Image: Source: Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash
Can China Lead the Next Order?
A global shift is unfolding before our eyes. It is fast, raw, and likely irreversible.
The post-war order that defined the twentieth century is crumbling under its own contradictions, and new forces are pushing through the cracks. For decades, the West assumed the world would run on its terms but that assumption is slowly collapsing.
China, long content to bide its time and build its strength seemed to have stopped waiting and it is no longer a quiet participant and acting more like an impatient contender for the top seat. After forty years of compounding power, Beijing seems confident enough to challenge Washington directly.
"Yet confidence is not the same as readiness and one must not forget that, power lies not only in factories or output but on the structures that has the capacity to endure risk, maintain alliances, command legitimacy, preserve independence, and inspire trust and that is where the real contest for the next world order begins."
China’s economic rise has been staggering, in 1980, its nominal GDP was about US $190 billion, smaller than Italy’s roughly US $480 billion and by 2024, it accounted for roughly 18–19% of global GDP (IMF data).
China produces roughly 30% of the world’s manufactured goods, refines around 70–80% of global rare-earth elements, and holds leading positions in solar panel production, 5G infrastructure, and electric vehicles and this dominance makes much of the global economy, including major powers, deeply dependent on Chinese manufacturing and supply chains.
Yet structural weaknesses persists within China and growth has slowed to around 5% and the youth unemployment data, which was climbing before the data releases were suspended, all this together with the working-age population which has been shrinking since 2015.
China has also made significant progress in transitioning toward renewable energy as part of its strategy to navigate the Malacca dilemma. Unfortunately, while the Straits of Lombok and Sunda offer potential alternatives to the Strait of Malacca, they are either impractical or unprofitable for now.
Around 80 % of China’s crude-oil imports still transit the Strait of Malacca, exposing Beijing to a major strategic vulnerability and how China manages this chokepoint risk remains to be seen.
Another question that i keep asking myself is, if the Chinese public ready to see body bags return home in case Beijing enters a direct confrontation for global dominance? Unfortunately, the legacy of the one-child policy means many families could lose their only child.
"So i ask myself, is China’s current impatience a preemptive reach for power before demographic decline limits its strength?"
Add to all this, China’s mounting real-estate debt is estimated at roughly 25–30% of GDP and the ballooning local government and off-balance-sheet liabilities, which may reach 50–60% of GDP when broadly measured, adding further strain to the economy.
Still, China’s challenges do not make it any less of a formidable contender and it remains one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations and has made immense contributions to human progress.
However, certain recent developments cannot be ignored. China’s dismissal of numerous CCP officials suggests signs of an internal purge, though the reasons remain unclear or highly speculative. Moreover, it is yet to be seen how Chinese weapons perform in real war scenarios, which would provide a clearer perspective on its military capabilities.
So the real question is not just whether China is confident, but what durable structures it has built to project power and sustain that confidence. So far, there are less evidences of this.
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Understanding World Order
To understand this shuffle, we must ask what a World Order truly is. Professor John Mearsheimer calls it a collection of institutions working in tandem with each other.
"The world doesn’t run on slogans but on institutions of trade, energy, finance, and security, and whoever controls the institutions that govern these, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO, SWIFT, and their modern equivalents, effectively writes the rules."
Today, we live within an American or more broadly, Western-led world order. Global security institutions like the UN, financial arteries such as SWIFT, and the dominant trade networks and energy flows all originate from and remain under Western influence and protection.
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A Short History
For simplicity, I’m not delving into every earlier world order predating the Islamic period, though several pre-Islamic civilisations built extendable systems of power and exchange such as the powerful Hindu and Buddhist empires dominated much of South and Southeast Asia, extending their reach from the Indian subcontinent to Sumatra, Java, and Thailand. Their cultural and philosophical influence still echoes across Asia. One can see it in the art, language, and even traces within Japan’s Shinto thought in the Far East.
The Islamic caliphates that followed created a civilisational framework linking commerce, scholarship, and governance from Spain to Central Asia and it was a genuine world order in its own right.
Their scientific engine ran on synthesis: Greek philosophy, Persian astronomy, and Indian mathematics. The early Indian works by Aryabhata and Brahmagupta, translated into Arabic during the Abbasid period, shaped Al-Khwarizmi’s development of algebra and numerical systems. Additionally Indian astronomical tables likewise merged into Arabic zij compilations, creating an integrated body of knowledge that later flowed into Europe through the translation networks of Toledo and Sicily.
"By the thirteenth century, the great caliphates had fractured and the Invasions shattered cities and trade routes, while growing theological rigidity curbed the spirit of open inquiry in some regions, yet the intellectual corpus they had built did not vanish completely but simply migrated."
Through various translation centres, science, mathematics, and philosophy seeped into Europe’s universities and merchant cities, and over time, this diffusion of knowledge helped lay the foundations for the modern West we see today.
Europe’s ascent was born of desperation, curiosity, and an entrepreneurial spirit. After being cut off from costly overland trade routes dominated by the Ottomans, small maritime kingdoms turned seaward. Here, innovations such as the Chinese compass, the Arab lateen sail, and the Portuguese caravel, a fusion of diverse technologies made the oceans navigable..
Further more, Italian bankers in Florence and Venice invented double-entry bookkeeping and sovereign credit, forging the architecture of modern finance on top of the trade via the waters.
"By the seventeenth century, European powers, Iberian then Dutch and English controlled the global flow of goods, gold, and ideas."
Centuries of expansion, however, came at a price. The two world wars ultimately bankrupted the Old World and shattered its empires but old Structures die hard and therefore even if it may collapse, the legacy of their power endures, only the actors behind it change.
And this 'Old Power' passed to the United States and at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the entire global finance was tied to the 'Dollar', backed by gold. When rising expenditures made this system unsustainable, the Petrodollar Agreement under Nixon ensured that oil which is the lifeblood of modern economies, would be traded primarily in U.S. currency and this particular move cemented the United States as the dominant global power, giving it extraordinary financial leverage through its control over the dollar, in simple words US can literally just print dollars as much as it needs.
"America has built an empire without colonies and ruled through culture, banks, trade routes, and bases and now possess some 750+ military installations abroad and a defence budget approaching US $900+ billion and commands both the map and the narrative of the modern world."
The American Century promised prosperity through liberalism and globalisation and, for a time, it delivered, well atleast to the selected few.
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Cracks in the American-led Order
The foundations of the Western-led economic order are showing strain. All those Institutions which were originally designed to stabilise economies create dependency.
Since the 1980s, many IMF programs have included fiscal consolidation and market-oriented reforms such as public-sector restructuring and privatization. These measures have often restored short-term stability, but critics argue that in some contexts they have weakened state capacity and constrained long-term development rather than strengthening it.
Global trade patterns reinforce this imbalance and many countries in the Global South remain heavily dependent on exporting raw materials while importing higher-value manufactured goods. Structures such as tariff escalation where processed goods face higher barriers than raw inputs make it harder to move up the value chain and one have seen how US used tariffs as a tool.
Monetary dynamics deepen the asymmetry even further , when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, capital often flows toward dollar assets and that strengthens the dollar while putting pressure on emerging markets and in turn currencies weaken, dollar-denominated debts become more expensive, and external financing tightens. The Fed’s mandate is understandably domestic but its decisions inevitably transmit across borders in a system centered on the dollar.
Then came COVID-19 pandemic and it exposed another fault line where wealthier countries secured vaccines far more quickly, while many lower-income nations faced long delays, highlighting disparities in access during a global crisis. Soon after, following the Russia-ukraine war, roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen by Western authorities. Regardless of one’s view of that decision, it signalled that reserve assets, particularly those linked to the dollar system can be subject to geopolitical risk.
This has contributed to a gradual shift in perception, although dollar remains dominant and still accounts for a majority of global reserves, though its share has declined from around 70% at the turn of the century to the high-50% range today. At the margins, some central banks have increased diversification, including higher gold holdings. The system is not collapsing, but its perceived neutrality has been dented.
After decades of interventions, policy pressure, and economic restructuring carried out under the banner of a US-led order, a growing sense of fatigue and skepticism is visible across parts of the Global South and critics point to a long history of external involvement, sometimes overt, sometimes covert as well as unequal bargaining power in trade, finance, and security arrangements.
In Africa and beyond, persistent questions reflect that frustration: how can some of the world’s most resource-rich regions remain economically fragile? Why do cycles of conflict and instability endure in certain areas? What structural forces sustain such unequal distributions of power?
"And why has the expansion of development actors particularly NGOs often just increases in number but their works never translates into the prosperity it promises?"
Even within the US, scholars recognise growing strain in the international system. In the different Schools of thought such as Realism which emphasise competition and spheres of influence or, in very simple terms, “you take what you can with the power you have.” Meanwhile, Liberalism focuses on cooperation and shared security frameworks or, put simply, “we are a cultural bunch, so we will also take what we want, but perhaps give something in exchange.”
"Both essentially attempt to explain the global order, but neither fully resolves the deeper tensions between power, development, and legitimacy. Neither can provide or maybe intentionally do not provide a clear underlying explanation for the imbalance we see. Instead, they often produce an overwhelming word salad that sounds prophetic but is, in essence, just a collection of words stitched together by so-called professors."
The harder question is not just how to describe the system, but how to reform it, i listen to debate often stopping at diagnosis and categorising the world as competitive or cooperative without addressing underlying issues such as institutional credibility, uneven development, uneven wealth distribution across continents and ending the control of hegemones.
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The Tell Signs
Trust is the hidden currency of any world order, and it’s leaking fast. One can see how Saudi Arabia and China now settle part of their oil trade in yuan, meanwhile India pays for some Russian energy in rupees. Additionally, more than 40 nations including countries in Europe have applied or expressed interest in joining BRICS, hoping to shield themselves, at least partly from dollar risk, yet again i must add that scale matters here, rather than sentiment.
We know that BRICS-denominated trade makes up around 3% of global settlements, and the renminbi accounts for just 4.5% of international payments compared with the dollar’s 46% (SWIFT, 2024), so one can see that the movement is symbolically powerful but materially still very limited.
"More importantly, China’s currency is not fully convertible on the capital account, and that is a major reason why renminbi use remains constrained in global finance. so for now, de-dollarisation is diversification, not replacement."
Across Africa, assertion is also clearly visible with countries like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso expelling French troops and reopening mining contracts on their own terms. This suggests that these countries may also be receiving backing from other actors in the geopolitical theatre. Meanwhile, the United States faces its own structural stress with federal debt crossing US $39 trillion and the interest payments now exceed spending on both defence and Medicare (CFR, 2024).
"As for the war in the Middle East, it could increase global reliance on major energy and fertiliser exporters, such as the United States and Russia, but any claim that this would give US a clean slate or restore trust in the dollar goes well beyond what the evidence can firmly support at this moment."
Having said all that, one must also face the facts: the dollar’s network effects remain formidable and it still dominates international banking, bond markets, and foreign exchange, while the latest data show that the dollar and euro together account for more than 80% of global trade invoicing.
Decline, for the U.S., in my opinion is relative not absolute and it remains the world’s largest innovation hub and productivity anchor. One must remember what historian Paul Kennedy said in his book: The rise and fall of the great powers about what happens to the nations when ambition outpaces resources. Whether the US becomes overstretched globally while its productive capacity reaches its limits remains to be seen.
"So far, what we’ve seen in the first few weeks of the Iran war is that, while there are clear tactical and geographical constraints and that entering Iran is far from straightforward, the US still possesses significant firepower."
The conflict has shown that U.S. forces retain overwhelming military capability, with large-scale air operations and thousands of strikes demonstrating reach and intensity but at the same time, Iran’s terrain, dispersed infrastructure, and asymmetric strategy i.e. relying on drones, a highly distributed organisation such as IRGC, and geography make it difficult to translate that firepower into full control or quick victory.
"And Therefore, the rivals of the Western-led order are pressing forward, but each faces limits of its own. For example, China’s energy dependence and internal conflicts, Russia’s war in Ukraine all constrain their ascent."
Multipolarity is inevitable, but it won’t arrive overnight, it will take time, leverage, and persistence while the Western bloc uses their institutions, economic hegemony, tariffs, sanctions, and other extracurricular activities to slow the shift.
What seems to be emerging is not a single replacement but a collection of middle powers, and one can see it in:
- China’s manufacturing base,
- India’s internal market, demographic and defence momentum, and
- Russia’s resources and ambition.
During the pandemic, it was global south not the West that exported vaccines to more than 90 other global south countries, an inversion of old aid hierarchies.
"The next world order will be multipolar and negotiated rather than imposed and it is bound to be messy, competitive, and unpredictable but also more reflective of the world of humans as it truly is. One must not forget that the American order is not gone, and the new one is not yet born and we are living in the dangerous middle, a kind of a churn between eras and therefore Instability will certainly follow, but so will new relations."
From history, we know that more war is inevitable, the strong will certainly assert itself to keep their place and the challengers will push back, and in the noise between them, a new world order will come forth.
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What I Think
Power, like all things, shifts, decays, and reforms and the global order is no exception to that, one order will rise, another will fall but in time, each fades into memory.
Change is the most fundamental property of matter and of everything made from it and therefore the current world order will also not last forever and nor does any other order. Transformation in world politics in my opinion is never sudden, nor does it follow a schedule, it unfolds quietly over decades, through crises, corrections, rebalances of strength and the inevitability of change, and we are at the crossover.
"Geopolitics, like all human constructs, is a passing film projected onto the surface of a much larger reality. We take it seriously, we build theories around it, we act through it, yet the thinkers who shaped these world orders have already faded, and their ideas will fade as well, just as every idea before them has, in the long churning of the living world.”
The Earth, the vast universe, will endure these punitive, insignificant churns. It owes no allegiance to our ambitions, nor to the child’s play we call global power politics. What causes the churn can be speculative: for some, it is evil capitalism, for some it is the natural rise and fall of empires, for some it is eschatological, and for some, it is simply the enjoyment of chaos.