{"id":3654,"date":"2026-05-23T21:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T21:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/xi-hosted-trump-then-putin-and-showed-where-chinas-leverage-lies\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T21:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T21:00:35","slug":"xi-hosted-trump-then-putin-and-showed-where-chinas-leverage-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/xi-hosted-trump-then-putin-and-showed-where-chinas-leverage-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Xi hosted Trump, then Putin, and showed where China\u2019s leverage lies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Beijing, the choreography said almost as much as the communiques. Air Force One had barely left Chinese airspace before Vladimir Putin\u2019s plane touched down.<\/p>\n

The flags, guards and banquet halls were still warm from one superpower summit when China began staging the next.<\/p>\n

For Xi Jinping, the sequence was not just diplomatic theatre; it was a live demonstration of leverage: America came looking for commercial wins, Russia came looking for reassurance, and both found themselves moving through a capital where the terms were set by Beijing.<\/p>\n

The red carpet gap<\/h2>\n

The first message came before either summit began.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump was received on the tarmac by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, then treated to a tightly choreographed visit that included the Great Hall of the People, the Temple of Heaven and a rare stop at Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound at the centre of Chinese power.<\/p>\n

Putin, arriving days later, was met by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, a warm welcome but a lower-ranking one.<\/p>\n

The contrast carried a quiet irony.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump went for cash, to put it bluntly,\u201d said Alexander Korolev, a China-Russia scholar quoted by TIME<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe went as a tradesman to sell airplanes and do some agricultural deals. But Putin goes more for strategic cooperation.\u201d Yet it was the \u201ctradesman\u201d who received the more elevated arrival optics.<\/p>\n

What each man came for<\/h2>\n

Trump arrived with a business-heavy agenda and a delegation that included some of corporate America\u2019s most important China-facing executives.<\/p>\n

The leaders from Apple, Boeing, Qualcomm, Tesla and Meta were among those joining the trip, while Nvidia chief Jensen Huang was added at the last minute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The asks were familiar but substantial: agricultural purchases, Boeing orders, relief on rare earths and a more predictable path for US companies operating in China.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s needs were harder to price. He wanted confirmation that Beijing\u2019s improving dialogue with Washington would not dilute the China-Russia axis.<\/p>\n

Dennis Wilder, a former senior US intelligence official now at Georgetown University, argued that Putin would arrive in Beijing looking for reassurance that any improvement in US-China ties would not come at Moscow\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

In a LinkedIn post<\/a> before the visit, Wilder wrote that the lack of US pressure on China over its support for Russia\u2019s war would make Putin \u201cfeel very comfortable going into Beijing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mattered because Russia\u2019s position is weaker than its summit language suggested.<\/p>\n

Its economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter of 2026, the first quarterly contraction in three years, while Western sanctions and the Ukraine war continue to narrow Moscow\u2019s options.<\/p>\n

Xi said yes, but not to everything<\/h2>\n

Trump left Beijing with measurable deliverables.<\/p>\n

The White House said China agreed to buy at least $17 billion a year in US agricultural goods through 2028, approved an initial purchase of 200 Boeing aircraft and would address US concerns over rare earths and critical minerals such as neodymium, yttrium, scandium and indium.<\/p>\n

Those wins were real, even if Beijing later described parts of the visit as preliminary and analysts questioned how much had been settled beyond the optics.<\/p>\n

The analysts called the trip heavy on pageantry and thin on deeper breakthroughs, especially on Taiwan, Iran and broader strategic trust.<\/p>\n

Putin also got a show of solidarity.<\/p>\n

Xi and Putin oversaw more than 40 cooperation agreements, spanning trade, technology and media, and backed a 47-page declaration on a \u201cmultipolar world\u201d and a new type of international relations.<\/p>\n

But Moscow did not get the prize it most wanted: a firm Power of Siberia 2 pipeline contract.<\/p>\n

The pricing, financing and contract terms remained unresolved, despite the Kremlin speaking of a general understanding.<\/p>\n

Jack Burnham of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a> argued that Russia\u2019s failure to secure a final Power of Siberia 2 deal underscored the limits of Beijing\u2019s willingness to deepen its dependence on Moscow.<\/p>\n

The dependency Beijing won\u2019t acknowledge<\/h2>\n

The imbalance is now difficult to miss as China is Russia\u2019s largest trading partner, while Russia accounts for only a small share of China\u2019s global trade.<\/p>\n

Russia sources more than 90% of its sanctioned technology imports from China, including dual-use components important to drones and defence production.<\/p>\n

Energy tells the same story as Russia is selling more to China because it has fewer alternatives.<\/p>\n

As per public records, China imported about 2.01 million barrels per day of Russian oil in 2025, equal to 20% of its total imported oil by volume.<\/p>\n

Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russian oil exports to China rose 35% in the first quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n

The trade relationship remains large, though not frictionless.<\/p>\n

Bilateral turnover fell to about $228 billion in 2025 after several years of growth, according to recent analysis, but the structure still favours Beijing.<\/p>\n

China buys Russian energy at a discount, sells Russia the technology and manufactured goods it can no longer easily source from the West, and gains influence over Moscow\u2019s economic future without formally assuming the costs of an alliance.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s masterclass in hedging<\/h2>\n

Xi\u2019s real achievement was not choosing between Trump and Putin. It was hosting both, extracting value from both, and committing fully to neither.<\/p>\n

For Washington, Beijing offered enough commercial substance to keep the relationship manageable. For Moscow, it offered enough strategic warmth to keep the partnership alive.<\/p>\n

But in both cases, China kept the decisive cards in its own hands.<\/p>\n

The experts described the back-to-back visits as a flex of Beijing\u2019s growing diplomatic leverage, placing China at the centre of a fractured global order.<\/p>\n

Andrius Tursa of Teneo <\/a>said China held \u201cstrong leverage\u201d because Beijing\u2019s support had become increasingly important to Putin amid mounting economic pressure and military setbacks.<\/p>\n

This was not simply a busy week in Beijing.<\/p>\n

It was a reminder that the centre of gravity in global politics is shifting, not with a declaration, but with arrivals, handshakes, menus, pipeline delays and the quiet discipline of a capital that made two powerful men come to it.<\/p>\n

The post Xi hosted Trump, then Putin, and showed where China\u2019s leverage lies<\/a> appeared first on Invezz<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Beijing, the choreography said almost as much as the communiques. Air Force One had barely left Chinese airspace before Vladimir Putin\u2019s plane touched down. The flags, guards and banquet halls were still warm from one superpower summit when China began staging the next. For Xi Jinping, the sequence was not just diplomatic theatre; it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmarkettrends.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}