking state media “journalists.”
The South African government has not at press time commented on the record about Xi’s absence. It responded much more aggressively to President Trump’s announcement that he would not attend, however, as Trump announced it as a boycott and has refused to send any delegation to the event. The United States is scheduled to host the next G20 summit, in 2026, in Miami, Florida, also creating an awkward scene for the South Africans.
“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump wrote in a message on his website, Truth Social, on November 8. “Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.”
“I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.
Trump’s boycott followed Trump initially claiming in September that he would send Vice President JD Vance to the summit, but would not attend himself. Prior to that, Ramaphosa personally claimed Trump had committed to attend the summit after a disastrous visit to the White House in May, in which Trump presented him with evidence of targeted racist massacres of white Afrikaners in his country.
Following Trump’s confirmation of his absence, the South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation issued a statement again denying the evidence of racial violence against Afrikaners.
“The South African government wishes to state, for the record, that the characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical. Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution is not substantiated by fact,” the ministry asserted.
Ramaphosa told reporters on Friday that, given America’s status as the next host of the G20, he expected to hand over the hosting duties to an empty chair during this month’s summit.
“I have said in the past, I don’t want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there, [I will] probably symbolically hand over to that empty chair and then talk to President Trump,” Ramaphosa explained.
The G20 is composed of 19 countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkiye, the UK and the U.S. — and the European and African Unions.
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