Visits by Trump and Putin show how pivotal China has become

Beijing is a top tourist attraction in the spring. This month it is also a top diplomatic attraction for world leaders. China’s President Xi Jinping recently said farewell to US President Donald Trump and then prepared to say hello to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Mr Trump’s visit is the first of several planned American meetings with Mr Xi although it is unclear what the recent talks achieved beyond photo opportunities, public cordiality and plans for future engagements. In a famous phrase attributed to Winston Churchill: "Jaw, jaw is always better than war, war.” The war in Ukraine and the conflict with Iran were both on the agenda when Mr Trump met Mr Xi, even if what emerged was comforting but vague, including promises of “new positioning” on trade – whatever that means. Mr Trump took key US business leaders with him and the question of tariffs remains divisive but, significantly, as soon as the US President’s team left China, the Russians led by Mr Putin arrived . This was a reminder how pivotal China has become in international relations while the UN is sidelined. At a time of the Ukraine war, the Iran conflict, the wider situation in the Middle East and a potential future conflict between China and Taiwan, the UN might have been expected to mediate. But nowadays – in Mr Trump’s eyes at least – the UN is irrelevant, the EU diminished, Russia stuck in Ukraine and China ascendant. Therefore, discussions involving Mr Trump and a rising China point to a different world order, one that a miscalculation could tip into a very serious world dis-order. For a sense of how these US and Russian Beijing visits are being seen by Chinese officials Global Times offers a clue. It’s a daily newspaper published in English and linked to the Chinese Communist Party , and it offers this analysis: “The tightly sequenced visits [of Trump and Putin] have sparked widespread attention, with analysts noting that it is extremely rare in the post-Cold War era for a country to host the leaders of the US and Russia back-to-back within a week.” Beijing is therefore “fast emerging as the focal point of global diplomacy”. China’s pride is obvious and deserved. Moreover, this power shift has a historic importance that has been noted in European and other capitals. Back in 2022, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz prophesied a turning point in international relations, in German a “Zeitenwende”. Mr Scholz was right. China is at the centre of this power shift and it’s easy to see why. The Russia-China relationship has been solid for years. More than a quarter of Russia’s exports, including oil, end up in China. China reportedly bought billions of dollars’ worth of Russian fossil fuels since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By underpinning the otherwise fragile Russian war economy, China plays a pivotal role in enabling the war to continue. It could therefore also play a pivotal role in helping end the conflict. But will it? One further complicating factor is Taiwan. Again, China has a strong hand. Just a few hours after his summit with Mr Xi, Mr Trump warned Taiwan not formally to declare independence from China. China seeks what it regards as reunification with Taiwan, and the island is regarded by Beijing as a rebellious province. However, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te thanked the US for its “unwavering commitment” to the region's security, a statement perhaps suggesting a degree of nervousness since “unwavering commitments” are not Mr Trump’s strong point. Either way the complexity of the positioning on war, peace, national security and the world economy is like four-dimensional chess, except that in chess the rules are clear. In this extraordinary change in world affairs, our “Zeitenwende”, it is not even clear if there are any rules at all, just different competing national interests and personal ambitions of three very powerful and somewhat unpredictable leaders. Even so, there are grounds for optimism. Mr Xi may prove the most predictable of those three leaders and China is the country whose economy most depends upon a benign trading environment. Like many in the Chinese leadership, Mr Xi has an engineering background. Engineers plan and build things and he is building a new superpower. Conflict is therefore unwelcome because even with a sidelined UN, the basic rules of economics show that wars are bad for business and hugely damaging for the world economy. Mr Xi and Mr Trump understand that, especially since Mr Putin’s pursuit of the Ukraine invasion has meant sacrificing much of the Russian economy for a war Moscow has failed to win. Yet the rise of China towards superpower status may not be welcomed by the Trump administration either – and American tariffs are certainly not welcomed by China. Even so, the two nations are interconnected. For example 60 per cent of American chain store Walmart’s imports reportedly come from China. US economic giants Apple and Tesla have hugely important interests in China. World peace of course does not depend on iPhones, electric cars and inexpensive China-made T-shirts but it does increasingly depend on China’s role in international diplomacy. That role – like China’s economy – is rapidly expanding.