America’s Future: How Beijing is Planning Its Next Move
Source: White House
As one of the founders and long-term leaders of the postwar international order, the United States has dramatically changed its attitude toward that very order. Some argue that the U.S. has abandoned the postwar international order, while others say it is merely seeking to revise it. In my view, both are true. The basic backdrop is that both the Republican and Democratic parties have come to recognize that the existing order no longer maximizes U.S. interests, nor does it adequately sustain America’s hegemonic position. Under Trump’s first term, constrained by the establishment, he could not act entirely at will, and his adjustments to the international order leaned more toward revision than abandonment. In his second term, however, surrounded by loyalists of his own choosing, Trump has enjoyed far greater freedom of action, shifting more toward abandoning elements of the order, though still unable to discard it wholesale.
So, what kind of international order does the U.S. wish to see today? For Trump, there may be no such thing as “international order” at all—only the world with America at its center. Much of what he has done since returning to office suggests he seeks to pull the United States back to the conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During President William McKinley’s tenure (1897–1901), whom Trump openly admires, the U.S. became the world’s leading wealth generator and expanded its reach through events like the Spanish-American War. In the 1920s, under President Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929), the U.S. experienced what came to be known as the “Coolidge Prosperity,” with per capita GDP ranking at or near the top globally. At that time, the Monroe Doctrine had already been in place for a century, giving Washington absolute dominance in the Americas while limiting its involvement in Europe—the political center of the world—thus sparing the U.S. from excessive international responsibilities.
If the Republican Party were to govern for a prolonged period, America might abandon more of the principles and fabric of the current order, pushing the world into—or back into—a jungle-like multipolar system of survival of the fittest. In such a system, the world would be divided into multiple geopolitical blocs. In regions of lesser importance to U.S. interests, whichever state is strongest would be left to enforce order. But in areas critical to U.S. interests, Washington would exert maximum dominance to ensure its priorities prevail. If the Democrats were to return to power after 2028, however, the U.S. might revert to revising the existing order, rebuilding Cold War-style narratives to define adversaries and sharpening global confrontations.
Does the United States have the capacity to reshape the international order according to its preferences? The answer is likely no—unless it can marshal external forces to help it stage the “script” it has in mind. Domestically, whether Americans can reach consensus on the policy direction conservatism is pushing still remains to be seen. Externally, how will the world respond to Washington’s agenda? That is a great unknown. Will new geopolitical conflicts erupt that bog down America’s strategic recalibrations? Quite possibly. Will European states willingly embrace a conservative path and collude in America’s retreat from international responsibilities? That seems unlikely. And at the systemic level, with so many other actors or “players” in the global arena, it is improbable that the international order could be entirely remade by U.S. shifts alone.
So, what kind of country will America become in the future order? The “new world order” of the early 1990s—defined by unipolar U.S. dominance—will not reappear. But neither will the U.S. turn entirely inward. More likely, I believe, America will evolve into a relatively “normal” country—“normal” here carrying a sense of “ordinary.”
As the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary, a historical review is telling. For its first 125 years, the United States was largely inward-looking, showing little concern for parts of the world unrelated to its interests. In the following 125 years, it became a “two-ocean nation,” with globalized interests, deeper ties to Europe, and far greater involvement in shaping—and even leading—the international system. America sought to prove on the global stage that its domestic governance model was correct, gradually developing its own globalist outlook and rising to world preeminence. Going forward, Washington may lose interest in proving its “correctness” or “exceptionalism” to the world. No longer self-styled as a “chosen nation” or “city on a hill,” it may turn more pragmatic—pursuing international engagement based strictly on the protection of its own interests, acting selectively like other great powers. Trump’s announcement in Saudi Arabia this May that the United States was abandoning interventionism was one such sign.
In doing so, the U.S. is extending to other powers—especially great powers—an “invitation” scripted by Trump. In a sense, it is the lure of power itself.
How should China respond to such changes and their impact on global politics? In the near term, opportunities may outweigh challenges: China could gain more room to maneuver and assume international responsibilities aligned with its interests. Over the longer term, however, we must reflect deeply on the conservative vision of a U.S.-driven “world division of labor,” rooted in great-power determinism and the law of the jungle. To what extent is this vision fundamentally at odds with China’s principles and values? On that basis, we must consciously resist the temptations of power, hold firmly to the basic direction of Chinese major-power diplomacy, and continue advancing the ideal of building a community with a shared future for humankind.
If the United States truly evolves in the direction Trump is pushing, China and the U.S. may not tumble as quickly into the abyss of a “new Cold War” as they did during Trump’s first term and the Biden years. Instead, there could even be new opportunities for coordination and cooperation at both the bilateral and global levels. Recently, some American scholars have raised the question: if Trump’s first term marked the beginning of a new era of great-power competition, might Trump 2.0 see a shift from great-power competition to great-power coordination? I believe there is room for such possibilities.
Trump 2.0 has also begun to talk about “multipolarity.” The kind of multipolarity Washington envisions is not the same as the one China advocates, but it is still preferable to the “new Cold War” mindset of bipolar confrontation and zero-sum rivalry. For China, this could mean seizing the opportunity to stabilize China-U.S. relations as much as possible: to continue resolute struggle on issues involving China’s core interests, while maximizing coordination and cooperation in areas of shared interest, rather than letting strategic rivalry in core areas trigger a systemic collapse of the relationship. At the same time, China must shape the international order according to its own “script,” steering it toward the vision of multipolarity that Beijing promotes.
As the Chinese saying goes, “Momentum is strongest at the first drumbeat, wanes with the second, and is exhausted by the third.” America’s China strategy is now at the stage of “waning with the second.” Trump and his administration are reassessing themselves and reconsidering China, and compared with the recklessness of his first term, they have been forced to make certain adjustments. The MAGA movement Trump leads is, in its essence, an effort to change America by changing the world. It is not entirely targeted at China—rather, issues involving China are more of a tool in Trump’s hands. China today is more confident, experienced, and methodical, increasingly adept at managing and responding to U.S. challenges. In fact, China is gradually taking the “script” of China-U.S. relations into its own hands.
(This article was originally published in World Affairs magazine under the title “Taking the Script of China-U.S. Relations Into Our Own Hands.” The author is a professor and head of the Department of Diplomacy at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China.)
