U.S, May 22 -- There is an old diplomatic maxim that the real deals at a summit are never the ones announced at the podium. Donald Trump's three-day sojourn to Beijing in mid-May, flanked by Silicon Valley's most powerful CEOs and a Secretary of Defense whose very inclusion broke decades of protocol, was a masterclass in that principle.

What was billed as a trade offensive ended as something far more consequential: a quiet reordering of global power dressed up in the language of commerce.

Two threads run through this visit that deserve far more attention than the headline-friendly optics of Elon Musk and Jensen Huang clinking glasses in Zhongnanhai. The first is the emergence of China as the world's pre-eminent capital allocator, not a ...