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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Zhou Bo
Zhou Bo

Opinion | 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

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Zhou Bo
Are China and the US on an inevitable collision course? One may wonder this when comparing the national security strategy issued by American President Joe Biden on October 12 with the report of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party delivered by President Xi Jinping four days later.
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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.

With the US hell-bent on competition on all fronts, Washington’s offer to cooperate with Beijing on issues such as climate change appears as a tiny isle in a vast ocean. Biden is right about one thing: the next 10 years will be the decisive decade.

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.

Although slow growth has dampened expectations that the Chinese economy will be the largest by the end of the decade, the high probability is that the gap between the US and China will continue to shrink until a kind of balance is achieved, with each leading in different areas.
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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.

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