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In May 2026, Beijing held two summits with Washington and Moscow six days apart, in this order and not by chance: Donald Trump on May 14 and Vladimir Putin on May 20. The immediate comments focused, predictably, on trade deals, gas pipelines and the rhetoric of summit diplomacy. This is the level at which the 24-hour media cycle operates. But there is a deeper level to these visits, which does not appear in the joint communiqués and which deserves patient analysis: Beijing did not react to world events, but orchestrated a deliberate sequence through which it positioned itself as the indispensable pivot of a multipolar system in search of stabilization.

The title of this article is inspired by the Concert of Europe, that system of governance of the great powers built after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which managed continental balances through direct consultation. It was not an era of universal peace, but one of controlled conflict and damage limitation. The analogy is not perfect, no historical analogy is, but the rhythm we recognize is the same: a central power that summons adversaries, separates them, negotiates with them, and emerges strengthened from each interaction. China plays that role today, with its own means and a distinct strategic culture; history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

The new grammar of great power relations

To understand what happened in Beijing in May, we must first understand what Xi Jinping proposes as the architecture of the world. For several years, the Chinese leader has been promoting a new type of great power relations, a diplomatic formula for a world in which the United States can no longer claim unilateral hegemony, Russia remains a structural partner regardless of its fragility, and China places itself at the center, not as a hegemon replacing the United States, but as an indispensable partner in a multipolar system that requires active stabilization.

The May visits are the latest and clearest illustration of this vision in action. With the US, China is pursuing a “constructive relationship of strategic stability,” the concept articulated by Xi himself after the May 14 summit, in which systemic competition is managed, not eliminated, and the risk of catastrophic collision is reduced through direct channels. With Russia, the declared partnership is one of “no limits,” a term carefully chosen precisely because it suggests the absence of ceilings, although practice shows that limits exist and are set by Beijing. The two partnerships are deliberately asymmetrical, and it is precisely asymmetry that is the instrument of Chinese power. This is, however, a coherent evolution of the Chinese strategic project. If the first phase was the economic rise under the umbrella of the Pax Americana, and the second was the accumulation of its own instruments of power, from the Belt and Road Initiative to the expanded BRICS, from CIPS to military bases in Djibouti, this third phase is that of positioning itself as a necessary intermediary of the multipolar order, the only actor that maintains freedom of maneuver and access to all players to promote a stable condominium.

Trump-Xi summit: stabilization, not reset

The May 14 summit was misinterpreted by most analysts. The focus was on Trump’s impressive delegation, the presence of tech and financial giants, and possible trade deals. Even the interpretation focused on Trump’s humiliation and the decline of the US is a misreading of the event.

The real stakes of the summit were not transactional, but one of framework construction. Xi Jinping formulated it directly: China and the United States must build a constructive relationship of strategic stability, in which cooperation is the norm, competition is kept within limits and does not become a zero-sum game, and direct confrontation is a scenario that neither side can afford. It is not the language of friendship, but of manageable risk. The two powers agreed to manage the rivalry, not abandon it.

Behind the diplomatic ceremonial, three operational files were coordinated. First: the fate of post-conflict Iran, where any lasting agreement requires guarantees of credibility that only China can offer Tehran in relation to Washington. Second: the architecture of sanctions and the unfreezing of assets in the post-armistice phase, where Beijing is the only actor with economic leverage and political legitimacy vis-à-vis Iran. Third: the rules of engagement for global systemic competition. The summit functioned, in essence, as a crisis management session, with all the diplomatic protocol that goes with it. The Taiwan issue cannot be ignored either, present in the room even if not on the official agenda. The Trump administration suspended a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, citing the need to conserve ammunition for Operation Epic Fury. Trump himself described the sale as a very good negotiating tool in relations with China. Xi responded accordingly, warning that the Taiwan issue is the most important in the bilateral relationship and that its mismanagement could generate clashes and even conflicts. The exchange was not a confrontation but a negotiation, and Taiwan became a variable in the equation, not a partner. It is a sobering signal to those who believe that American security guarantees are immune to Trump’s transactional geometry. The exchange was seen as a setback for Donald Trump, who gratuitously violated the US’s constructive ambiguity on Taiwan by abandoning the Reagan-era policy of not engaging with Beijing on arms sales to Taiwan.

Putin in Beijing: the parade of an asymmetrical partnership

Six days after the American delegation left Beijing, the Russian delegation arrived. Putin came to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, the founding document of the Sino-Russian axis. He left with 42 signed documents and without the agreement he wanted most.

Power of Siberia 2 remains a strategic project in waiting. The 2,600-kilometer pipeline that should transport 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Siberian fields through Mongolia to northern China is blocked by a price dispute that perfectly summarizes the asymmetry of the relationship: the Russian side wants pricing according to its European formula, the Chinese side wants a price comparable to other suppliers in Central Asia, well below what Russia practices in the EU. China can afford to wait. It has weathered the global energy shock triggered by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz thanks to massive investments in strategic stocks, renewable energy, nuclear power, and diversification of supply.

We would be tempted to conclude that Putin returned empty-handed. This reading is simplistic. The 42 agreements signed are not mere formalities: 14 agreements between universities and 11 between government media outlets reflect a real expansion of the networks of human and institutional cooperation that have linked Russia and China for decades. As the Western societal/academic space closes to Russians – Schengen visas increasingly difficult to obtain, direct flights suspended, joint research projects blocked by sanctions – China is becoming Russia’s natural window to the world. Young Russian scientists who want to collaborate internationally are now doing so with Chinese partners. Russian students study at Tsinghua and Peking University, which are in the world’s top 20, while no Russian university is in the top 100. Putin’s spokesman, Peskov, half-jokingly mentioned that his youngest daughter spoke Chinese before Russian, thanks to her nanny from Hebei province. While the current generation of Russian elites remains Euro-American in its reference formats, the generation that will lead Russia after Putin, young military officers trained in the trenches of Ukraine and in cooperation with their Chinese counterparts, will see China as a model for modernization and a natural strategic partner. There is also a technology transfer dimension that deserves attention. Beyond the already public scandals involving Russian scientists arrested for illicit transfers of military technology, the relationship now includes more and more officially approved transfers. Russia’s technological advantage in military and space is now being eroded with official sanction. In parallel, Western sanctions have cut Russia off from German, Czech, and American precision industrial equipment and industrial control software. China is filling part of this gap, thereby gaining influence in the heart of the Russian industrial system. Moreover, China buys Russian hydrocarbons at 15-20% discounts to global prices, and Russia has already surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil. Bilateral trade has exceeded $200 billion for two consecutive years and is on track to reach a new record in 2026. Russia sells cheap and buys expensive: imports from China are growing by 23% per year, largely fuelled by the needs of military production, which absorbs 40% of the state budget. The equation is clear: China extracts maximum value from Russia’s constraints, while offering in return exactly what is needed to keep the regime functional and dependent.

Sequentiality matters

The most important detail of these visits is not their content, but their order. Trump came first, Putin second.

The US-China summit set the framework: managed competition, strategic stability, coordination on the Iranian issue. The China-Russia summit allowed Beijing to convey the parameters of this framework to Moscow, which needs Chinese economic oxygen, has its own channels to Tehran (including through intelligence support to the Iranians), and must play a role in any sustainable resolution of both the Iranian and Ukrainian conflicts. Without Russia’s participation, Sino-American coordination on Iran remains incomplete: the ghost fleet, the sanctions architecture, the enriched uranium stockpiles, all require a Russian role. Beijing spoke to Washington first, clarified its own position, and only then welcomed Moscow. China was not a neutral intermediary between the two powers, but conveyed messages in the order that served its interests.

Analyst Velina Tchakarova calls this constellation the Triangle of Happiness, not because it describes a world at peace, but because it captures the only configuration capable of preventing the worst-case scenario. Three nuclear states, three powers with deep imprints on the active conflicts of the moment, three actors with an interest in preventing a total systemic rupture. This is not a formal alliance and there is no treaty of the triangle. It is a de facto, opaque coordination, carried out behind the scenes of summits that the press treats as a diplomatic spectacle.

Productive pessimism: what Putin didn’t achieve

We need to not let China’s strategy, however coherent, overshadow our more prosaic realities. Putin came to Beijing with a concrete agenda and left without its central element. Power of Siberia 2 was not signed. Not because the relationship has suffered, but because China simply does not urgently need the pipeline. It built its energy resilience decades in advance: LNG terminals, new nuclear power plants, huge solar fields, wind turbines. The crisis caused by the Hormuz blockade tested the system, and it withstood it. Even if AI and rising industrial consumption create additional pressure, signing a 30-year contract is a major strategic commitment that Beijing will not make if the terms are not acceptable.

There is also a structural risk for Russia that transcends this summit: the window of opportunity may be closing. As China’s energy mix becomes greener, its dependence on natural gas may structurally decline. If Russia does not secure a deal now, at a time when China is most vulnerable to hydrocarbons, it may never secure one on favorable terms. Paradoxically, the Hormuz crisis, which many in Moscow believed would improve Russia’s negotiating position by showing China the dangers of dependence on sea routes, has not had the desired effect. China navigated the crisis on its own reserves and did not feel the need to rush a land-based alternative that it wanted to obtain on its own terms anyway.

Russia risks becoming exactly what serious analysts have long warned: a gas station with a nuclear arsenal. Large and important enough not to be ignored, but increasingly isolated, with an economy increasingly technologically backward compared to the West and completely dependent on the goodwill of a single major partner. China is already dictating which projects it is interested in and on what terms. Already the structure of bilateral trade (resources against equipment and finished products) reproduces the classic periphery-center relationship that Russia played out in relation to Europe, with the difference that now it has no alternative. When Russian elites hire nannies from Hebei for their children and send their students to Tsinghua, they are not making an arbitrary choice, but are recording their new dependency.

Beijing as dispatch of the multipolar order

The Sino-American ship is big, Xi told Trump in Beijing. The question is who is at the helm.

China does not manage an alliance or lead a bloc. It manages elevated bilateral relations, each with its own logic and asymmetries, which it patiently coordinates and sequences according to its interests. The partnership without limits with Russia and the constructive partnership of strategic stability with the US are not contradictory in the Chinese vision, but instruments of a system of great power relations in which China is the indispensable pivot. Iran cannot be resolved without China, systemic risk cannot be managed without China, and post-conflict peace cannot be built without China. This is the message that Beijing is sending to the world through the deliberate sequencing of its visits in May.

There is a temptation in the West to see this move as a direct threat. Seen coldly, it is more like a missed opportunity. The postwar liberal order worked, with all its flaws, because the United States chose to build international institutions and share their authority. China is now building a different architecture, less transparent, less institutionalized, less predictable, but more attuned to the power realities of a multipolar world. If the West wants a seat at this new table, it will have to choose between the comfort of principles and pragmatic engagement in a system that is being built anyway, with or without it.

The history of the Concert of Europe ended in Sarajevo in 1914, when crisis management mechanisms gave way to an event that no one had properly calibrated for. We do not yet know where the Concert of Terra of 2026 will give way.

Photo source: PxHere.com.