The Two Summits

The Two Summits

By Paolo Falconio

Looking at newspaper headlines over the past few days, the impression one gets is that of a now multipolar world in which China is playing an increasingly decisive role. Indeed, at the Celestial Court we witnessed an unusually courteous Trump, followed shortly thereafter by a deferential Putin.

Things, however, are not always what they seem. Trump was welcomed by the Vice President, formally second only to Xi Jinping, yet in reality a figure with little real political weight. Putin, on the other hand, was received by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is in fact one of the most influential men in the Party, being the true architect of China’s international posture. As if to say: with Washington one negotiates; with Moscow one governs an alliance.

The summit with Trump is not particularly significant in economic terms. The promise to purchase 200 Boeing aircraft is actually a reduction from the initial pledge of 500 planes (later reduced to 250), so much so that Boeing’s stock lost four points on the market the following day. More interesting is China’s openness to the possibility of purchasing oil from the United States. Nothing has been formalized, but it is a development worth monitoring.

The summit was important, however, because the two actors—while keeping every tactical and strategic option open, especially regarding Taiwan—agree, for different reasons, on the need to avoid military confrontation for the time being and instead manage their competition through other mechanisms. In essence, they converge on a shared interest in keeping their rivalry within manageable limits. Taiwan nonetheless remains the point of greatest latent tension.

This ambiguity was immediately circumscribed by Trump’s phone call to the Japanese Prime Minister, reassuring her that the American posture would not undergo substantial changes. The following day, Xi Jinping’s declaration of support for Iran echoed that message. This is contemporary diplomacy: proceeding through simultaneous and often contradictory signals.

The summit with Putin, aside from the choreography, failed in its main objective: the conclusion of the contract for the Siberian gas pipeline. In times like these, such infrastructure binds more tightly than an alliance. But Beijing, at least for now, does not want to become excessively dependent on Russia and has postponed the signing.

This is a problem for Moscow, which fears that the real price of Chinese proximity may be the Arctic—and that is precisely what the Kremlin would like to avoid. Nevertheless, the summit between Putin and Xi Jinping concluded with the signing of numerous agreements, including economic ones, all carrying a deeper meaning: a synergy aimed at complementarity between technical and economic structures, from satellites and internet systems to railways sharing the same gauge and compatible industrial standards.

In simple terms, this means the creation of a common strategic ecosystem, incompatible with the American one and from which America itself remains excluded. A Eurasian bloc—or at least part of one—in which the United States has almost irrelevant room for maneuver. In a world where sovereignty over structural nodes equates to dominance and determines the state of exception to international norms, this is no minor matter.

The implicit thesis is that the twenty-first century will not be dominated merely by armies, but by technical architectures that are either compatible or incompatible with one another. It is indeed a thesis, but one that recalls contemporary reflections on technological sovereignty: whoever controls protocols, networks, and nodes determines the freedom of action of others.

This is also the rationale behind this new and historically unprecedented Sino-Russian friendship. It is true that China and Russia have different agendas and ambitions, yet they are compelled to cooperate in order to compete with the United States.

At least for now, despite all the problems the United States faces—and the Chinese have their own as well—it is the American fleet that sails off the Chinese coast. By contrast, Chinese ships operating near the Gulf of Mexico have yet to be seen.

Stripping away the superstructures and getting to the essence of the matter, China and Russia are fully aware that the United States remains their systemic antagonist.