Emerging World (Dis)Order

Less than a week after President Trump’s departure from Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in China in a summit that will inevitably be viewed through the lens of Washington’s recent diplomatic engagement with President Xi. Officially, the meeting is about strengthening the Sino-Russian relationship—something Beijing insists is not mutually exclusive to a stable and beneficial relationship with the US. 

In reality, the timing reflects Moscow’s desire for reassurance—President Trump’s visit raised questions about whether Xi might pursue a tactical stabilization with Washington at Moscow’s expense. 

For Putin, the summit is ultimately about economics more than symbolism. Russia’s war economy remains heavily dependent on Chinese purchases of discounted oil and gas, particularly after Western sanctions sharply reduced Moscow’s access to European energy markets. At the same time, Russia faces mounting pressure at home—Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory are increasing, territorial losses continue to accumulate, and signs of economic fatigue are becoming harder for the Kremlin to obscure. Xi understands that dependence gives Beijing leverage. 

However, China’s latest economic data reported slowed industrial output and meager increases in consumer spending, caused in part by instability in the Middle East and rising energy costs. In sum, Beijing wants reliable and cheap oil imports, but it does not want to absorb the broader economic and diplomatic costs that come with deeper alignment with Moscow. That imbalance increasingly defines the relationship—Russia needs China economically more than China needs Russia strategically. 

The key question is whether the summit produces anything tangible beyond symbolic declarations of partnership. If Putin leaves Beijing without a major pipeline agreement or visible economic commitments, it suggests China’s support is becoming more conditional and transactional. Xi likely still sees strategic value in keeping Russia close as pressure from Washington intensifies, but he appears increasingly aware that the war in Ukraine carries mounting financial, reputational, and commercial costs for China itself. 

Weekly Wildcard

In Bolivia, President Rodrigo Paz is confronting what is rapidly becoming a full-scale governability crisis less than six months into office. Nationwide blockages of key infrastructure by peasant unions and mining groups have severed internal supply routes, leaving La Paz under effective siege and straining the city’s supply of fuel, food, and medicine. What began as sectoral disputes over wages, fuel shortages, and mining concessions has evolved into a broader test of whether Paz’s government can impose authority over a fragmented political system that no longer has a dominant organizing force. If it’s not contained, Bolivia’s crisis will risk investment opportunities tied to the country’s vast reserves of critical minerals. 

Paz, a business-friendly centrist who came to power on a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment, governs a legislative assembly without a majority or a disciplined party to represent his agenda.  

Deeper instability has resulted from the collapse of former President Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), and a consolidated alternative has not yet emerged. Morales remains a destabilizing reference point in a fragmented field, and Morales-aligned networks retain enough influence in labor and rural sectors to cause unrest and exacerbate economic strain, showing that in a fragmented country like Bolivia, winning an election is not synonymous with gripping the wheels of power. 

Paz’s market-oriented reforms and austerity measures have inflamed tensions with some indigenous and working-class groups who have seen their political representation eroded and the cost-of-living rise. The unrest is now beginning to spill into the financial system itself, with some banks temporarily closing branches in the capital as shortages and uncertainty deepen.  

That instability carries implications beyond domestic politics. Bolivia’s vast lithium and tin reserves had attracted growing interest from international investors and foreign governments eager to secure long-term access to critical minerals under a market-friendly administration. But if Paz cannot reach some form of accommodation with the patchwork of unions, transport workers, miners, and peasant organizations now paralyzing the country, one of South America’s most significant potential investment openings could quickly deteriorate into another prolonged cycle of political and economic dysfunction.