The Complete Primer: From Iran to China and the guide to the Trump-Xi Summit
Chris Rollins
@ThePowerAudit
·
20h
Energy, Rare Earths, and the Strategic Competition That Explains Everything Happening in Beijing This Week
Disclaimer: This is the companion piece to "The Forty-Seven Years' War," published May 10. That article told the vertical story of Iran. This one tells the horizontal story. It is about China. A note on sourcing: I served with 1st Special Forces Group and spoke Mandarin Chinese at a 1+/1+ proficiency (OR lack thereof.) Nothing in this article is drawn from any classified information while with 1st Group. Everything here comes from open-source research, publicly available data, and my own analysis. The timeline ends on Tuesday, May 12. Estimated read time: 55 minutes.
Chris Rollins (@ThePowerAudit) | 12 May 2026
On the evening of May 13, 2026, Donald Trump will step off Air Force One in Beijing for the first visit by an American president to China in nearly a decade.
He is bringing Boeing's CEO, Apple's Tim Cook, and Elon Musk. The Chinese will likely announce a Boeing order. They did the same in 2017. That one never materialized. Both sides will likely announce a "Board of Trade" and a "Board of Investment." There will be photographs and state dinners and talk of cooperation. The usual choreography.
None of that is the point.
The point is what Trump carries in his briefcase that no camera will photograph: the strongest American negotiating position against China since Nixon went to Beijing in 1972. The reason he holds that position has almost nothing to do with tariffs, semiconductors, or the South China Sea.
It has to do with a strait. Two straits, actually. One is on fire right now. The other is the one that keeps the Chinese Communist Party awake at night.
To understand why, you have to understand what the Iran war was actually about.
I. The Number That Explains Everything
There is a single fact that most coverage of the Iran war buries in the background, and it is the most important fact in the entire conflict:
China buys 80 to 90 percent of every barrel Iran exports.
Kpler's 2025 average was 1.38 million barrels per day. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission placed it as high as 1.5 million. At roughly 13 percent of China's total crude imports, this is less a marginal trade and more a discount feedstock that keeps Shandong's independent refineries profitable and gives Chinese state-owned enterprises cover from the political risk of buying sanctioned oil openly.
The accounting hides the scale. China officially reported $9.96 billion in total bilateral trade with Iran in 2025. That number excludes roughly $31.2 billion in unreported Iranian crude exports to China, tracked by the Tehran Bureau and UANI's tanker-monitoring project. Add the crude back in, and oil alone is over 75 percent of total bilateral economic activity. Beijing calls this a strategic partnership. The trade data describes something closer to a commodity extraction arrangement with a flag on it.
The framework on paper is the March 2021 China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. A 25-year agreement. A headline figure of $400 billion in Chinese investment pledged in exchange for stable discounted crude. Almost none of the $400 billion has actually materialized. Sanctions kept Chinese state banks and Belt and Road capital out. What the agreement did produce was a political commitment: Iran would settle in yuan, integrate with CIPS (China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, the parallel rail to SWIFT), and join the BRICS-led effort (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and newer members including Iran) to build alternatives to the dollar.
A word on SWIFT, because it matters for everything that follows. SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a messaging network based in Belgium that connects over 11,000 financial institutions across 200 countries. It does not move money. It sends the secure messages that tell banks where to move money. Nearly every international wire transfer, trade settlement, and cross-border payment runs through SWIFT, and almost all of it clears in U.S. dollars through correspondent banks in New York. This is the mechanism that gives Washington its financial power. When the U.S. cuts a country or a bank off from SWIFT, that entity loses the ability to conduct international business. Iran was cut off in 2012 and again in 2018. Russia's largest banks were cut off in 2022. The threat of SWIFT disconnection is the financial equivalent of a naval blockade, and it is the reason China built CIPS: a backup system that can settle transactions in yuan without touching SWIFT or the dollar. Whether CIPS can actually replace SWIFT at scale is one of the central questions of this decade. For now, it handles a fraction of SWIFT's volume. But for sanctioned trade between China and Iran, it works well enough.
Thank you. This does, indeed, reveal a very large piece of the puzzle. SWIFT and CIPS. The fulcrum and I pray part of our leverage is china recalling every, single spy and relinquishing all US owned land.
Holy cow! What a comprehensive article, thanks for sharing it! While we are stressing about immigrants, gas prices, etc., Trump and his admin are busy securing the whole world to our advantage. The long term strategic thinking described here is astounding. Very long article, but worth the read for an overview of what is happening globally.
Try this link instead: https://x.com/ThePowerAudit/status/2054281337096286230
This worked for me when the other link wouldn't
Can't open it. Must be X member.
The Complete Primer: From Iran to China and the guide to the Trump-Xi Summit
Chris Rollins @ThePowerAudit · 20h Energy, Rare Earths, and the Strategic Competition That Explains Everything Happening in Beijing This Week
Disclaimer: This is the companion piece to "The Forty-Seven Years' War," published May 10. That article told the vertical story of Iran. This one tells the horizontal story. It is about China. A note on sourcing: I served with 1st Special Forces Group and spoke Mandarin Chinese at a 1+/1+ proficiency (OR lack thereof.) Nothing in this article is drawn from any classified information while with 1st Group. Everything here comes from open-source research, publicly available data, and my own analysis. The timeline ends on Tuesday, May 12. Estimated read time: 55 minutes. Chris Rollins (@ThePowerAudit) | 12 May 2026 On the evening of May 13, 2026, Donald Trump will step off Air Force One in Beijing for the first visit by an American president to China in nearly a decade. He is bringing Boeing's CEO, Apple's Tim Cook, and Elon Musk. The Chinese will likely announce a Boeing order. They did the same in 2017. That one never materialized. Both sides will likely announce a "Board of Trade" and a "Board of Investment." There will be photographs and state dinners and talk of cooperation. The usual choreography. None of that is the point. The point is what Trump carries in his briefcase that no camera will photograph: the strongest American negotiating position against China since Nixon went to Beijing in 1972. The reason he holds that position has almost nothing to do with tariffs, semiconductors, or the South China Sea. It has to do with a strait. Two straits, actually. One is on fire right now. The other is the one that keeps the Chinese Communist Party awake at night. To understand why, you have to understand what the Iran war was actually about. I. The Number That Explains Everything
There is a single fact that most coverage of the Iran war buries in the background, and it is the most important fact in the entire conflict: China buys 80 to 90 percent of every barrel Iran exports. Kpler's 2025 average was 1.38 million barrels per day. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission placed it as high as 1.5 million. At roughly 13 percent of China's total crude imports, this is less a marginal trade and more a discount feedstock that keeps Shandong's independent refineries profitable and gives Chinese state-owned enterprises cover from the political risk of buying sanctioned oil openly. The accounting hides the scale. China officially reported $9.96 billion in total bilateral trade with Iran in 2025. That number excludes roughly $31.2 billion in unreported Iranian crude exports to China, tracked by the Tehran Bureau and UANI's tanker-monitoring project. Add the crude back in, and oil alone is over 75 percent of total bilateral economic activity. Beijing calls this a strategic partnership. The trade data describes something closer to a commodity extraction arrangement with a flag on it. The framework on paper is the March 2021 China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. A 25-year agreement. A headline figure of $400 billion in Chinese investment pledged in exchange for stable discounted crude. Almost none of the $400 billion has actually materialized. Sanctions kept Chinese state banks and Belt and Road capital out. What the agreement did produce was a political commitment: Iran would settle in yuan, integrate with CIPS (China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, the parallel rail to SWIFT), and join the BRICS-led effort (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and newer members including Iran) to build alternatives to the dollar.
A word on SWIFT, because it matters for everything that follows. SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a messaging network based in Belgium that connects over 11,000 financial institutions across 200 countries. It does not move money. It sends the secure messages that tell banks where to move money. Nearly every international wire transfer, trade settlement, and cross-border payment runs through SWIFT, and almost all of it clears in U.S. dollars through correspondent banks in New York. This is the mechanism that gives Washington its financial power. When the U.S. cuts a country or a bank off from SWIFT, that entity loses the ability to conduct international business. Iran was cut off in 2012 and again in 2018. Russia's largest banks were cut off in 2022. The threat of SWIFT disconnection is the financial equivalent of a naval blockade, and it is the reason China built CIPS: a backup system that can settle transactions in yuan without touching SWIFT or the dollar. Whether CIPS can actually replace SWIFT at scale is one of the central questions of this decade. For now, it handles a fraction of SWIFT's volume. But for sanctioned trade between China and Iran, it works well enough.
Thank you. This does, indeed, reveal a very large piece of the puzzle. SWIFT and CIPS. The fulcrum and I pray part of our leverage is china recalling every, single spy and relinquishing all US owned land.
Works for me just fine. No sign in. Just close the pop up
Holy cow! What a comprehensive article, thanks for sharing it! While we are stressing about immigrants, gas prices, etc., Trump and his admin are busy securing the whole world to our advantage. The long term strategic thinking described here is astounding. Very long article, but worth the read for an overview of what is happening globally.
Excellent article!