The Busan Meeting and the Crisis of the Liberal Order: Towards a Sino-American Bipolarism (G2) and the Legitimization of Chinese Totalitarianism?

The meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and American President Donald Trump in Busan on October 30, 2025, cannot be reduced to a mere tactical agreement to alleviate tariff pressures. On the contrary, it represents a breaking point, a de facto acknowledgment of Beijing's systemic parity by Washington, and with it, a potential international legitimization of the Chinese totalitarianism led by Xi Jinping. Xi's words, claiming that Chinese ambitions and the American "Make America Great Again" goal are "mutually compatible" and can "mutually realize and prosper together," delineate the perimeter of an extreme Realpolitik, where the management of global stability becomes an affair reserved for the "G2," relegating the rest of the world to a subordinate role.

As highlighted in the preface and first chapter of the volume La Cina di Xi Jinping: Verso un nuovo ordine mondiale sinocentrico? (The China of Xi Jinping: Towards a New Sinocentric World Order?), the West lived for decades under the "pure illusion" that economic liberalization would lead to the automatic democratization of the country. Conversely, Xi Jinping’s rise since 2012 has been characterized by "increasing assertiveness and will to power" based on a model "in total antithesis to the Western values of Liberty, Democracy, and the Rule of Law" (Prefazione, Interni libro La Cina di Xi Jinping.pdf). The Busan truce is the culmination of the "belated understanding of the Chinese strategy" where the West, upon realizing the danger—both external and internal, as Beijing has managed to "penetrate and become rooted in the very core of our political, economic, and cultural apparatuses"—is forced to accept the regime as an irremovable player, a strategic equal whose power can only be managed through dialogue at the highest level.

On October 30, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with US President Donald Trump in Busan. (Photo by Shen Hong, Xinhua News Agency)

The Tariff Conflict as a Clash of Models and Economic Inevitability

The tariff war launched by the Trump administration was, in reality, a desperate attempt at decoupling from an economic system increasingly driven by an illiberal state capitalism. The failure to completely eliminate dependency, culminating in the truce, clearly demonstrated that Beijing has long prepared itself for this eventuality, building geoeconomic resilience based on highly effective and asymmetric pressure levers.

A. Strategic Geoeconomic Levers: Beijing's "Hard Power"

China holds undisputed dominance over sectors essential to the global value chain, transforming interdependence into a weapon. This is the "hard power" mentioned in the analysis:

1. Rare Earth Elements (REE) and Critical Raw Materials. Beijing controls not only most global reserves but, crucially, holds a near-monopoly on their refining and processing. This control allows for the paralyzing of entire Western industries, from advanced semiconductor manufacturing to jet engines, defense components, and green technologies. This strategic access to resources, vital for American industry, places Beijing in an unassailable negotiating position.

2. Pharmaceutical Sector (APIs). Global reliance on China for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and generic drugs exposes the West to deep vulnerability in health sovereignty. Any forced interruption of the supply chain in this sector would represent a direct threat to national security and public health, an unacceptable cost for any power.

3. Agricultural Commodities (Soy, etc.). Although China is a buyer, its ability to target or halt massive purchases of products like soy from the United States allows it to surgically strike key agricultural states (the Farm Belt), directly influencing American domestic political dynamics and acting as a powerful tool of indirect lobbying.

These levers prove that Chinese economic power and its interconnectedness with Western economies cannot be eliminated except through a full-scale military war, an option that, due to the incalculable human and economic costs, is discarded by the global decision-making elites. The truce, in this sense, is the acknowledgement of the impossibility of peaceful decoupling.

The "Fifth Column" and the Western Neoliberal Infiltration

A crucial element that has favored Beijing's rise and resilience is its infiltration into the very core of Western democracy, fostered by neoliberalism and the obsessive pursuit of profit.

A. The Power of Multinationals and Structural Lobbying

American multinationals that have long relocated production to China (massive offshoring), such such as Apple and the vast ecosystem of suppliers connected to it, essentially act as a "fifth column" within the U.S. political and economic system. These capitalist giants, whose interests are inextricably linked to the stability of the Beijing regime and access to its market and labor, exert an enormous weight in American economic policy. Their lobbying pressures, aimed at preventing commercial escalation and ensuring the fluidity of supply chains, condition political choices, limiting the federal government's freedom of action and dampening the willingness to impose harsher sanctions. This dynamic transforms interdependence into a structural vulnerability for American democracy.

B. The Issue of Compliance and Historical Violations

The context of the Busan truce must be analyzed in light of Beijing's historical non-compliance with agreements. We reiterate that China has never fully respected the pacts, a trend that has allowed for the construction of its current power. Key examples include:

• Entry into the WTO (2001). Beijing systematically disregarded promises of transparency, reciprocity, and intellectual property protection, exploiting the open global market without liberalizing its own internal system as promised.

• Cyber Theft and Patents. Despite the agreement reached with the Obama administration to curb the systematic cyber theft of American industrial property and patents (often called the largest wealth heist in history), industrial espionage operations, while changing form, have never fully ceased.

Beijing built its economic and commercial power "from nothing" partly thanks to technological theft, a strategy that places it today in a phase of profound transformation. The truce, by overlooking this historical deficit of trust, heightens the paradox of the legitimization granted to an actor operating outside established norms.

IV. Technological Hegemony and Geoeconomic Digital Power

The domain of technology is not merely a field of competition but the true theater of global hegemony. The Chinese reaction to the chip war, far from being a sign of weakness, has demonstrated that Xi is capable of leading China on an accelerated path toward self-sufficiency and quality innovation.

A. The Dual Transformation and the Five-Year Plan

China is at a critical juncture: to truly sit as an equal with the U.S. in the G2, it must transform its domestic industry from a model based on quantity and copying to one based on autonomous, quality innovation. The 14th Five-Year Plan (and the strategic blueprint of the 15th Five-Year Plan mentioned by the user) is the manifesto for this transformation, with explicit goals of technological sovereignty (especially in semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence, and quantum computing) and the consolidation of geoeconomic digital power.

The concept of geoeconomic digital power refers to Beijing's ability to exert global influence not only through the export of goods but through control of digital infrastructure (5G, submarine cables), data management, and the dissemination of surveillance technologies (digital totalitarianism). The subordination of private Chinese actors to the CCP makes this technology a direct extension of state power, in sharp contrast to the Western governance model. The article "In Cina i 'diritti sovrani' sopprimono i diritti umani" (In China 'sovereign rights' suppress human rights, from the volume's summary) illustrates how state control over technology is functional to the regime's maintenance, a systemic threat to individual liberties.

B. The Chip Competition and Taiwan as a "Silicon Shield"

The chip war revealed the crucial reliance of the United States on Taiwan for the supply of high-end semiconductors. This dependence is not only commercial but has vital importance for the American defense industry and the maintenance of its technological-military advantage. Taiwan, with its microelectronics industry (led by TSMC), acts as a "silicon shield."

The G2 can be interpreted as an American attempt to buy time. The U.S. cannot afford a war over Taiwan that would destroy the island's production capacity, nor can it accept Chinese control. The truce might represent the first step towards a sort of division of spheres of influence that implies maintaining the status quo on Taiwan, conditional on the completion of domestic chip supply chains in the U.S. Until then, Taiwan remains the supreme geoeconomic asset and the red line for Washington.

The G2 Hypothesis: Partitioning Spheres of Influence and Global Subordination

The nature of the truce and the acknowledgment of parity suggest that the competition for global hegemony is now confined to the G2, a new bipolarism that does not reflect ideological alignment (as in the Cold War) but a pragmatic convergence on power management.

A. Geostrategic Compromise and Hot Spots

The hypothesis that the truce could lead to a tacit division of spheres of influence is plausible, though not explicit:

1. South China Sea: The United States might (or may have to) concede regional preeminence to Beijing, provided international freedom of navigation is guaranteed. Any acknowledgment, even implicit, of Chinese claims would be a strategic victory for Xi.

2. Indo-Pacific and Taiwan: As discussed, Taiwan remains the crucial exception. However, the "G2" concept could lead to a tacit agreement of non-belligerence and mutual containment, granting Beijing broader influence over continental Asia in exchange for maritime stability.

B. The Cost for Other Global Actors: Subordination

If the G2 is consolidated, the effect on the rest of the world is subordination. European nations, Japan, India, and emerging actors would find themselves squeezed between the two orbits, forced into difficult choices and limited in their sovereignty. The G2 establishes that China and the USA will divide the world, or at least the rules of the game, and everyone else will be subordinate. The European Union, fragmented and lacking a true common foreign and defense policy, risks becoming a mere economic platform upon which the two giants project their technological and normative influence.

This situation represents the definitive erosion of the geopolitical pillars built after World War II, sanctioning the decline of rules-based multilateralism and the advent of a system dominated by binary power.

VI. Conclusions: Xi's Totalitarianism and the Doubtful New World Order

The analysis of the Busan summit and its structural implications suggests that the world is moving irreversibly towards a Sino-American bipolarism. This dynamic does not stem from a commonality of values but from the strategic necessity of managing an economic and technological power that the West is no longer able to counter or eliminate except through total conflict.

The commercial truce is more than an economic agreement; it is a geopolitical acknowledgment. By accepting China as an equal, Trump has conferred political legitimacy on Xi Jinping's regime, bolstering his totalitarian vision and his will to power on a global scale. The danger is not merely economic supremacy, but the reinforcement of an illiberal model that utilizes geoeconomic digital power and internal repression (under the doctrine of "sovereign rights") as the foundation of its international projection.

The title of the volume La Cina di Xi Jinping: Verso un nuovo ordine mondiale sinocentrico? perfectly encapsulates our doubtful conclusion: coexistence within the G2 is a tactical truce that could consolidate Beijing's hegemony and lead to the subordination of other nations. The world finds itself in the limbo of a new order where stability is bought at the price of a value compromise, and where competition between the two powers is managed by "helmsmen" who possess the power to decide the fate of the planet.