The answer may be more nuanced than many expected: while the U.S. remains the world’s most powerful country, China is emerging as an architect of that order.
China does not have a miraculous, surefire plan to succeed the U.S. as the world’s new hegemon. Nor is there evidence that other countries are prepared to embrace a Chinese-led system entirely. China’s ambition appears more complicated: it seeks greater influence over the ideas and institutions that determine how the international system works. Beijing wants not merely a decisive vote in the game, but a hand in writing its rules.
Yet China is not inheriting a vacuum. Thanks to its power, Washington remains deeply entrenched in the institutions, alliances, and technologies that underpin its supremacy. China is gaining room to shape the international order, but it is not yet replacing the power that built much of it. Instead, Beijing is creating alternatives that allow other countries to become less dependent on the existing American-led system.
For much of the past eight decades, the prevailing vision of development was associated with a broadly Western model: foreign aid, privatization, and political liberalization. China offers something different, defying the hopes of Western intellectuals and policymakers who believed that Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 would eventually lead to its political liberalization.
The developing world has been receptive. China’s Global Development Initiative places development at the center of its international engagement. Although the Belt and Road Initiative has been heavily criticized since its inception, it has provided Beijing with a practical platform for financing and building infrastructure overseas. Beijing is making its case not through elegantly written standards of governance but through tangible things: roads, railways, and ports.
China’s development strategy creates economic relationships that should endure for decades, especially when its financing carries conditions that serve Beijing’s interests, including privileged access to critical minerals and resources. But the era of immense Chinese overseas spending is becoming harder to sustain as Beijing grapples with its own economic woes.
A new age of Chinese tech
Influence is no longer exerted through explicit military might but built quietly into the infrastructure of everyday economic life. As development becomes increasingly intertwined with technology, a country that adopts Chinese cloud computing may also embed itself in a Chinese-led ecosystem that endures for decades.
The technological race is also becoming a competition over the development choices countries make. If most economies build their digital infrastructure and AI systems primarily around American technologies, Washington will retain an enormous structural advantage. As countries invest in those systems, they will become increasingly dependent on them, while American tech giants gain access to vast stores of user data. If more countries come to rely on Chinese technologies and the standards and supply chains associated with them, China will acquire greater influence: less visible than military power, but potentially just as consequential and enduring.
A central ambiguity lies at the heart of China’s development strategy. Chinese technology can expand a country’s economic opportunities but is bound to increase its dependence on China. That tension is likely to persist longer than many anticipated. Many governments are choosing Chinese technology for its affordability and not because they have been persuaded by Beijing’s governing philosophy. A country may adopt Chinese systems while remaining aligned with the U.S. on security.
China’s statecraft is a way of redistributing economic and technological power. Unlike the U.S., China’s most significant export may not be a political model but the infrastructure and technology through which other countries seek to build prosperity. In adopting those systems, they become part of a world less dominated by the U.S. and its European allies.
Consider BRICS. What began as an informal gathering of emerging economies has become a much larger political forum, with countries from the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere seeking membership or closer connections. It would be a mistake to consider BRICS as a Beijing-led anti-American bloc. Its members have sharply different interests, and countries such as India have no intention of joining an anti-Western alliance. But the group’s expansion reflects a critical shift: a growing number of countries want access to institutions in which the Group of 7 does not set the terms.
This is why I expect that the emerging world order will not be divided neatly between a Chinese camp and an American one. Most countries will continue to use the dollar, trade with the U.S., and participate in Western institutions while simultaneously joining BRICS, borrowing from Chinese-backed institutions, and engaging with the SCO. For many governments, the fundamental attraction is the freedom to choose among competing sources of finance, technology, and diplomatic support.
Yet the China dilemma remains. Beijing opposes an international order dominated by a single power, but fragmenting that system would inevitably increase China’s global influence. And the more influence China acquires, the more other countries may begin to question whether Beijing’s vision is truly intended to produce greater equality, or merely a new distribution of power that benefits China most.
An order shaper in the making
China is not seeking to inherit the world America built. It is trying to change how that world works by giving other countries choices beyond the American-led system. For decades, the U.S. was identified with policing the rules-based international order, while China was portrayed primarily as its challenger. But during President Trump's second term, questions of sovereignty and international law have themselves become more contested, blurring what once seemed a clear distinction between the American and Chinese approaches.
Whether China’s ascent produces a fairer international order, a more genuinely multipolar one, or simply a new system in which Chinese power carries greater weight remains uncertain. The answer will depend not only on what Beijing wants, but also on what other countries are willing to accept. For now, China’s ambition may not be to write all the rules, but to ensure that Washington is no longer the only power capable of writing them.
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