By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
China Today And Tomorrow
By now, Chinese
President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to
dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as
“Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar
off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology.
In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned
by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values
of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no
longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.
To hear Xi tell it,
this world is within reach. At the Central Conference on Work Relating to
Foreign Affairs last December, he boasted that Beijing was (in the words of a
government press release) a “confident, self-reliant, open and inclusive major
country,” one that had created the world’s “largest platform for international
cooperation” and led the way in “reforming the international system.” He
asserted that his conception for the global order—a “community with a shared
future for mankind”—had evolved from a “Chinese initiative” to an
“international consensus,” to be realized through the implementation of four
Chinese programs: the Belt and Road
Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security
Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative.
Outside China,
such brash, self-congratulatory proclamations are generally disregarded or
dismissed—including by American officials, who have tended to discount the
appeal of Beijing’s strategy. It is easy to see why: a large number of China’s
plans appear to be failing or backfiring. Many of China’s neighbors are drawing
closer to Washington, and its economy is faltering. The country’s
confrontational “Wolf Warrior” style of diplomacy may have pleased Xi, but it
won China few friends overseas. Polls indicate that Beijing is broadly
unpopular worldwide: A 2023 Pew Research Center study, for example, surveyed
attitudes toward China and the United States in 24 countries on six continents.
It found that only 28 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of
Beijing, and just 23 percent said China contributes to global peace. Nearly 60
percent of respondents, by contrast, had a positive view of the United States,
and 61 percent said Washington contributes to peace and stability.
But Xi’s vision is
far more formidable than it seems. China’s proposals would give power to the
many countries that have been frustrated and sidelined by the present order,
but it would still afford the states Washington currently favors valuable
international roles. Beijing’s initiatives are backed by a comprehensive,
well-resourced, and disciplined operational strategy—one that features outreach
to governments and people in seemingly every country. These techniques have
gained Beijing's newfound support, particularly in some multilateral
organizations and from non-democracies. China is succeeding in making itself an
agent of welcome change while portraying the United States as
the defender of a status quo that few particularly like.
Rather than
dismissing Beijing’s playbook, U.S. policymakers should learn from it. To win
what will be a long-term competition, the United States must seize the mantle
of change that China has claimed. Washington needs to articulate and push
forward its vision for a transformed international system and the U.S. role
within that system—one that is inclusive of countries at different economic
levels and with different political systems. Like China, the United States
needs to invest deeply in the technological, military, and diplomatic
foundations that enable both security at home and leadership abroad. Yet as the
country commits to that competition, U.S. policymakers must understand that
near-term stabilization of the bilateral relationship advances rather than
hinders ultimate U.S. objectives. They should build on last year’s summit
between President Joe Biden and Xi, curtailing inflammatory anti-Chinese
rhetoric and creating a more functional diplomatic relationship. That way, the
United States can focus on the more important task: winning the long-term game.
I Can See Clearly Now
Beijing’s playbook
begins with a well-defined vision of a transformed world order. The Chinese
government wants a system built not just on multipolarity but also on absolute
sovereignty; security rooted in international consensus and the UN Charter;
state-determined human rights based on each country’s circumstances;
development as the “master key” to all solutions; the end of U.S. dollar
dominance; and a pledge to leave no country and no one behind. This vision, in
Beijing’s telling, stands in stark contrast to the system the United States
supports. In a 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed
Washington was “clinging to the Cold War mentality” and “piecing together small
blocs through its alliance system” to “create division in the region, stoke
confrontation and undermine peace.” The United States, the report continued,
interferes “in the internal affairs of other countries,” uses the dollar’s
status as the international reserve currency to coerce “other countries into
serving America’s political and economic strategy,” and seeks to “deter other
countries’ scientific, technological and economic development.” Finally, the
ministry argued, the United States advances “cultural hegemony.” The “real
weapons in U.S. cultural expansion,” it declared, were the “production lines of
Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.”
Beijing claims that
its vision, by contrast, advances the interests of the majority of the world’s
people. China is center stage, but every country, including the United States,
has a role to play. At the 2024 Munich Security Conference in February, for example,
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and the United States are
responsible for global strategic stability. China and Russia, meanwhile,
represent the exploration of a new model for major-country relations. China and
the European Union are the world’s two major markets and civilizations and
should resist establishing blocs based on ideology. And China, as what Wang
called the “largest developing country,” promotes solidarity and cooperation
with the global South to increase its representation in global affairs.
China’s vision is
designed to be compelling for nearly all countries. Those that are not
democracies will have their choices validated. Those that are democracies but
not major powers will gain a greater voice in the international system and a
bigger share of the benefits of globalization. Even the major democratic powers
can reflect on whether the current system is adequate for meeting today’s
challenges or whether China has something better to offer. Observers in the
United States and elsewhere may roll their eyes at the grandiose phrasing, but
they do so at their peril: dissatisfaction with the current international order
has created a global audience more amenable to China’s proposals than might
have existed not long ago.
Four Pillars
For over two decades,
China has referred to a “new security concept” that embraces norms such as
common security, system diversity, and multipolarity. But in recent years,
China believes it has acquired the capability to advance its vision. To that
end, during his first decade in power, Xi released three distinct global
programs: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the Global Development
Initiative (GDI) in 2021, and the Global Security Initiative (GSI) in 2022.
Each contributes in some way to furthering both the transformation of the
international system and China’s centrality within it.
The BRI was initially
a platform for Beijing to address the hard infrastructure needs of emerging and
middle-income economies while making use of the Chinese construction industry’s
overcapacity. It has since expanded to become an engine of Beijing’s geostrategy:
embedding China’s digital, health, and clean technology ecosystems globally;
promoting its development model; expanding the reach of its military and police
forces; and advancing the use of its currency.
The GDI focuses on
global development more broadly, and it places China squarely in the driver’s
seat. Often working with the UN, it supports small-scale projects that address
poverty alleviation, digital connectivity, climate change, and health and food
security. It advances Beijing’s preference for economic development as a
foundation for human rights. One government document on the program, for
instance, accuses other countries of the “marginalization of development issues
by emphasizing human rights and democracy.”
Beijing has
positioned the GSI as a system for, as several Chinese scholars have put it,
providing “Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions” to promote “world peace and
tranquility.” In Xi’s words, the GSI advocates that countries “reject the Cold
War mentality, oppose unilateralism, and say no to group politics and bloc
confrontation.” The better course, according to Xi, entails building a
“balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture” that resolves
differences between countries through dialogue and consultation and that
upholds noninterference in others’ internal affairs. Behind the rhetoric, the
GSI is designed to end U.S. alliance systems, establish security as a
precondition for development, and promote absolute sovereignty and indivisible
security—or the notion that one state’s safety should not come at the expense
of others’. China and Russia have used this notion to justify Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine, suggesting that Moscow’s attack was needed to stop an expanding
NATO from threatening Russia.
But Xi’s strategy has
taken flight only in the past year, with the release of the Global Civilization
Initiative in May 2023. The GCI advances the idea that countries with different
civilizations and levels of development will have different political and
economic models. It asserts that states determine rights and that no one
country or model has a mandate to control the discourse of human rights. As
former Foreign Minister Qin Gang put it: “There is no one-size-fits-all model
in the protection of human rights.” Thus, Greece, with its philosophical and
cultural traditions and level of development, may have a different conception
and practice of human rights than China does. Both are equally valid.
Chinese leaders are
working hard to get countries and international institutions to buy into their
world vision. Their strategy is multilevel: striking deals with individual
countries, integrating their initiatives or components of them into
multilateral organizations, and embedding their proposals into global
governance institutions. The BRI is the model for this approach. Around 150
countries have become members of the program, which openly advocates for the
values that frame China’s vision—such as the primacy of development,
sovereignty, state-directed political rights, and common security. This
bilateral dealmaking has been accompanied by Chinese officials’ efforts to link
the BRI to other regional development efforts, such as the Master Plan on
Connectivity 2025 created by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN).
Xi at a summit in San Francisco, November 2023
China has also
successfully embedded the BRI in more than two dozen UN agencies and programs.
It has worked particularly diligently to align the BRI and the UN’s
high-profile 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UN Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, which has been headed by a Chinese official for
over a decade, produced a report on the BRI’s support for the agenda. The
report was partially funded by the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, which,
in turn, was initially established by a $200 million Chinese pledge. Such
support undoubtedly contributes to the enthusiasm many senior UN officials,
including the secretary-general, have shown for the BRI.
Progress on the GDI,
GSI, and GCI has understandably been more nascent. Thus far, only a handful of
leaders from countries such as Serbia, South Africa, South Sudan, and Venezuela
have offered rhetorical support for the GCI’s notion that the diversity of
civilizations and development paths should be respected—and by extension, for
China’s vision for an order that does not give primacy to the values of liberal
democracies.
The GDI has gained
more international support than the GCI. After Xi announced the project before
the UN General Assembly, China developed a “Group of Friends of the GDI” that
now boasts more than 70 countries. The GDI has advanced 50 projects and pledged
100,000 training opportunities for officials and experts from other countries
to travel to China and study its systems. These training opportunities are
designed to promote China’s advanced technologies, its management experiences,
and its development model. China has also succeeded in formally linking the GDI
to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and held GDI-related
seminars with the UN Office for South-South Cooperation. Beijing, in other
words, is weaving the program into the fabric of the international governmental
system.
The GSI has achieved
even greater rhetorical buy-in. According to China’s Foreign Ministry, more
than 100 countries, regional organizations, and international organizations
have supported the GSI, and Chinese officials have encouraged the BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), ASEAN, and the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization to adopt the concept. At the SCO’s September 2022
meeting, China advanced the GSI and received support from all the members
except India and Tajikistan.
Mass Appeal
China, in contrast
with the United States, invests heavily in the diplomatic resources necessary
to market its initiatives. It has more embassies and representative offices
around the globe than any other country, and Chinese diplomats frequently speak
at conferences and publish a stream of articles about China’s various
initiatives in local news outlets.
This diplomatic
apparatus is supported by equally sprawling Chinese media networks. China’s
international news network, CGTN, has twice as many overseas bureaus as CNN,
and Xinhua, the official Chinese news service, has over 180 bureaus globally.
Although Chinese media are often perceived in the West as little more than
crude propaganda tools, they can advance a positive image of China and its
leadership. In a study published in 2024, a team of international scholars
surveyed more than 6,000 respondents in 19 countries to see whether China or
the United States was more effective at selling its political and economic
model and its role as a global leader. At baseline, participants overwhelmingly
preferred the United States—83 percent of the interviewees preferred the U.S.
political model, 70 percent preferred the U.S. economic model, and 78 percent
preferred U.S. leadership. But when they were exposed to Chinese media
messaging—whether only to China’s or to Chinese and U.S. government messaging
in a head-to-head competition—participants preferred the Chinese models to
those of the United States.
Beijing also draws
heavily on the strength of state-owned companies and the country’s private
sector to promote its objectives. China’s technology firms, for instance, not
only provide digital connectivity to a variety of countries; they also enable
states to emulate elements of Beijing’s political model. According to Freedom
House, representatives from 36 countries have participated in Chinese
government training sessions on how to control media and information on the
Internet. In Zambia, adopting a “China way” for Internet governance—as a former
government minister described it—resulted in the imprisonment of several
Zambians for criticizing the president online. German Council on Foreign
Relations experts revealed that Huawei middleboxes blocked websites in 17
countries. The more states adopt Chinese norms and technologies that suppress
political and civil liberties, the more Beijing can undermine the current
international system’s embrace of universal human rights.
In addition, Xi has
enhanced the role of China’s security apparatus as a diplomatic tool. China’s
People’s Liberation Army is conducting exercises with a growing number of
countries and offering training to militaries throughout the developing world.
Last year, for example, China brought more than 100 senior military officials
from almost 50 African countries and the African Union to Beijing for the third
China-Africa Peace and Security Forum. China and the African participants
agreed to hold more joint military exercises, and they embraced the BRI and the
GSI, alongside the African Union’s Agenda 2063 development plan, as a way to
pursue economic development, promote peace, and ensure stability on the
continent. Together, these arrangements help create the collaborative security
system China wants: one that’s based on Beijing.
China has boosted its
strategy by being both patient and opportunistic. Beijing provides massive
resources for its initiatives, reassuring other countries of its long-term
support and enabling Chinese officials to act quickly when opportunities arise.
For example, Beijing first announced a version of the Health Silk Road in 2015,
but it garnered little attention. In 2020, however, China used the COVID-19
pandemic to breathe new life into the project. Xi delivered a major address
before the World Health Assembly promoting China as a hub for medical
resources. Beijing paired Chinese provinces with different countries and had
the former send personal protective equipment and medical professionals to the
latter. China also used the pandemic to push Chinese digital health
technologies and traditional Chinese medicine—a priority for Xi—as ways to
treat the virus.
More recently, China
has used Russia’s and the resulting Western sanctions to push de-dollarizing
the global economy. China’s trade with Russia is
now mostly settled in renminbi, and Beijing is working through the BRI and
multilateral organizations, such as the BRICS (which 34 countries have
expressed interest in joining), to advance de-dollarization. As Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said during a 2023 visit to China, “Every
night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar.
Why can’t we do trade based on our currencies?”
The Payoff
Beijing has made
progress in gaining rhetorical buy-in from other countries, as well as from UN
organizations and officials. But in terms of effecting actual change on the
ground, garnering support from other countries’ citizens, and influencing the
reform of international institutions, China’s record is more mixed.
The GDI, for its
part, is well on its way. A two-year progress report produced by the Xinhua
News Agency’s think tank indicated that 20 percent of the GDI’s initial 50
cooperation programs had been completed, and an additional 200 had been
proposed. Some projects are highly local and long-term, but others will have a
greater immediate impact, such as a wind power project in Kazakhstan that will
meet the energy needs of more than one million households.
Despite the relative
nascence of the GSI, Wang, China’s foreign minister, quickly claimed that the
Beijing-brokered 2023 rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was an
example of the GSI’s principle of promoting dialogue. China has had less
success, however, using GSI principles in its attempts to resolve the war in
Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, some countries
have expressed concern that the GSI is a kind of military alliance. Despite
being an early beneficiary of GDI projects, for example, Nepal has resisted
multiple Chinese entreaties to join the GSI because it does not want to be part
of any security alliance.
The BRI has
transformed the geostrategic and economic landscape throughout much of Africa,
Southeast Asia, and, increasingly, Latin America. Huawei, for example, provides
70 percent of all the components in Africa’s 4G telecommunications
infrastructure. In addition, China’s 2023 BRI investments have increased from
2022. There are signs, however, that the BRI’s influence may be plateauing.
Italy, the biggest economy in the initiative (aside from China itself),
withdrew in December, and only 23 leaders attended the 2023 Belt and Road
Forum, compared with 37 in 2019. China’s financing for the BRI has fallen
sharply since its peak in 2016, and many BRI recipient countries are struggling
to repay Beijing’s loans.
A screen broadcasting an air force drill, Beijing,
August 2023
Public opinion polls
paint a similarly mixed picture. The Pew poll indicated that middle-income
economies, particularly in Africa and Latin America, are more likely to have
positive views of China and its contributions to stability than higher-income
economies in Asia and Europe. But even in these regions, popular views of China
are far from uniformly positive.
A 2023 survey of
1,308 elites in ASEAN states, for instance, reveals that although China is
considered the most influential economic and security actor in the region,
majorities in every country, except Brunei, express concern over China’s rising
influence. Pluralities or majorities in seven of ten countries do not believe
that the GSI will benefit their region. And when asked whether they would align
with China or with the United States if forced to choose, majorities in seven
of ten ASEAN countries selected the United States.
Afrobarometer’s 2019
and 2020 surveys suggest China has a more positive reputation in Africa: 63
percent of Africans polled in 34 countries believe China is a positive external
influence. But only 22 percent believe China is the best model for future development,
and approval of China’s model declined from the 2014 and 2015 surveys.
A 2021 survey of 336
opinion leaders from 23 countries in Latin America was similarly telling.
Although 78 percent of respondents believe China’s overall influence in the
region is high, only 35 percent have a good or very good opinion of China.
(Respondents have similar opinions about the United States.) There was support
for engagement with China on trade and foreign direct investment but minimal
support for engagement on multilateral cooperation, international security, and
human rights.
Finally, support for
China and Chinese-backed initiatives in the United Nations is mixed. For
example, a detailed study of China’s Digital Silk Road investment in Africa
found that although eight African DSR members supported China’s New IP proposal
for increasing state control over the Internet, more African DSR members did
not write in support of it. And the February 2023 vote to condemn Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine—in which 141 countries voted in favor, seven voted against,
and 32, including China and all other members of the SCO except Russia,
abstained—suggests widespread rejection of the GSI’s principle of indivisible
security. Nonetheless, China won the support of 25 of the 31 emerging and
middle-income countries (not including itself) in the UN Human Rights Council
in a successful bid to prevent debate on Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur
minority population. It was only the second time in the council’s history that
a debate has been blocked.
Fighting Fire With Fire
Support for China’s
efforts may appear shallow among many segments of the international community.
But China’s leaders express great confidence in their transformative vision,
and there is significant momentum behind the basic principles and policies proposed
in the GDI, GSI, and GCI among members of BRICS and the SCO, as well as among
nondemocracies and African countries. China’s wins within bigger
organizations—such as the UN—may seem minor, but they are accumulating, giving
Beijing substantial authority inside major institutions that many emerging and
middle-income economies value. And Beijing has a formidable operational
strategy for achieving its desired transformation, along with the capability to
coordinate policy at multiple levels of government over a long period.
Part of why Beijing’s
efforts are catching on is that the present, U.S.-led system is unpopular in
much of the world. It does not have a good record of meeting global challenges
such as pandemics, climate change, debt crises, or food shortages—all of which
disproportionately affect the planet’s most vulnerable people. Many countries
believe that the United Nations and its institutions, including the Security
Council, do not adequately reflect the world’s distribution of power. The
international system has also not proved capable of resolving long-standing
conflicts or preventing new ones. And the United States is increasingly viewed
as operating outside the very institutions and norms it helped create:
deploying widespread sanctions without Security Council approval, helping
weaken international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, and, during
the Trump administration, withdrawing from global agreements. Finally,
Washington’s periodic framing of the world system as one divided between
autocracies and democracies alienates many countries, including some democratic
ones.
Even if its vision is
not fully realized, unless the world has a credible alternative, China can take
advantage of this dissatisfaction to make significant progress in materially
degrading the current international system. The uphill battle the United States
has waged to persuade countries to avoid Huawei telecommunications equipment is
an important lesson in addressing a problem before it arises. It would be far
more difficult to overturn a global order that has devalued universal human
rights in favor of state-determined rights, significantly de-dollarized the
financial system, widely embedded state-controlled technology systems, and
deconstructed U.S.-led military alliances.
The United States
should therefore move aggressively to position itself as a force for system
change. It should take a page from China’s playbook and be
opportunistic—seeking strategic advantage as China’s economy is faltering and
its political system is under stress. It should acknowledge that, as Xi has
repeatedly said, there are changes in the world “the likes of which we haven’t
seen for 100 years” but make clear that these shifts do not signal the decline
of the United States. Instead, they are in line with Washington’s own dynamic
vision for the future.
The vision should
begin by advancing an economic and technological revolution that will transform
the world’s digital, energy, agricultural, and health landscapes in ways that
are inclusive and contribute to shared global prosperity. This will require new
norms and institutions that integrate emerging and middle-income economies into
resilient and diversified global supply chains, innovation networks, clean
manufacturing ecosystems, and information and data governance regimes.
Washington should promote a global conversation on its vision of
technologically advanced change rooted in high standards, the rule of law,
transparency, official accountability, and sustainability—norms of shared good
governance that are not ideologically laden. Such a discussion would likely be
widely popular, just as China’s focus on the imperative of development holds
broad appeal.
Washington has put in
place some of the building blocks of this vision through the U.S.-EU Trade and
Technology Council, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and the Partnership
for Global Infrastructure Investment. Largely left out of the equation, however,
are precisely the states most open to China’s vision of transformation—most
members of the BRICS, the SCO, and nondemocratic emerging and middle-income
economies. Together with these countries, Washington should explore regional
arrangements akin to those it has established with its Asian and European
partners. More countries should be brought into the networks Washington is
establishing to build stronger supply chains, such as those created by the
CHIPS and Science Act. And countries such as Cambodia and Laos, left out of
relevant existing arrangements such as the Indo-Pacific framework, should be
given a path to membership. This would expand the United States’ development
footprint, allowing it to provide a development trajectory that is different from
Beijing’s BRI and GDI and—unlike China’s initiatives—offers participating
countries an opportunity to help develop the rules of the road.
Artificial
intelligence presents
a unique opportunity for the United States to signal a new, more inclusive
approach. As its full applications become appreciated, AI will require new
international norms and potentially new institutions to harness its positive
effects and limit its negative ones. The United States, which is the world’s
leading AI innovator, should engage upfront with countries other than its
traditional allies and partners to develop regulations. Joint U.S.-EU efforts
regarding skills training for the next generation of AI jobs, for example,
should be expanded to include the global majority. The United States can also
support engagement between its robust private sector and civil society
organizations and their counterparts in other countries—a multistakeholder approach
that China, with its “head of state” style of diplomacy, typically eschews.
This effort will
require Washington to draw more effectively on the U.S. private sector and
civil society—much as China has worked its state-owned enterprises and private
sector into the BRI and GDI—by fostering vibrant, state-initiated but
business-and-civil-society-driven international partnerships. In most of the
world, including Africa and Latin America, the United States is a larger and
more desired source of foreign direct investment and assistance than China. And
Washington has left untapped a significant alignment of interests between its
strategic goals and the economic objectives of the private sector, such as
creating political and economic environments abroad that enable U.S. companies
to flourish. Because American companies and foundations are private actors,
however, the benefits of their investments do not redound to the U.S.
government. Institutionalizing public-private partnerships can better link U.S.
objectives with the strength of the American private sector and help ensure
that initiatives are not cast aside during political transitions in Washington.
The work of private foundations in the United States—which invest billions of
dollars in emerging economies and middle-income countries—should similarly be
amplified by American officials and lifted up through partnerships with
Washington.
More inclusive global
governance also requires that Washington consider potential tradeoffs as other
countries’ economies and militaries grow relative to those of the United
States. In the near term, for example, a clearer delineation of the limits of
U.S. sanctions policy could help slow the momentum behind Beijing’s
de-dollarization effort. But Washington should use this time to assess the
viability of the dollar’s dominance over the longer term and consider what
steps, if any, U.S. officials should take to try to preserve it. Washington’s
vision may also need to incorporate reforms to the current alliance system. The
hard realities of China’s growing military prowess and its economic support for
Russia during the latter’s war against Ukraine make clear that Washington and
its allies must think anew about the security structures necessary to manage a
world in which Beijing and its like-minded partners operate as soft, and
potentially hard, military allies.
As with China, the
United States needs to spend more on the foundations of its competitiveness and
national security to succeed over the long term. Although defensive policies
are often necessary, they grant only short-term protections. This means Washington
must staff up to match Beijing’s foreign policy apparatus. Around 30 U.S.
embassies and missions have no sitting U.S. ambassador; each of these slots
must be filled. The United States has taken the first steps to enhance its
economic competitiveness with programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act and
the CHIPS and Science Act, but it needs sustained investment in research and
development and advanced manufacturing. It also needs to adopt immigration
policies that attract and retain top talent from around the world. And
Washington needs to recommit to investing in the foundations of its long-term
military capabilities and modernization. Without bipartisan support for the
basic building blocks of American competitiveness and global leadership,
Beijing will continue to make headway in changing the global order.
Finally, to avoid
unnecessary friction, the United States should continue to stabilize the
U.S.-Chinese relationship by defining new areas for cooperation, expanding
civil society engagement, tamping down needless hostile rhetoric, strategically
managing its Taiwan policy, and developing a clear message on the economic
tools it uses to protect U.S. economic and national security. This will enable
the United States to maintain relations with those in China who are concerned
about their country’s current trajectory, as well as give Washington room to
focus on building up its economic and military capabilities while moving
forward with its global vision.
China is right: the
international system does need reform. But the foundations for that reform are
best found in the openness, transparency, rule of law, and official
accountability that are the hallmarks of the world’s market democracies. The The global innovation and creativity necessary to solve the
world’s challenges thrive best in open societies. Transparency, the rule of
law, and official accountability are the foundation of healthy, sustained
global economic growth. The current system of alliances, although insufficient
to ensure global peace and security, has helped prevent war from breaking out
among the world’s great powers for more than 70 years. China has not yet
managed to convince a majority of the planet’s people that its intentions and
capabilities are the ones needed to shape the twenty-first century. But it is
up to the United States and its allies and partners to create an affirmative
and compelling alternative.
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