UNITED STATES PERSPECTIVE

Washington, May 18, 2026. The recent diplomatic week has placed Washington in an unusual posture: that of an observer who feels satisfied. The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, concluded with an agreement under which China commits to buying at least $17 billion worth of American agricultural products annually until 2028, is presented as a tangible victory by the American administration. Bloomberg, which reported the figures in detail, notes that the two leaders held a 'major summit' before the announcement, signaling a desire to stabilize the bilateral relationship.

But Putin's visit to Beijing immediately following this summit has not escaped Washington's notice. The Russian president is there to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborhood, and economic and regional issues will be on the agenda. But the calendar does not lie: Putin arrives in a capital that has just received its American rival. For American analysts, this illustrates the pivot position that Xi Jinping now occupies in global geopolitics — a position that Trump sought to exploit by speaking with Beijing before Moscow.

The dominant reading in Washington is strategic: if Putin is seeking to ensure that the Sino-American rapprochement does not come at his expense, it is precisely that Trump has succeeded in inserting a wedge into the Sino-Russian axis. China has become Russia's first commercial partner, providing more than a third of its imports and absorbing more than a quarter of its exports. Washington sees this economic link as a vulnerability to exploit rather than a monolithic threat.

The $17 billion annual agricultural agreement is, in this context, a tool of pressure as much as an economic benefit. By linking Beijing to its agricultural markets, the United States seeks to make it more costly for China to provide logistical or industrial support to Moscow. The implicit message: Sino-American economic gains are conditional on Chinese restraint towards Russia.

What Washington struggles to formulate clearly, however, is the limit of this logic. Xi Jinping receives Putin while maintaining his commercial commitments with Trump — which means that Beijing has not chosen a camp, but is capitalizing on both. The Russian visit, far from signaling a Sino-Russian rupture, confirms that China intends to manage its partnerships in parallel, not in exclusivity. For now, Washington prefers to highlight the concrete agricultural result rather than recognizing the complexity of a China that plays its own tune.