China’s growing global links show there is no such thing as a US-led international order
- Unable to contain China’s economic rise, the US has fallen back on claims that it is defending the ‘international order’
- But these claims ring hollow when most countries are either uneasy about taking sides or eager to embrace China’s model
President Biden asserted that China harbours the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order and vowed to “outcompete” China. Without naming the US, President Xi Jinping warned of “high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms” on the journey ahead and made it clear that China has the courage and ability to carry on its fight.
But even if all signs point to competition between Beijing and Washington becoming fiercer down the road, the outcome is very much known already. China’s gross domestic product in PPP terms overtook that of the US in 2013.
Competition is more about mentality. When Biden talks about the international order, he is actually talking about what he has previously referred to as the “liberal world order”, in which America’s leadership is taken for granted. There is no such order in the world.
True, many rules, regimes and even institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank were tailor-made by the West after World War II, but these alone do not define a system shaped by major events such as the independence movements in Africa, the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China, to name just a few.
Intrinsically, the international order comprises different religions, cultures, customs, national identities and social systems. Some of them may have survived over a millennium. It is also affected by globalisation, climate change, pandemics and nuclear proliferation.
In fact, the period that looks at best like a liberal international order is the 15 years or so after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when China had yet to rise fully. This is but a blink of an eye in human history.
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A good lesson from the Cold War is that even enemies can cooperate sometimes. China and the US are not enemies yet.
And for competitors to not become enemies, they just need the common sense to know that however different we are, we must coexist. One only needs to look at a garden to know the beauty of the world lies in diversity.
Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert