Deep Dive: China’s Global Strategy and Power Balance

What role does China play in the global economy and what role does it want to play? Does Beijing see the U.S.-led world order as something to join, bend, or break?

Until recently, the modern United States had never faced a true systemic competitor. Neither the Soviet Union nor the combined economies of Germany, Italy, and Japan during WW2 ever accounted for more than 60% of U.S. GDP. When the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in 1990, Charles Krauthammer declared America the world’s only superpower, writing: “the immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar. It is unipolar.” In retrospect, 2001 marked a turning point. The U.S. supported China’s admission into the WTO, hoping it would open China’s market and moderate its authoritarian regime.…