Is China winning?
by : Derwin Pereira
Published in The Edge (Singapore)
Asian Viewpoint, March 17, 2025
Is China winning the war for global supremacy against America? Yes. Is America losing the war? No.
If those two answers appear contradictory, it is because many of us have been conditioned to think about the world in binary terms. Those terms are derived from the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Today, talk of Cold War 2.0 between the US and China — although the fear of it is not entirely unfounded — is causing some of us to believe that this is a war that only one side can win. America won Cold War 1.0: Some fear and others hope that China will win Cold War 2.0.
I take a more nuanced view of the global power transition underway. An old era — the Western one — is indeed retreating, but a new era — the Sinic one — has not yet begun to advance. I shall explain why I think China is winning the war without America losing it.
China’s victory
It is quite clear that the contraction of American influence around the world under the current Administration is to China’s advantage. US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his country from the Paris accord on climate change and the World Health Organization, along with a host of other executive orders that are shrinking Washington’s global footprint, is creating strategic space for Chinese President Xi Jinping by default. China provides certainty in a global order being hollowed out by the unpredictable actions of the chief executive of what is still the world’s most powerful country. Nature does not allow a vacuum. China will gain from the American retreat.
That is where Chinese derives its international confidence from. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared at a press conference on March 7: “We will be a constructive force for common development of the world. We will continue to expand high-standard opening up, and share the vast opportunities of Chinese modernisation with all countries. We will safeguard the multilateral free trade system, foster an open, inclusive and non-discriminatory environment for international cooperation, and advance a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation.”
Even if we ignore the superlative adjectives that proclaim China’s loftily selfless international goals, it is clear that Beijing is walking into global ground that the US is vacating. After all, American hegemony since the end of World War II in 1945, which was accelerated by the end of the Cold War in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, rested precisely on American freedom of economic and military action in a multilateral world order premised on liberal internationalism. The current American withdrawal from that order allows the Chinese to stake their leadership claims to internationalism and globalisation, albeit without the liberal political characteristics that democratic America has attached to internationalism.
Just as China says that it practises socialism with Chinese characteristics at home, it now seeks to inaugurate internationalism with Chinese characteristics abroad. There is no great harm in that. After all, the world learnt to live with internationalism with American characteristics (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation being the three chief characteristics). China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and a quasi-alliance system that will no doubt form in China’s expanding gravitational orbit — all these developments are the formative phase of an emergent Chinese order.
The ground is sweet for China.
Why is that so? An essential reason is that, since its independence in 1949, China has been able to manage its occasionally thwarted yet definite rise to global prominence without having waged wars that would have distorted its position in the world substantially. China has not been involved in any costly external military adventures except for the border war with India in 1962 (which it won) and the punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 (which it neither won nor lost). The Chinese aversion to warfare as a means of settling international disputes has served it well, in both material and perceptual terms. Many see China as a pushy country (for its de facto capture of the South China Sea) but not as an imperial one.
That happy reputation contrasts with America’s global exposure, which has involved it in costly foreign expeditions even after the disappearance of the Soviet threat to the US. The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the culmination of that wild record, and the inglorious departure of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 (although the invasion itself was warranted) cemented America’s record as a fickle hegemon. China is stepping into a world contoured by the reduction of American global power.
America’s resilience
And yet, America persists. That is because it is beating strategic retreat, not really seeking escape into isolationism. The American economy, at its current state of development, is simply far too integrated into the global economy to make decoupling viable even for an increasingly-protectionist America. What is happening is that Americans, aware of the global overreach that has distorted their economic priorities at home and depleted their political resources abroad, are seeking to consolidate their domestic position by contracting their global ambit. The new administration wants to choose where, when and how to intervene, particularly militarily. Washington wants to be in charge of its own destiny and not be held hostage by its open-ended and unending engagements abroad.
This is a troublesome proposition, of course, for many of America’s treaty allies and non-treaty partners. However, the domestic rejuvenation of America would benefit them ultimately. An army marches on its stomach: A country reigns only if its finances permit.
And America will not lose the global race for power because its losses abroad will be transformed into China’s losses soon enough. America got sucked into the booby-trapped global commons because it could not do otherwise, being the preponderant world power after the fall of the Soviet Union. America’s strategic retreat will tempt China to behave in the same way, and that is where problems will arise for the Sinic power one day, soon enough.
Take the Middle East. No country could claim to be the global power of last resort without having a determining say in that restive region. America’s closeness to Israel might have influenced it excessively in its approach to Palestine, but China’s ethnic neutrality in the Jewish-Arab dispute will not automatically translate into success. Beijing will be sucked into the same quagmire as Washington has been because the Middle East conflict is intractable without one side winning completely. Washington has failed to achieve that outcome: Beijing, too, will fail.
My guess is that America wants to sit back for a while and let China (along with Russia) take charge of world affairs. Given that great powers behave in predictable and comparable ways, China (and Russia) will soon find itself burdened with so many global responsibilities that it will look for a partner. Then, Uncle Sam will rise from his rocking chair, greet a former enemy at the door, invite him in, and settle the terms of a new partnership.
America’s strategic retreat into domesticity would then have served it well.
That outcome would be, in any case, better for the world than war over Taiwan or a continuation of the proxy war of attrition being waged between Nato and Russia in Ukraine.
Conclusion
My conclusion proceeds naturally from my premise: China is winning the war, but America is not losing it. Having eroded its advantages in international affairs, Washington is playing a waiting game with Beijing (and with Moscow to a lesser extent) to see who wins the marathon. That approach buys time for other countries to readjust their relations with the three legs of the coming global triumvirate: America, China and Russia.
Of course, power transitions are not guaranteed to succeed, even when embarked upon willingly. Anything could go wrong. China could mistake American strategy for weakness and move against it precipitately in Asia. Russia could do the same in Europe. Then, ageing Uncle Sam would get out of his rocking chair and pick up his gun, a favourite American pastime both at home and abroad. Of course, the intruder could be carrying a larger gun. Then, who knows? That is the way global lawlessness goes.
In the meanwhile, smaller powers would do well to hedge their bets. In Asia, America appears to be in strategic retreat and China in strategic advance. However, a balance will be struck between the two movements.
Let us wait and see. Let us wait so that we can see the dawn of a new era. It does not have to be ghastly, although it could well be. E
The writer is founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political and strategic advisory consulting firm. An awardwinning journalist and a graduate alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he is also a member of the Board of International Councillors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. This article reflects the writer’s personal views
