Do All Roads Lead to Beijing?

by Amir Taheri  •  Gatestone Institute  •  May 24, 2026

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing almost in the same timeframe. China’s President Xi Jinping gave both visitors exactly the same reception while granting neither any of the things they demanded. Pictured: President of Russia Vladimir Putin and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping at Zhongnanhai in Beijing, China. Photo by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia

• In the past decade, the UN has lost much of its aura as a source of moral authority, let alone meaningful material relevance. Two of its veto-holding members have been engaged in wars of choice, while a third one has been branded a gross violator of human rights.

• Despite all the talk about a multipolar world system — a meaningless conceit because if you have more than two poles you won’t have a polar system — Washington has emerged as the favored destination for leaders seeking help or legitimacy.
• Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing almost in the same timeframe. China’s President Xi Jinping gave both visitors exactly the same reception while granting neither any of the things they demanded.
• In fact, there was no threat, and Xi’s reference to the Thucydides trap was about a change in the status quo rather than depicting China as a rising power to replace the US as a retiring one.
• Trump acted with exemplary discipline and gently reminded Xi that the US remains the indispensable power. He also made it clear that China has more to lose from the blockades in the Strait of Hormuz if only because some 40 percent of its energy needs pass through it, while the US has the power to allow Chinese tankers to pass.
• [F]ew people remember that Iran’s nuclear project was started by American money and expertise in 1959, and that the first generation of Iranian nuclear scientists were trained in US universities.
• Each year China trains more engineers than the US and EU combined.
• My guess is that Xi will not invade Taiwan because he knows the Confucian concept of “active waiting.”

Imagine you are a nation’s leader facing problems or seeking to underline your legitimacy on the global stage. Where will you go in pursuit of those goals?

In ancient times, all roads led to Rome or Susa, where two great empires set the tune in large chunks of the three continents known at the time. In the age of European imperialism, the obvious destinations were London, Paris and Petrograd. During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow were the obvious destinations. After the USSR collapsed, Washington was seen as the first source of authority, with the United Nations as a distant second.

In the past decade, the UN has lost much of its aura as a source of moral authority, let alone meaningful material relevance. Two of its veto-holding members have been engaged in wars of choice, while a third one has been branded a gross violator of human rights.

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