Energy, Leverage, and Hierarchy: What Putin’s Beijing Visit Revealed
Vladimir Putin landed in Beijing late Tuesday evening, May 19, on his 25th visit to China during his quarter-century in power.
He was met on the tarmac by Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Six days earlier, Donald Trump had landed at the same airport.
Trump was met on the tarmac by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng. T
The protocol gap between the Vice President and Foreign Minister carries precise meaning in Chinese diplomatic ritual.
Trump was received as the leader of a peer power.
Putin was received as the leader of a junior one.
Putin came to Beijing wanting one outcome above all else: Chinese approval of the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a 1,615-mile project from Russia’s Yamal field through Mongolia to northwestern China that would carry 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.
He did not get it.
Instead, he went back home with 40 cooperation documents, a joint declaration on multipolarity, an extension of the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, and memoranda on trade, technology, nuclear cooperation, automobiles, media, and the protection of Amur tigers.
No pipeline agreement and no timeline either.
The more important signal is what the refusal reveals about Chinese energy strategy.
Power of Siberia 2 is exactly the kind of supply contract authoritarian regimes typically prize: pipeline running over land, immune to maritime interdiction, locked in over multi-decade timescales.
Beijing’s decision to delay it at a moment when the United States has just demonstrated maritime blockade capability against Iran is not the decision of a country worried about energy security.
