By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

China Turns Predictability Into Power

One of the greatest advantages the United States has over China has been its soft power - the ability to persuade other countries, particularly allies and partners, to go along with its wants without having to resort to coercion. For decades, other countries have made sacrifices on behalf of the United States because they believed they were better off working with Washington than Beijing in the long run. This was the ultimate win-win for the United States and its partners. Together, they prospered through collective defense, integrated markets, and coordinated action on common challenges, including dealing with China.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to put an end to much of that cooperation. The United States, once the bedrock of the international system, is now a major source of geopolitical instability. Trump launched a global trade war, slapping tariffs indiscriminately on allies and adversaries alike and bullying longtime partners. He ordered the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, raising fears that sovereign rules no longer apply, and has repeatedly threatened to seize allied territories.

These moves have caused many U.S. partners and allies to turn to China as an alternative. But China is not rushing to exploit the rupture in the United States’ relationships. Its approach hasn’t changed since Trump began his second term. Beijing is doing what it always has: trying to bring other countries in line with its own interests by deploying carrots and sticks. In fact, China is nearly as transactional as the Trump administration is. What sets Beijing apart, however, is its predictability, which offers countries a clear picture of how they might work with China even if it is less appealing than what the United States could offer. If the United States continues its capricious behavior toward the rest of the world, China won’t need to do anything differently, yet will still profit from the splintering of Washington’s network of allies and partners.

 

Continental Drift

Canada, one of the United States’ closest allies, has long partnered with its neighbor to the south. Ottawa has repeatedly taken heat from Beijing for standing with the United States on issues related to China. In 2018, for instance, Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, and the daughter of its enigmatic founder, at the request of the United States under a mutual extradition treaty over alleged U.S. sanctions violations. The consequences for Canada were swift and severe. China retaliated by banning imports of Canadian pork and beef for months and Canadian canola for three years. China froze diplomatic relations with Canada, which had previously been on an upward trajectory. And most painfully, Chinese authorities detained two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, for nearly three years until Meng was allowed to return to China.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, January 2026

In 2024, Canada aligned itself again with Washington by joining the United States in applying a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. The Biden administration’s goal was to shield the North American auto industry from competition from Chinese companies. Canada took the brunt of Beijing’s retaliation, which included tariffs on $2.6 billion worth of Canadian exports, including crops, meat, and fish. Although Canada had its own reasons for detaining Meng and putting tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, it paid a high price for aligning with the United States on China.

When Trump was elected for a second time, it became clear to Ottawa that it would not be rewarded for its loyalty to the United States. As president-elect, Trump threatened to annex Canada and began derisively calling it the “51st state.” Once he took office, Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian goods and threatened to unravel deeply enmeshed North American supply chains built over decades of trust and economic partnership. Canadians were justifiably furious. In 2025, according to polling from the Pew Research Center, the share of Canadians with a favorable view of the United States fell to its lowest level since Pew surveys began collecting this measurement, in 2002. Canadians boycotted Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice. Many stopped traveling to the United States.

Leaders in Ottawa started pulling away from the United States, too. In January of this year, Mark Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to visit China in nearly a decade. While in Beijing, Carney announced that he had struck a deal with China to slash tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for lower tariffs on Canadian goods and visa-free travel for Canadians visiting China. Carney declared that Canada was “forging a new strategic partnership with China” and described Canada’s relationship with Beijing as “more predictable” than the one it has with Washington.

Canada is not alone in trying to improve ties with China. In December, French President Emmanuel Macron received a red-carpet welcome in China. In January, Lee Jae-myung became the first South Korean president to visit China in nearly seven years, and Keir Starmer became the first British prime minister to do so in eight years. These visits are not just symbolic. After years of making moves to “de-risk” from China, some U.S. allies are contemplating de-risking from the United States. They hope that China can help fill that gap.

 

Cold and Calculating

But anyone expecting a charm offensive by Beijing will be sorely disappointed. During the first Trump administration, many observers wondered whether Beijing would seize the opportunity to step into the breach left by U.S. volatility in global affairs. In 2017, Chinese leader Xi Jinping played into those hopes by making a sweeping speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in defense of globalization and multilateral institutions.

Yet Xi’s speech was followed by years of China’s so-called wolf warrior diplomacy, a confrontational and nationalistic approach to foreign policy in which Chinese diplomats were quick to criticize and retaliate against perceived slights. In 2020, China punished Australia with tariffs and import bans for calling for an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, China cut trade with Lithuania after the eastern European state allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius; Beijing, regarding the island as part of its territory, saw this as an affront to its sovereignty. That same year, China sanctioned a set of European individuals and organizations, including five members of the European Parliament, in response to EU sanctions on Chinese officials and entities suspected of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. This led to the demise of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a major trade deal aimed at mutually expanding market access and investment opportunities, which both sides had been negotiating for more than seven years.

Beijing engages in a coldly rational form of geopolitics. It tries to use incentives to influence the behavior of other countries to its advantage. Although all great powers do this to some extent, China is more narrowly transactional than most. For decades, the United States underwrote a wide range of global public goods from which it also benefited, such as security guarantees through alliance networks and the expansion of international trade. China’s approach, in contrast, tends to be tightly coupled to its own core economic and territorial interests.

As China’s economy has developed, the benefits Beijing can offer have become more compelling. It can reward countries for behavior it wants to promote - such as endorsing its stance on Taiwan or staying quiet about repression in Xinjiang - with large-scale infrastructure projects backed by Chinese state financing. It can also encourage Chinese companies to set up factories in other countries. This creates local manufacturing jobs and helps countries build up their domestic industries, particularly in clean technology. Chinese firms have, for instance, set up plants for electric cars in Brazil and for batteries in Hungary. China can also leverage its position as the world’s second-largest importer to buy more goods, particularly agricultural products or raw materials, from countries that do its bidding.

China’s ability to coerce other countries has also grown in line with its increasing economic heft. Gone are the days when all China could do was ban imports or limit the flow of Chinese tourists to a country that had caused it offense. Now, it can use its chokehold over important supply chains to get what it wants. Beijing processes over 90 percent of the world’s rare-earth elements, which countries around the world need for advanced manufacturing. As Beijing and Washington were escalating a trade war with each other in 2025, China restricted the sale of rare-earth elements to the United States and much of the rest of the world, causing Trump to back down on his highest tariff demands. China has also wielded its supply of microchips to advance its interests. In September, the Dutch government seized control of Nexperia, a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in the Netherlands, out of fear that its Chinese owner was undermining the company’s European operations. In reprisal, China cut Europe off from a supply of automotive chips, leading the Dutch government to reverse course.

 

A Steady Hand

In many ways, Beijing’s approach to the world resembles Trump’s. Beijing is transactional, unsentimental, even ruthless, but also highly adaptable. It eschews lofty values for pragmatic dealmaking. The key difference is that, unlike the United States under Trump, China is predictable. Beijing makes what it wants abundantly clear. Chinese officials repeat the same set of redlines on issues such as Taiwan ad nauseam. Rewards or punishments doled out by Beijing are usually linked to concrete behavior. Whenever a U.S. arms deal with Taipei is struck or a U.S. leader visits Taiwan, for example, Beijing answers with another round of military exercises around the island. Beijing has essentially trained the world to anticipate its reactions.

In contrast, when Trump blusters, his specific demands are often unclear, and he is liable to move the goalposts later. Consider the case of South Korea. Last October, it pledged to invest $350 billion in the United States as part of a wider trade agreement. In January, however, Seoul was blindsided with new U.S. tariffs because, in the eyes of the Trump administration, it had failed to make good on the deal fast enough.

China offers the world predictability, not a more generous alternative to U.S. leadership. China can provide U.S. allies with investment, access to its markets, and help improve the competitiveness of certain industries, such as electric vehicle manufacturing. Beijing, for its part, is hoping to sell more Chinese products overseas and secure supplies of certain technologies, such as components for its semiconductor industry, while keeping other countries from meddling in what it regards as its internal affairs, including Taiwan. A lack of trust and shared values constrains the scope and depth of any partnership. But China and longtime U.S. allies could realistically forge new trade and supply chain networks that might leave out the United States.

Beijing is not scrambling to take advantage of Trump’s chaos because it does not need to. It can take the same tack it always has: cooperating when possible and retaliating when necessary, always with an eye to its own national interests. It is ultimately Trump who is doing the heavy lifting of shattering trust in the United States and pushing the world into China’s arms. The United States needs to work hard to regain the trust of its allies or risk forfeiting its most powerful advantage - soft power - over China.

 

 

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