China’s moment to shape a new global order

Recent visits to Beijing by Trump and Putin and a more favorable geopolitical environment have given Beijing more strategic space to advance its vision, says Claus Soong.

China’s recent calls for “constructive strategic stability” with the US and a “new type of international relations” with Russia indicate that Beijing is intent on managing competition with Washington to create the strategic space to build a global order no longer led by the United States. US President Donald Trump’s mid-May trip to Beijing revealed a new dynamic in US-China relations, with Beijing demonstrating greater agency in shaping the bilateral relationship. This dynamic was reinforced only a few days later when China’s party and state leader Xi Jinping articulated his preferred vision for the international order while hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Chinese capital.

China is seeking to reduce tensions with the US by reframing the relationship around managed competition rather than confrontation – while avoiding major concessions on trade or Taiwan. But in resetting the agenda of bilateral ties that have deteriorated over the past decade, Beijing is also challenging the universalist claims of the liberal international order. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that “constructive strategic stability” meant that “the relationship gets more resilient through exchange and cooperation” and that stability should be based on “respecting each other’s social systems and development paths, core interests and major concerns.” 

This reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s growing confidence and its view that the authoritarian political system is not inferior to the Western liberal democracy – and may quite possibly even be superior. With Russia, Beijing is more explicit in articulating its vision for a global order after the end of US leadership. In their joint declaration on building a “new type of international relations” in May, China and Russia argue that the world is becoming more dynamic and “undergoing profound changes,” creating the need for a transition to an “equal and orderly multilateralism” that would provide a fairer system of global governance.

Defining the terms of engagement with the US

Regardless of how realistic this goal may be, Beijing’s ability to define the terms of engagement – even with the US – demonstrates China’s growing ability to shape the global agenda – the US may not have explicitly endorsed the idea of “constructive strategic stability,” but it did adopt China’s wording. The term therefore reflects both the shifting power dynamic between the US and China and Beijing’s attempt to define the boundaries of US-China competition, a role once exercised largely by Washington. The power to establish the vocabulary and framework through which the bilateral relationship is understood has obviously shifted in China’s favor. 

This is not Beijing’s achievement alone. Trump’s unilateralism has even encouraged US allies to adjust long cautious and confrontational approaches to China. The series of German, French, British, Canadian and other Western leaders visiting Beijing has created a more favorable geopolitical environment for China. China’s relations with its neighboring countries have also improved, as reflected in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in the late summer of 2025 and the signing of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area 3.0 upgrade protocol a few months later. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy has reinforced perceptions of China’s economic centrality and regional influence.

In an advantageous position to advance its geopolitical vision, Beijing organized back-to-back summits with Trump and Putin to show that China matters to all world leaders, even the most powerful. Facing mounting pressure from his war in Ukraine, Putin needs China’s economic lifeline to sustain its invasion. The US, meanwhile, relies on China for supplies of critical rare earth and its huge market for agricultural products, while also hoping that Beijing will play a constructive role in restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait. Moscow and Washington currently both need China, albeit in very different ways. 

These diplomatic engagements have not only placed China at the center of the world stage but also strengthened its capacity to shape the international order rather than merely declare its ambitions to do so. By describing Taiwan as the “most important issue in US-China relations” and urging Washington to “exercise extra caution in handling the Taiwan question,” Xi in May drew a red line for the US. After leaving Beijing, Trump said with reference to the island: “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent” – a line very likely welcomed in Beijing. 

Turning influence into legitimacy

Claiming to “uphold the UN and international law,” Xi and Putin’s joint declaration on the “new type of international relations” can be read as a concentrated expression of China’s broader diplomatic strategy, developed over many years: security, diversity and global governance, all with Chinese characteristics and distinct from the liberal international order. It calls for “equal and indivisible security,” stressing that “the security of one state cannot come at the expense of another country’s security,” and for the “democratization of international relations,” arguing that “rules set by a minority of states cannot replace commonly accepted international norms.

This overlooks Russia’s pursuit of security at the expense of Ukraine and China’s rejection of a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea about the illegality of its expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea. Indeed, despite calling for a multilateral world to prevent a return to the “law of the jungle,” China risks reproducing elements of the US-led system it wants to replace. China may support the UN, the SCO and other multilateral institutions, but its selective adherence to common rules risks turning its multilateralism into a vehicle to compete with US rather than constraining great-power rivalry. 

China is making use of a favorable international environment to advance an alternative world order. But how long these conditions continue will depend on geopolitical dynamics and China’s own actions. The key question is whether China can provide sufficient stability to international society to generate legitimacy for its agenda. For now, it may simply be benefiting from other countries’ short-term efforts to hedge against a perceived retreat of the US from global leadership. In the long run, China will have to prove that it offers the world more than a new form of hegemony. To gain legitimacy, Beijing must show that it is willing to uphold common rules, exercise restraint and providing the public goods expected of a responsible great power. 

This article was first published by The Diplomat on July 6, 2026.