22 May, 07:38
Multipolarity died in Busan. It was buried in Beijing.
Five days ago I wrote about the Beijing summit as a point of transition - arguing that the Trump-Xi meeting marked the end of the multipolar bluff, and that Moscow was no longer a participant in negotiations but merely an item on the agenda. To some that conclusion sounded too optimistic. Five days later, Vladimir Putin landed at the same Beijing airport - and he was met not by the head of state, not by the premier, but by Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Putin's twenty-fifth visit to China became the public protocol of the new reality - the very one the first article described.
This is the new world order in its most precise gesture.
Who Met Whom
Before discussing substance, the protocol deserves attention - because that is where the new format shows up more clearly than in any declaration. Trump was met at the steps by Vice President Han Zheng at Beijing Capital International Airport on May 13, 2026. Han Zheng is known as "number eight" - the most senior leader after the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, from which he himself was dropped in October 2022 when Xi began his third term. Putin was met by Wang Yi - Foreign Minister and a Politburo member since 2022. Russian commentators immediately tried to spin this as a mark of special respect: look, our leader is being met by a more senior official.
This is a classic reading-in-reverse. Diplomatic protocol works precisely so that a formal upgrade of the welcoming party compensates for a real downgrade in the visitor's standing. Trump could have been met by anyone - he came to negotiate as an equal, and ritual did not change that. Putin had to be received with pomp - because otherwise it would have been obvious that he came to receive instructions. The less real weight that remains, the more important the external trappings.
A more accurate indicator is the composition of the delegations. Trump brought with him SpaceX chief Elon Musk and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Also in the delegation: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The owners of the planet's largest market capitalizations, people who hold real money and real technology. Putin brought five deputy prime ministers, eight ministers, the head of the Central Bank, the chiefs of Gazprom, Rosneft, Rosatom, VEB, Sberbank. Ten private jets, the entire economic machinery. These are fundamentally different types of delegations. One came to negotiate. The other came to report.
What They Bring When They Bring Everything
When a state sends a narrow team of top business executives to negotiations, it means one thing: the country has something concrete to sell or buy, and it is decided at the level of specific signatures. Musk signs - Tesla enters the Chinese market on new terms. Cook signs - Apple preserves its supply chains. Huang signs - NVIDIA secures access or locks in restrictions. This is work with real numbers, real technology, real money.
When a state sends the entire economic cabinet, it means the opposite. The country has nothing concrete that could be sold in a single negotiating round. There is only readiness to show up. Here the deputy prime minister handles logistics, there the minister handles agriculture, here the head of the Central Bank handles settlements. Forty documents on "cooperation." Each about something small. None about something big.
This is the structural difference between two types of economies. The United States arrived with end-demand and advanced technology - two things that cannot be substituted on a global scale. Russia arrived with a resource - a thing that can be substituted entirely over the medium term. Money negotiates with money and obtains concessions. Resource negotiates with money and obtains "unresolved nuances."
Power of Siberia 2 as Epitaph
If anyone wants to understand what really happened in Beijing on May 20, 2026, they should look not at the joint statement and not at the forty signed documents on "cooperation." They should look at the one thing absent from those documents.
Power of Siberia 2 did not appear in the final list of agreements. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia and China "reached an understanding on the project's main parameters", but "some nuances remain to be ironed out," with no clear timeframe. Despite the announcement of a "general understanding" on the route, other important elements - pricing, financing, construction timelines, and long-term contractual terms - remain unresolved.
The geometry of this "nuance" is simpler than it looks. Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia sold the West more than 150 billion cubic meters of gas per year, earning an average of 20-30 billion dollars in resource rent. Power of Siberia 1 delivered approximately 38 billion cubic meters last year. Power of Siberia 2 is a planned 2,600-kilometer pipeline designed to transport up to 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Russia's Yamal fields through Mongolia to China. Beijing reportedly pushed for prices linked to Russia's heavily subsidized domestic gas rates. Moscow wants terms closer to Power of Siberia 1. Every dollar shaved off the netback is a direct hit to Russian fiscal revenue at a time when gas-related tax receipts are already down.
The worst part is not even the figure. The worst is the argument Chinese buyers are now using to pressure Russian suppliers. Four liquefied natural gas tankers were sailing to China from the United States, expected in June 2026 - the first U.S. LNG cargoes to head directly to China during Trump's second term. All four vessels were expected to arrive at the Chinese port of Tianjin between June 15 and 28. This is resource substitutability in action: Moscow offers gas as strategic depth, while Beijing haggles over it as if it were a batch of consumable material - because that is what it is.
Money, Resource, and Why One Can Be Replaced and the Other Cannot
Here it is worth unpacking a simple thing that explains the whole picture. In today's world economy there are three types of strategic assets. The first is end-demand - the capacity to purchase at scale. The second is advanced technology - the capacity to create new products and new processes. The third is resources - the capacity to supply raw materials for production cycles.
The first two are almost impossible to substitute. End-demand is formed by the aggregate purchasing power of a population and the budgetary muscle of a state - a function of living standards, accumulated wealth, institutional stability. Advanced technology is formed by decades of investment in science, education, engineering culture, patent law, venture capital. Neither is created in five years; neither can be imported. NVIDIA in October 2025 became the first company in history with a market capitalization approaching 5 trillion dollars, after announcing 500 billion dollars in orders for its AI processors and the construction of seven new supercomputers for the U.S. Department of Energy. Microsoft, the world's second most valuable company, climbed to a market capitalization of 4.03 trillion dollars. This is not coincidence. This is structure.
Resources are almost always substitutable. Oil can be bought from a dozen countries. Gas can be bought from several suppliers, plus LNG from the world market. Metals can be replaced with other metals or other suppliers. Grain - the same. A resource is the most market-driven of all strategic positions, which is precisely why a resource economy is always structurally weaker than a financial or technological one.
The United States holds end-demand and advanced technology. Oil exports from producers outside the Middle East, led by the United States, surged by 3.5 million barrels per day during the Iran war, according to the International Energy Agency. The oil market lost about 10 million barrels per day of Persian Gulf exports due to the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz - the largest oil supply disruption in history, equivalent to about 10% of total global consumption.
China holds the production cycle - partly substitutable, but in the short term nearly monopolistic. This makes it an indispensable partner for the United States in economic exchange. Russia holds the raw-materials cycle. Fully substitutable. The only question is the time and price of transition.
From this comes one simple logic that explains everything that happened in Beijing: the United States arrived as money, negotiated with money, and obtained concessions. Russia arrived as resource, negotiated with money, and obtained "nuances." Not because Xi personally dislikes Putin. Not because Moscow does not know how to negotiate. But because the structure of economic positions is such: the irreplaceable negotiates with the irreplaceable as an equal; the replaceable negotiates with the irreplaceable as a supplicant.
What Washington Got
Here it is worth listing concretely. China will purchase at least 17 billion dollars of U.S. agricultural products per year in 2026 (prorated), 2027, and 2028, in addition to soybean purchase commitments made in October 2025. China restored market access for U.S. beef by renewing expired listings of more than 400 U.S. beef facilities. China also resumed imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the USDA to be free of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Boeing concluded its first major deal with China in nearly a decade - 200 aircraft - after the Trump-Xi summit. Trump said China also reserved the right to buy up to 750 Boeing aircraft as part of the deal. The potential agreement would also benefit General Electric, which would supply 400-450 engines to China. China will address U.S. concerns about supply-chain shortages in rare earth elements and other critical minerals, including yttrium, scandium, neodymium, and indium.
This is the typical package a buyer hands to a seller.
The Chinese Export Machine and Why It Clings to the West
Here it is worth demolishing one myth that has been actively spread from Moscow for the past five years. The myth holds that China has supposedly reached an economic weight that makes it a fully fledged pole, capable of standing against the West. It has not, and here is why.
Bilateral trade in goods between the United States and China last year amounted to about 415 billion dollars, down from more than 690 billion in 2022. USDA data show that China's imports of U.S. agricultural goods peaked in 2022 with 38 billion dollars, but fell to 8 billion in 2025. The huge tilt of trade in favor of Chinese exports is the precise measure of Chinese production-cycle dependence on U.S. end-demand. If tomorrow the American market closes to China, much of those volumes will have no buyer. Europe buys less. Africa and Latin America do not have such demand. Domestic consumption in China is structurally weak.
Ben Vagle and Stephen Brooks in their 2025 book "Forging Trade" put it with academic precision: the most important, profitable, and advanced companies in the world are located predominantly in the United States and the Western bloc, and the Chinese export machine is substantially dependent on them. A full rupture of relations in the short term would cause damage to China's economy 5-11 times greater than to the U.S. economy.
For twenty years Moscow sold Beijing the idea of a "multipolar world" as a joint alternative to the West. It turned out that Beijing's own calculation is different: Western end-demand cannot be replaced by anything, while Russian resources can be bought more cheaply or replaced entirely with Central Asian, Australian, South American, North American supply. Multipolarity was a convenient rhetorical wrapper for Chinese accumulation as long as accumulation needed rhetorical cover. It no longer does.
Europe: A Ticket to the Hall, Not the Stage
Here Europe deserves a separate note - because without it the picture would be incomplete. The European Union remains one of the three largest economic centers on the planet by GDP. But GDP is not the same as strategic subjectivity.
Russian gas for Europe averaged 13-22 euros per megawatt-hour in the "normal years" of 2018 and 2019. In the first half of this year the same benchmark stood at 41 euros. Over three years the European economy has lost: cheap Russian gas, which fed its energy-intensive industry; technological parity with the United States, because advanced AI models, chips, biotech, and quantum computing are concentrated predominantly on the other side of the Atlantic; military autonomy, because supplies to Ukraine and Europe's own rearmament have flowed mainly through the American defense industry. Europe pays the American premium for LNG. Europe buys American F-35s and Patriots. Europe regulates digital markets, but the digital giants are all American. Europe wants to regulate artificial intelligence, but the advanced models are trained in California.
In this configuration Brussels remains a regulatory superpower within its own jurisdiction. What happens in Europe is decided in Europe. But the parameters within which that jurisdiction exists - energy prices, access to technology, security contours - are set in Houston, Silicon Valley, and the Pentagon. Europe got a ticket to the hall. Not to the stage.
This is not a catastrophe. This is the structural position Europe will hold for years. Its voice will be heard, its interests considered within bounds that do not contradict the interests of those who set the agenda. But the decisive decisions about the configuration of the world will be made by two, not by twenty-seven.
Constructive Strategic Stability: When G2 Steps Out of the Shadows
The chief conceptual outcome of the Beijing summit on May 14-15, 2026 was the formulation Xi Jinping put forward as a framework for bilateral relations. Xi and Trump agreed to develop a "constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability". Beijing will treat this as the guiding framework for the next three years and beyond. The strategic positioning will be led by cooperation and "measured competition" with manageable differences.
The White House used the same formula: Trump and Xi agreed that the United States and China should build a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity. Although both sides used the phrase "a constructive relationship of strategic stability," Beijing filled it with broader political content.
This is not trade terminology. This is a philosophical-structural category that directly describes a bipolar architecture. It looked as if Beijing was trying to lock in a truce on terms favorable to it for the next several years. This is how American and Soviet leaders met in the second half of the Cold War, when the bipolar world was a stable construct that required constant calibration. This is not how leaders meet with second- or third-tier partners.
Meanwhile, the Russian leader had one in-person meeting with Trump in 2025, in Anchorage, and a handful of phone calls. On April 29, 2026, Trump said he had rebuffed Putin's offer to help secure Iran's nuclear material: "He told me he'd like to be involved with the enrichment if he can help us get it. I said, 'I'd much rather have you be involved with ending the war with Ukraine'." This is the answer to the question of where Moscow stands in the new construction: not on the schedule of negotiations between the agenda-setters. On the list of issues those agenda-setters discuss among themselves.
BRICS in this construction becomes what it has always been - an empty brand no one fills with content. The SCO - a regional forum without global weight. All the "alternative centers" Moscow's propaganda has talked about for the past decade either integrated into the Western system through specific countries (India keeps its special relationship with the United States) or remained declarative platforms without real mechanisms.
What Comes Next: Three Horizons
Short horizon - up to six months. The Russian budget begins to crack at the seams because of an oil price that the United States and China together hold within a managed corridor. The first signs that Trump is shifting his attention to the Ukrainian war - on American terms, not Russian ones. The Iranian regime moves into a phase of managed exhaustion without an exit. Europe pays an ever-greater premium for energy and loses competitiveness in energy-intensive industry.
Medium horizon - one to two years. The legalization of the de facto Chinese-American condominium over global economic processes through institutional mechanisms. President Trump and President Xi established two new institutions to streamline bilateral economic relations: the U.S.-China Trade Council and the U.S.-China Investment Council. BRICS finally turns into a forum of photo opportunities without decisions. Brazil and India are the first to distance themselves, because the new configuration leaves no room for multipolar maneuvering. Moscow seeks a "new Iran" - perhaps Venezuela, Libya, individual African countries. Without a Chinese rear, these attempts are doomed to marginality.
Long horizon - the systemic cycle. What happened in May 2026 is not a trade truce and not a new stage of relations. This is the moment when the future center of accumulation publicly chose the regime of soft transition over head-on collision. Britain did the same toward the United States in the 1890s. China in 2026 - toward the same United States, only from the other side of the cycle. The logic is the same. Head-on conflict is a sign of the weakness of the rising center. A strong future hegemon uses the existing system, does not destroy it.
In this configuration Moscow is not a participant in the transition but its raw-materials supply. And a supply the new metropolis is ready to abandon when arithmetic with Washington demands it. The four U.S. LNG tankers in Tianjin are the first swallow. More will follow.
Epilogue: The Phone Calls After This
The diplomatic calendar for the next twelve months has been drawn up without Russian participation. Trump and Xi agreed to meet again in September - Xi will arrive on a state visit to Washington. The two countries will support each other as hosts of the G20 and APEC summits later this year. Four leader-level meetings in a year is not ordinary bilateral diplomacy. It is the working format of regular consultations between two agenda-setters.
Note the locations of the upcoming meetings: Washington in September, then APEC, then G20. A bipolar architecture into which the Russian position is grafted - instead of the tripartite architecture in which Moscow was one of the agenda-setters.
This is the finale of the multipolar bluff that lasted twenty years. The burial took place in Beijing. Without scandal, without an official obituary, without a moment of silence. Just a guest who for twenty years represented one of the poles flew into one airport, talked with one host, signed forty papers about cooperation, left without the main agreement, and returned to a capital where drones and a budget written for prices that will no longer exist were waiting for him.
On October 30, 2025, in Busan, South Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for roughly 100 minutes - their first face-to-face encounter in six years. Multipolarity died there, when the two of them first agreed to do business between themselves, without intermediaries. It was buried in Beijing on May 20, 2026 - when the one who had been the third arrived and got nothing.
The hall is full: all who yesterday were still trying to play their own roles on the world stage have now moved into the audience seats. Only two remain on the stage.