Trump Strong in Beijing — Sixteen Months of Receipts
リアクション
2026年05月13日
The conventional wisdom heading into the May 14–15 Trump-Xi summit in
Beijing is that the President is walking into negotiations from a
weakened position. The Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy
magazine, and Bloomberg are running it as the consensus take. The
operational record over the last sixteen months argues the opposite —
and it isn't close.
Iranian crude exports to China fell from 1.85 million barrels per day
in March to 567,000 barrels per day after the United States Navy
blockaded Iranian ports — a 70% drop in weeks. The U.S. has been
seizing Iranian oil tankers worldwide. In April 2026, Treasury
sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical, a major Chinese teapot refiner. On
May 11, OFAC added twelve more entities in the Iran-China oil network.
Since January 2025, the Department of Justice has rolled up PRC
operations on American soil at a pace not seen in twenty years —
APT27 cyber operators indicted; multiple Chinese researchers arrested
at U.S. universities and airports smuggling biological materials,
including a Pentagon-designated agroterrorism pathogen; Xu Zewei
extradited from Italy as a Ministry of State Security cyber
contractor; three separate Chinese nationals arrested for unlawfully
photographing Whiteman Air Force Base, Offutt Air Force Base, and a
U.S. Navy base; Chenguang Gong pleading guilty to stealing 3,600
files on U.S. missile launch and detection technology; Chinese money
laundering organizations rolled up under Operation Take Back America;
Brother Wang extradited from Mexico; and on May 11, 2026 — forty-eight
hours before wheels-down in Beijing — the Democratic mayor of Arcadia,
California, agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of
the People's Republic of China.
The administration has been changing the rules in parallel. In
February 2025, the President signed an executive order tightening
restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States. In July,
the Secretaries of Defense, Agriculture, Homeland Security, and the
Attorney General announced the National Farm Security Action Plan —
a coordinated federal effort to ban Chinese nationals from purchasing
American farmland, with special enforcement near military
installations, and to claw back what Beijing has already bought. And
last month, Charles Lieber — the convicted former chair of the
Harvard chemistry department — formally moved to China to staff a
brain-computer interface lab in Shenzhen.
Xi has real leverage. He still dominates the rare-earth supply chain
and supplies critical American industries from automotive to medical.
He will price that leverage at the table. He is also looking at a
sixteen-month record where DOJ rolled up his money launderers, his
pathogen smugglers, his cyber spies, his missile-tech thieves, his
propaganda assets, his elected officials, and the tourists with the
cameras — while the administration shut his nationals out of the land
around our military bases. The op-ed pages say the President walked
into Beijing to plead. Read the record. The President walked in to
collect.
Eric Garland is an intelligence analyst personally sanctioned by the
Russian Federation in May 2022 for his work on Russian intelligence
operations. He is the author of the 2016 "Game Theory" thread, named
by The New York Times as one of the 25 most important tweets in
history.
🔔 Subscribe for daily geopolitical intelligence analysis.
📝 Substack: ericgarland.substack.com
🎤 Book Eric to speak: Chartwell Speakers — https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/eric-garland/
SOURCES
U.S. Department of Justice — Multiple 2025–2026 press releases (APT27 indictments, Xu Zewei extradition, biological-materials smuggling arrests at U.S. universities, Whiteman/Offutt/Navy base photography arrests, Chenguang Gong missile-tech theft, Operation Take Back America, U.S. v. Eileen Wang)
U.S. Department of the Treasury / OFAC — Iran-China oil sanctions, April and 11 May 2026
The White House — Executive Order restricting Chinese investment in the United States, 24 February 2025
U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security — National Farm Security Action Plan, July 2025
Nature — "Convicted U.S. chemist Charles Lieber moves to Chinese university," April 2026
Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy, Bloomberg — pre-summit consensus commentary, May 2026
Beijing is that the President is walking into negotiations from a
weakened position. The Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy
magazine, and Bloomberg are running it as the consensus take. The
operational record over the last sixteen months argues the opposite —
and it isn't close.
Iranian crude exports to China fell from 1.85 million barrels per day
in March to 567,000 barrels per day after the United States Navy
blockaded Iranian ports — a 70% drop in weeks. The U.S. has been
seizing Iranian oil tankers worldwide. In April 2026, Treasury
sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical, a major Chinese teapot refiner. On
May 11, OFAC added twelve more entities in the Iran-China oil network.
Since January 2025, the Department of Justice has rolled up PRC
operations on American soil at a pace not seen in twenty years —
APT27 cyber operators indicted; multiple Chinese researchers arrested
at U.S. universities and airports smuggling biological materials,
including a Pentagon-designated agroterrorism pathogen; Xu Zewei
extradited from Italy as a Ministry of State Security cyber
contractor; three separate Chinese nationals arrested for unlawfully
photographing Whiteman Air Force Base, Offutt Air Force Base, and a
U.S. Navy base; Chenguang Gong pleading guilty to stealing 3,600
files on U.S. missile launch and detection technology; Chinese money
laundering organizations rolled up under Operation Take Back America;
Brother Wang extradited from Mexico; and on May 11, 2026 — forty-eight
hours before wheels-down in Beijing — the Democratic mayor of Arcadia,
California, agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of
the People's Republic of China.
The administration has been changing the rules in parallel. In
February 2025, the President signed an executive order tightening
restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States. In July,
the Secretaries of Defense, Agriculture, Homeland Security, and the
Attorney General announced the National Farm Security Action Plan —
a coordinated federal effort to ban Chinese nationals from purchasing
American farmland, with special enforcement near military
installations, and to claw back what Beijing has already bought. And
last month, Charles Lieber — the convicted former chair of the
Harvard chemistry department — formally moved to China to staff a
brain-computer interface lab in Shenzhen.
Xi has real leverage. He still dominates the rare-earth supply chain
and supplies critical American industries from automotive to medical.
He will price that leverage at the table. He is also looking at a
sixteen-month record where DOJ rolled up his money launderers, his
pathogen smugglers, his cyber spies, his missile-tech thieves, his
propaganda assets, his elected officials, and the tourists with the
cameras — while the administration shut his nationals out of the land
around our military bases. The op-ed pages say the President walked
into Beijing to plead. Read the record. The President walked in to
collect.
Eric Garland is an intelligence analyst personally sanctioned by the
Russian Federation in May 2022 for his work on Russian intelligence
operations. He is the author of the 2016 "Game Theory" thread, named
by The New York Times as one of the 25 most important tweets in
history.
🔔 Subscribe for daily geopolitical intelligence analysis.
📝 Substack: ericgarland.substack.com
🎤 Book Eric to speak: Chartwell Speakers — https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/eric-garland/
SOURCES
U.S. Department of Justice — Multiple 2025–2026 press releases (APT27 indictments, Xu Zewei extradition, biological-materials smuggling arrests at U.S. universities, Whiteman/Offutt/Navy base photography arrests, Chenguang Gong missile-tech theft, Operation Take Back America, U.S. v. Eileen Wang)
U.S. Department of the Treasury / OFAC — Iran-China oil sanctions, April and 11 May 2026
The White House — Executive Order restricting Chinese investment in the United States, 24 February 2025
U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security — National Farm Security Action Plan, July 2025
Nature — "Convicted U.S. chemist Charles Lieber moves to Chinese university," April 2026
Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy, Bloomberg — pre-summit consensus commentary, May 2026
