China Is Ready for a World of Disorder: America Is Not

Submission Statement

Several analysts have pointed out that the approaching multipolar world is quite different in character from the Cold War era and even the periods before. Unlike then, the powers of the modern-day are not characterized by an ideology or system they wish to impose upon a sphere of influence. Rather, they are defined by their support or opposition to the current liberal order as a whole. China and Russia seek to weaken and subvert the world order, without articulating a real alternative to said order. Conversely, the US and the West seek to preserve the world order. In that vein, this article submits a hypothesis on why China feels its actions are the most optimal for its own success. The pessimistic view on the gamble China is making is that China sees the changes in the liberal international order right now as inevitable and continuous. They believe that the order will continue to decline regardless of their actions and that they are simply positioning themselves to take advantage of the world to follow.

Interestingly, implicit in this article is a theory of victory for the United States. If America can ensure that the institutions of the liberal international order remain intact and inclusive, that smaller countries have more to gain from engaging with the rest of the world than withdrawing, and that current attempts to sabotage that world order do not succeed, then China will find that bet they have made on a fragmented world will turn out to be an unwise choice after all.

MARK LEONARD is Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of What Does China Think? and The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict.

Although China and the United States agree that the post–Cold War order is over, they are betting on very different successors. In Washington, the return of great-power competition is thought to require revamping the alliances and institutions at the heart of the post–World War II order that helped the United States win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This updated global order is meant to incorporate much of the world, leaving China and several of its most important partners—including Iran, North Korea, and Russia—isolated on the outside.

But Beijing is confident that Washington’s efforts will prove futile. In the eyes of Chinese strategists, other countries’ search for sovereignty and identity is incompatible with the formation of Cold War–style blocs and will instead result in a more fragmented, multipolar world in which China can take its place as a great power.

The very different responses of China and the United States to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the divergence in Beijing’s and Washington’s thinking. In Washington, the dominant view is that Russia’s actions are a challenge to the rules-based order, which must be strengthened in response. In Beijing, the dominant opinion is that the conflict shows the world is entering a period of disorder, which countries will need to take steps to withstand.

Chinese leaders see the United States as the principal threat to their survival and have developed a hypothesis to explain their adversary’s actions. Beijing believes that Washington is responding to domestic polarization and its loss of global power by ramping up its competition with China. U.S. leaders, according to this thinking, have decided that it is only a matter of time before China becomes more powerful than the United States, which is why Washington is trying to pit Beijing against the entire democratic world. Chinese intellectuals, therefore, speak of a U.S. shift from engagement and partial containment to “total competition,” spanning politics, economics, security, ideology, and global influence.

China is confident that the United States is mistaken in its assumption that a new cold war has broken out. Accordingly, it is seeking to move beyond Cold War–style divides. As Wang Honggang, a senior official at a think tank affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security, put it, the world is moving away from “a center-periphery structure for the global economy and security and towards a period of polycentric competition and co-operation.” Wang and like-minded scholars do not deny that China is also trying to become a center of its own, but they argue that because the world is emerging from a period of Western hegemony, the establishment of a new Chinese center will actually lead to a greater pluralism of ideas rather than a Chinese world order. Many Chinese thinkers link this belief with the promise of a future of “multiple modernity.” This attempt to create an alternative theory of modernity, in contrast to the post–Cold War formulation of liberal democracy and free markets as the epitome of modern development, is at the core of Xi’s Global Civilization Initiative. This high-profile project is intended to signal that unlike the United States and European countries, which lecture others on subjects such as climate change and LGBTQ rights, China respects the sovereignty and civilization of other powers.

China’s leaders have made an audacious strategic bet by preparing for a fragmented world. The CCP believes the world is moving toward a post-Western order not because the West has disintegrated but because the consolidation of the West has alienated many other countries. In this moment of change, it may be that China’s stated willingness to allow other countries to flex their muscles may make Beijing a more attractive partner than Washington, with its demands for ever-closer alignment. If the world truly is entering a phase of disorder, China could be best placed to prosper.