What can Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping possibly talk about for five days? What are they cooking up—many in the mainstream press are asking. The “partnership without limits” between the two is well known, yet few grasp the Shanghai Spirit animating the gathering that opened today in Tianjing. Twenty-six heads of state and government are in northern China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, whose members include China, India, Russia, and other emerging states. Together they represent 42 percent of the world’s population and nearly a third of global trade.

As the United States undertakes a “limitless disengagement” from Europe—part of Donald Trump’s plan to make European states shoulder their own security—and as NATO members throw themselves without limits into an arms buildup, the summit of powers alternative to the great but aging, over-armored collective West looks like more than the play of tigers roused from sleep.

Amid the chilliest U.S.–EU climate since the Cold War, the SCO—launched by China with a handful of former Soviet states—has, in recent years, become an expanding force thanks to Xi Jinping’s vision and Vladimir Putin’s economic–military interests. As geopolitical fissures widen across the so-called Global South, Beijing likes to describe the SCO as “a lighthouse shining in troubled waters.”

The Shanghai Spirit stands opposite to the spirit of the European Union. While a two-speed mentality persists among the EU’s 27, China’s sphere emphasizes equality, common interests, and cooperation. Among SCO states there is no competition, the line goes; Chinese banks finance weaker economies, and barter or debt concessions are acceptable currency.

According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Wood Snake, a time full of opportunity and transformation, when those guided by the reptilian spirit think strategically and adapt to change. Astrologers say the energy of 2025 stimulates creativity and intuition. With the snake’s calm and intelligence, the Chinese are urged to pursue their objectives with resolve and clarity.

The year is also an anniversary. Beijing plans a military parade the likes of which “the earth has not seen,” organizers say, marking 80 years since the defeat of Japan, a country that remains a formidable rival.

Back to the Xi–Putin meeting: the Kremlin leader will present his new geopolitical map of the world. It is increasingly clear that Anchorage set the stage for a new division of the globe. Even if it was no Yalta, Putin and Trump were working the maps across the table. Judging by the body language at the end, the White House signaled that bargaining with Moscow was no easy task. This new division will surely be the central theme between Putin and Xi. The SCO has announced discussion of a ten-year development plan for its members.

China’s global importance grows as fissures deepen and the United States becomes more unpredictable under Donald Trump.

In contrast to the Shanghai Spirit, the G7 might like to revive the formula of the “Eight-Nation Alliance” from the Qing era, when Anglo-American troops marched through China’s great cities to “protect Christian missionaries.” That cannot happen today.

The “Jinping dynasty” has no need to summon the Boxer Rebellion to preserve state integrity.

Two centuries ago, Napoleon warned: “Let China sleep; for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Two centuries on, Beijing seeks—in silence—to recompose its Great Empire, blowing kisses to emerging powers.

Only the naïve can believe the Great Dragon will ignite a war of expansion to reclaim what it considers rightfully its own. Only those who have not studied Confucian thought imagine the Chinese snake lunging for the throat at the first bout of nerves. Xi Jinping, say those close to him, has the patience of a snake.

China’s military doctrine today (with the largest army in the world, 1.4 million soldiers) is not a warfaring doctrine of expansion. Any geostrategist with their wits about them knows this.

Under its current leadership, China seeks to reclaim historic territories peacefully—through cultural seduction laced with planned lines of economic pressure—aiming to edge not only America but also Japan out of the Far East. In Chinese public education, students are taught about the murderous legacy of the samurai.

To be a model of prosperity, China aims to surpass the United States in purchasing power parity; power is not measured by GDP in the liberal, internationalist sense.

The very name “China” comes from Zhōngguó—中国—the “Middle Kingdom,” not in the sense consecrated by liberal parlance, but in the sense of everything between heaven and earth.

The Jinping administration shows the power and determination of an imperial revival, if you study the “steel soul” profile.

Vladimir Putin seems friskier than ever. He feels he has reconquered America. From the other direction, the Trump–Putin dialogue looks like an undeserved concession to the Kremlin. The American president is a long-haul haggler; he has laid out the wares and waits. Putin, too, is endowed with patience. The similarity between Trump and Putin is that neither is naïve—except that the latter enjoys a “friendship without limits” with Trump’s principal rival.

A three-power equation is non-negotiable. Each has its place on the planet.

The very name “China” comes from Zhōngguó—中国—the “Middle Kingdom,” not in the sense consecrated by liberal parlance, but in the sense of everything between heaven and earth.

The Jinping administration shows the power and determination of an imperial revival, if you study the “steel soul” profile.

China does not seek to be a global superpower. It does not intend to eclipse America’s Western hegemony. It seeks a gravitational axis in which regional powers cohabit. In fact and in law, Xi Jinping intends to restore to China the luster of its ancient empire.

Beijing does not imagine the autocratic domination the Soviet Union imposed on Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It proposes a collegial relationship—like teachers in the faculty lounge—where the school principal is primus inter pares.

Xi’s doctrine envisions an astral dependence of the former Asian tigers, their financial rays converging on a single bright sun. Emerging powers would delegate slices of sovereignty to coordinate Asia’s security under an astral, not hegemonic, power.

China’s manifest interest is to push the United States out of the South China Sea, the most vital commercial route for its development plans.

Geopoliticians note how Beijing, step by step, pulls states or blocs of states out of Washington’s wake. Party and state leadership court sustainable alliances with major Arab powers, conquer large swaths of Africa financially, and control a majority of companies in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan—resource-rich Central Asian countries that once belonged to the USSR and were long courted by Wall Street investors.

The Chinese Communist Party has crafted a defense doctrine centered on a non-war strategy for expelling foreigners from the interior of the vast state and pushing them away from its historical sphere of influence. In practice, the goal is to send American cruisers beyond any position from which they could be dangerous. The United States seems not to grasp the scale of the Chinese snake.

The liberal universe, convinced of its unique role in shaping prosperity, does not notice how, in silence, the Great Empire is reassembling along Confucian lines—in social harmony, at odds with the civilizational warfare of Western powers.

Ursula von der Leyen has begun her pro-war caroling across Europe. I still marvel at the persuasive power over younger generations who continue to believe that a third historic march on Moscow will succeed—after La Grande Armée lost its limbs in Moscow and on the retreat, and after the invincible Axis army fell prisoner at the gates of Stalingrad. The difference between a Chinese child and a European child is that the latter does not know the horrors of history, having been indoctrinated with “cancel culture” as a tool of progress.

Some are born foolish; others become so over time, as the madman with the bright eyes from my childhood city, Timișoara, used to prophesy.

By Marius Ghilezan