As observers of international relations, we often ask ourselves what the future of great power competition might bring. With ‘epoch-defining’ events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza seemingly occurring every month, it is even understandable that many of us indulge in forecasting the impact of structural change more and more often. And yet, the cautious analyst warns, our discipline has rarely been particularly good at looking into the future.

Broadly speaking, there are two overall positions when it comes to assessing US-China competition over the next decades. The one side argues that we are currently witnessing ‘peak China’ characterised by the country’s slowing economic growth, demographic decline and increasingly fraught relations with the West, exacerbated by Xi Jinping’s political centralisation and a growing decision-making echo chamber in Beijing.

On the other hand, others have cautioned against the ‘peak China’ metaphor, citing the country’s economies of scale, the Chinese Communist Party’s staying power and past successes at industrial policy and innovation which catapulted China to the forefront of high-end manufacturing and certain technologies such as 5G or unmanned systems.

While there are of course nuanced arguments that fall in between these two positions, recent articles have rightly pointed out that the most prevalent arguments espouse a zero sum logic. Either the US will continue to occupy the top spot or China will take the lead at some point during the 2030s or 40s, owing to the relationship between relative economic growth and overall greater power projection capabilities.

The reason why I tend to disagree with most of this debate are the underlying assumptions. The first is a general issue across Western policy and analysis circles, namely that China will inevitably seek to foster similar diplomatic arrangements as the current number one.

But whether we look to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and our continued misinterpretation of its overall remit as well as our inability to keep up with how it has evolved; or at China’s partnership framework, which espouses a fundamentally different understanding of diplomacy and security than Western alliances; it seems that we continuously prioritise Euro-Atlantic perspectives as a means to make sense of processes in which the West is only one, increasingly small, audience.

The second and related critique is that so much of this debate exhibits a fairly poor understanding of third country agency. It is certainly true that great power competition will continue to affect governments’ policy space, as seen during the impasse in the debt crisis between Western creditors, China and other lenders. But even if ‘peak China’ arguments are wrong and Beijing continues to ascend to some form of international primacy, its initiatives and policy strategies will inevitably be shaped by foreign partners and competitors.

And Beijing is surely aware of this dynamic to claim diplomatic space when it sees fit. Take for instance the China’s diplomatic manoeuvring in the Israel-Gaza crisis. First issuing a very broad statement in support of the two-state solution, Beijing then turned more pro-Palestinian as the situation in Gaza became more dire and protest across Western societies (even if not governments) and the Arab world manifested more forcefully.

China’s situationally contingent diplomatic approach and third country actions will continue to shape the reality of great power competition for the decades to come.

This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the China Foresight Forum, LSE IDEAS, nor The London School of Economics and Political Science.
The image, “Wutong Mountain” by E.D CHEN, is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.