Xiplomacy: Reading Xi's vision for global governance through metaphors

BEIJING, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- The 2026 Global Governance Forum (Xiong'an) is set to open on Friday in the Xiong'an New Area, north China's Hebei Province, bringing into world focus a pressing question: How can countries work together to address shared challenges in an interconnected world amid growing protectionism and unilateralism? In speeches and meetings on multiple occasions, Chinese President Xi Jinping has used vivid metaphors to articulate his vision for global governance. These metaphors offer insights into his approach to building a more just, equitable and inclusive global governance system.IN SAME BOAT "I was looking at the vast ocean when I boarded the ship, and it struck me that we are all indeed fellow passengers in the same boat," Xi said while addressing the 2018 APEC CEO Summit hosted at a unique setting -- onboard the giant cruise Pacific Explorer in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The metaphor embodies the essence of Xi's vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, highlighting the interconnectedness of countries and the need for solidarity and cooperation in addressing common challenges. Today, the interconnected world is grappling with four mounting deficits: a peace deficit that exacerbates geopolitical conflicts, a development deficit that widens the North-South divide, a security deficit that erodes mutual trust, and a governance deficit that undermines the effectiveness of multilateralism. In 2019, at the China-France Global Governance Forum held in Paris, Xi proposed a four-pronged approach to addressing the four deficits. First and foremost, he called for fairness and reasonableness to address the governance deficit. "It is advisable to uphold a vision of global governance featuring extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefits," Xi said, calling for actively advancing the democratization of global governance rules. As the world has found itself in a new period of turbulence and transformation, global governance has come to a new crossroads. Against this backdrop, Xi put forward the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in September 2025 in China's coastal city of Tianjin. "I look forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system and advancing toward a community with a shared future for humanity," Xi said, stressing sovereign equality and genuine multilateralism.TRAFFIC LIGHTS "A world without rules is like a crossroads without traffic lights, where chaos and disorder are all but guaranteed," Xi said at the 2026 BRICS Summit in New Delhi, India. This metaphor highlights the importance of rules in maintaining the international order. While having rules in place matters, how they are made and who gets to make them matter even more. International rules must be written and upheld jointly by all countries based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, rather than dictated by those with the strongest muscles or the loudest voice, Xi once stressed. He has also called for the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and other universally recognized basic norms of international relations to be observed comprehensively, fully and in their entirety. "There should be no double standards, and the house rules of a few countries must not be imposed upon others," he said. The GGI proposed by President Xi reflects the objective transformation of the world system and responds to the aspirations of most countries for a fairer and more representative system of global governance, said Rahmon Ulmasov, a professor at the Russian-Tajik (Slavonic) University.MAKING THE PIE BIGGER Xi has repeatedly used the metaphor of a pie to describe the gains of international cooperation. "We should make the pie of win-win cooperation bigger, and ensure that more development gains will be shared more fairly by people across the world," he said at the 23rd meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2023. The pie metaphor reflects the people-centered and action-oriented vision of the GGI: making the gains of cooperation bigger while ensuring that they are shared more widely and fairly. When proposing the GGI, Xi emphasized the importance of "ensuring that the people of every nation are the actors in and beneficiaries of global governance." The SCO, the platform where Xi proposed the GGI, provides an example. Within the grouping, China has announced the establishment of cooperation platforms in energy, green industries and the digital economy, as well as centers for scientific and technological innovation, higher education, and vocational and technical education. The expanding scope of cooperation shows how the "pie" can be made bigger in practice: by opening up new areas of cooperation, creating more opportunities for development and ensuring that the benefits reach more people. Beyond making the pie bigger, Xi has also called for sharing the pie fairly to ensure justice and equity. For him, the ultimate purpose of better global governance is to promote common development and improve people's well-being across the globe. At the G20 summit held in Brazil in 2024, Xi called for building a just world of common development, saying "prosperity and stability would not be possible in a world where the rich become richer while the poor are made poorer, and countries should make global development more inclusive, beneficial to all, and more resilient." To build such a world, Xi said, there should be more bridges of cooperation, and less "small yard, high fences," so that more and more developing countries will be better off and achieve modernization.