In the 21st century, the international system is undergoing a period of turbulence unlike any seen before. The liberal international order—built after World War II and globalized with the end of the Cold War—is facing a profound crisis of legitimacy and functionality, along with its institutions and norms. The summit held in Beijing on May 13–15, 2026, between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping represents not only a conjunctural rupture in the bilateral relations between the two superpowers but also the future structural form of the rule-based world order that is collapsing. The world today is caught in a spiral of uncertainty, where institutional and multilateral mechanisms have given way to personal, leader-centric, and transactional diplomacy.
Diplomacy has ceased to be a means of consolidating long-term alliances or upholding the universal principles of international law; it has become a tactical arena for short-term gains, asymmetric bargaining, and quid pro quo relationships. This shift away from institutional frameworks in global politics is eroding predictability across every sphere, from global markets to the architecture of macro-security. While the official diplomatic statements released regarding the summit claim that both leaders are seeking strategic stability and global responsibility, the ongoing trade wars, sanctions regimes, and technological divergence processes in the background clearly reveal just how fragile this stability is.[i]
Among theories of international relations, realism and its structural variant, neorealism, offer the most powerful and rational analytical tools for explaining the dynamics of the Trump-Xi summit. The Thucydides Trap, which Xi himself referenced during the summit and characterized as the fundamental challenge to bilateral relations, refers to the inevitable systemic tension arising when a rising power structurally threatens the existing status-quo hegemon. From a realist perspective, the 2026 Beijing Summit is an effort to delay an inevitable power conflict at the systemic level—rather than seeking lasting peace and normative integration—while minimizing costs and making competition manageable.
In this new context, where China has now emerged as a fully-fledged rival to the United States in terms of economic, military, and technological capabilities, Trump’s “America First” doctrine is a concrete manifestation of the impulse to maximize relative gains in an environment of international anarchy. Viewed through the framework of Robert Gilpin’s theory of hegemonic war and the Power Transition Theory, a shift in the distribution of power within the system inevitably leads to a showdown between revisionist and status quo powers. The 2026 summit can be interpreted as a structural pause that has allowed this showdown to be postponed for the time being.
John Mearsheimer’s theory of Offensive Realism, on the other hand, posits that in an environment of mutual distrust where neither power can ever be certain of the other’s intentions, both will inevitably seek to maximize their power in the pursuit of survival and security. In this context, diplomatic talks and handshakes in Beijing do not eliminate the deep mistrust engendered by structural anarchy. The leaders’ transactional approach to diplomacy conducts structural competition not through institutional frameworks but directly through the leaders’ personal decisions. This reinforces the states’ defensive positional reflexes, leading both sides to perceive the steps taken as tactical maneuvers.
For decades, liberal theorists have argued that globalization and economic interdependence would prevent war and conflict by altering the rational cost-benefit calculations between states. However, the economic backdrop of the 2026 summit demonstrates that this classical liberal thesis has lost its validity and has been replaced by a new asymmetric power politics conceptualized in theory as armed interdependence. This concept, introduced to the literature by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, explains how states that control global supply chains, financial networks, and information hubs use these networks as tools for punishment, surveillance, and coercion against other states.[ii]
According to Farrell and Newman, the Panopticon—or the Surveillance Effect—also demonstrates that states controlling central nodes have the capacity to continuously monitor global flows of information and money. The fact that leaders of tech giants such as Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Jensen Huang were personally present alongside Trump’s official delegation at the Beijing Summit between Trump and Xi is one of the most concrete manifestations of the digital panopticon on the economic-political stage. As Yanis Varoufakis puts it, these modern techno-feudal lords who hold “cloud capital” in their hands are not merely welcomed at the table of dominant powers like Xi and Trump as businesspeople; they are the true owners of the digital towers that monitor the data, desires, and behavioral patterns of billions of people.
The fact that, during the summit, the U.S. delegation was unable to use their personal devices due to fears of cyber espionage and was instead confined to special anti-surveillance phones known as “clean/golden images” demonstrates how the fear of “constant surveillance and infiltration”—as described in Michel Foucault’s panopticon—manifests itself at the highest levels of the state apparatus. This summit clearly reveals how algorithmic systems that monitor and process global data (Apple, Tesla, Nvidia) have become the primary lever of national sovereignty and geopolitical negotiations within the “armed interdependence” universe theorized by Farrell and Newman.[iii]
The most distinctive aspect of the 2026 Beijing Summit—one that transcends traditional analyses of international relations and offers a radical perspective on the transformation of the global order—is the high-level involvement of tech giants like Musk and Cook in the summit delegations and bilateral meetings. This situation can be analyzed through the “Technofeudalism” theory conceptualized by global political analyst and economist Varoufakis. According to Varoufakis, traditional capitalism has now given way to a new socio-economic formation: technofeudalism. In this new order, the source of wealth and power is no longer the traditional ownership of means of production or markets (capital accumulation); rather, it lies in controlling digital platforms, algorithms, and artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud capital. In this context, figures like Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Starlink) and Cook (Apple) are not capitalists in the classical sense; they function as modern “cloud feudal lords” who own digital ecosystems, global communication networks, and data mining fields. These technology barons have transformed into autonomous power centers that share in the sovereign domains of states by exploiting users’ digital labor and extracting cloud rent from traditional companies to ensure their presence on their own platforms.
The participation of these figures in the summit demonstrates that, in international relations, non-state actors and technological superiority are no longer merely tactical lobbying tools but have become the new gold standard of geopolitical dominance. From a constructive and critical perspective, the race for dominance in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, chip manufacturing, and space technologies is not a struggle to gain a military force multiplier. This new race is an ontological battle over who will define the 21st century’s global identity, normative codes, and epistemic authority.
The proposal for a “Trade Delegation”—which was put forward at the summit and is intended to operate under the direct control of the leaders—represents a move toward protectionist market management that allows for direct intervention by the two leaders, rather than adhering to the multilateral and normative rules of a free-market economy. This move confirms the structural collapse of the institutional pillars of liberalism, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and their replacement with bilateral, ad-hoc arrangements. The clearest historical evidence of this distortion in the global trade architecture is the trajectory of U.S. customs tariffs. A decision was made to strategically reduce U.S. customs tariffs—which had surged to 57% by 2025—to 47% at this peak. However, this reduction is not a liberalization move based on free trade principles; it is a strict transactional trade-off contingent on China easing its export restrictions on rare earth elements and committing to cooperation in supply chain control to address the fentanyl crisis.[iv]
The tariff history surrounding the fentanyl crisis confirms this strategy of imposing tariffs. In 2025, Washington imposed additional punitive tariffs of up to 10%, and later up to 20%, on Beijing to block trade in fentanyl precursor chemicals originating from China; following Beijing’s commitment in November 2025 to tighten controls on 13 precursor chemicals, the tariffs were reduced back to 10%. However, in February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that these punitive tariffs exceeded constitutional limits and struck them down, exposing the institutional conflict between Washington’s domestic legal and foreign policy tools. According to analysts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), the use of tariffs and trade sanctions as foreign policy instruments in such an intense, aggressive, and volatile manner—driven by national security or domestic political concerns—is creating a wave of permanent and structural instability and uncertainty in global supply chains.[v] Techno-feudalism is shaking the Westphalian paradigm of sovereignty. While Trump and Xi attempt to reshape the global order into a bipolar interstate system, the cloud lords sitting on the sidelines are managing data and communication flows that states cannot fully control even within their own borders. In this sense, great power competition is no longer merely a matter of state militaries but a derivative of the symbiotic and conflict-ridden partnerships states have established with these technological feudal lords.
The “security dilemma,” one of the most fundamental concepts of realism, refers to the process whereby steps taken by a state to enhance its own security are perceived by a rival state as a direct threat, thereby triggering an arms race. This dilemma manifests itself in the most concrete and dangerous way in contemporary global politics through the Taiwan issue. The new $11 billion defense and advanced weapons package approved by the U.S. administration for Taiwan was characterized by Beijing as “a clear and aggressive violation of the red line” and formed the tensest negotiation item at the summit. Although the Chinese government extended diplomatic hospitality to Trump in Beijing with the highest level of state protocol, grand ceremonies, and special tours of Zhongnanhai—the living quarters of the communist elite—it issued uncompromising and stern warnings regarding Taiwan’s independence and U.S. military support for the island. In the face of China’s clear stance, the remarks Trump made to reporters on the plane during his return from the summit—reflecting his transactional approach to diplomacy—have caused a significant tremor in the global security architecture. After listening to Xi’s deep concerns, Trump stated that he had not yet made a final decision on proceeding with the shipment of the massive $11 billion arms package to Taiwan and that he wished to de-escalate tensions.[vi][vii]
Trump’s ambiguous stance—using arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China—signals a strategic shift, according to international relations analysts. This approach constitutes a clear violation and relaxation of the unofficial “Six Assurances” doctrine, which was established under the Ronald Reagan administration in 1982 and governs Washington’s relations with Taipei by committing to the uninterrupted supply of arms to the island. Trump’s tactical retreat or strategy of ambiguity, while creating a temporary margin for de-escalation in macro-level negotiations with Beijing, is structurally eroding the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence and security commitments from the perspective of allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia).
The summit took place in the shadow of the ongoing war in Iran, which threatens global energy supply lines. Transcending a regional conflict, this war—waged by global powers through proxies—has been used by Trump and Xi as a “strategic lever” in their bilateral relations. While Washington demands that Beijing use its economic and political influence over Iran to rein in Tehran, Beijing views this instability in the Middle East as a structural opportunity that prevents the U.S. from rationalizing its military and diplomatic resources and keeps Washington from fully focusing on the Asia-Pacific region. Rather than resolving regional crises, the great powers are using these tragedies as bargaining chips to extract geopolitical concessions from one another. This situation once again confirms that the global system operates under a pure zero-sum game logic, dominated not by shared security interests but by the two superpowers’ selfish instincts for survival and the expansion of their spheres of influence.
When strategic and empirical outcomes are evaluated through a holistic approach, as analysts from Brookings, CSIS, and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) have emphasized, the 2026 Beijing Summit failed to resolve major structural fractures but succeeded in securing a delicate interim period of détente that both powers required. The summit’s most significant concrete, measurable, and commercial outcome is China’s commitment to make billions of dollars in new purchases from the U.S. aviation, agriculture, and energy (liquefied natural gas—LNG) sectors. This trade package serves as a tangible symbol of victory that Trump can present to American producers and his voter base in domestic politics.[viii] In response, Xi has gained time—which is critical for China’s economic restructuring and internal stability—by securing a signal from the U.S. to slow its military moves regarding Taiwan and by establishing a flexible dialogue mechanism to halt the expansion of technological embargoes (particularly restrictions on AI chips and semiconductors).
Consequently, crisis management mechanisms that have become dependent on decision-makers’ personal perceptions, psychological fluctuations, and irrational tactical preferences harbor the potential to directly escalate a potential diplomatic or military misstep into a global war. Ultimately, systemic uncertainty has ceased to be a cyclical byproduct or an exceptional anomaly of international relations; it has become a new ontological, structural, and enduring characteristic of global anarchy. The 2026 Beijing Summit failed to produce a structural or institutional solution to the systemic paradigm crisis; rather, it served merely as a tactical breathing space for the great powers amid the deepening process of structural turbulence in the global balance of power.
[i] “President Xi Jinping Holds Talks with U.S. President Donald J. Trump”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs People’s Republic of China, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/202605/t20260514_11910330.html, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
[ii] “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion”, Harvard Kennedy School, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/weaponized-interdependence-how-global-economic-networks-shape-state-coercion, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
[iii] Saura García, C. (2024). The age of datafeudalism: From digital panopticon to synthetic democracy. Philosophy & Technology, 37(3), 98.
[iv] “Fentanyl, China, and Trump’s 2025 tariffs”, PIIE, https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2026/fentanyl-china-and-trumps-2025-tariffs, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
[v] Ibid.
[vi] “China offers Trump grand welcome, but issues warning on Taiwan”, PBS News, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/china-offers-trump-grand-welcome-but-issues-warning-on-taiwan, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
[vii] “Elon Musk and Jensen Huang among CEOs joining Trump on China trip”, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yx757w048o, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
[viii] “Beyond Taiwan, a ‘Decent Peace’ at the Trump-Xi Summit”, CFR, https://www.cfr.org/articles/beyond-taiwan-a-decent-peace-at-the-trump-xi-summit, (Access Date: May 14, 2026).
