America’s Presidential Election Day (5 November) is looming up close and personal not only to Americans, but to the world at large, such power the United States still wields globally, its perceived relative “decline’’ notwithstanding.
Who will be in the White House matters hugely in a divisive era. Donal Trump has made known his top priorities clear. Domestically, he will launch a massive witch-hunting and deportation campaign against “illegal immigrants” the world has ever known. As revealed by the Trump-inspired, albeit later disowned, “Project 2025” (1), Trump is set to turn the whole federal bureaucracy into his fiefdom, vetting and removing “disloyal” civil servants, however meritorious otherwise. Externally, he will impose 100% or higher tariffs on all imported goods, especially from China, as a possible substitute for income tax. (2) Never mind whether most of the jobs represented by imports are coming back to the United States, due to America’s prohibitively-higher production costs, tax cuts and subsidies regardless.
A Harris administration could mean a “less arrogant America”, according to two books by authors who advise Kamala Harris on foreign policy (3). However, judging from the recipe advanced in one of the books, An Open World : How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order (4), “winning’’ for a West-dominated world order calls into question whether American exceptionalism still works. Moreover, an existential “win-or-lose” mindset would make matters worse for a rising Global South, yearning for inclusiveness and acceptance of alternative development paths and ideologies.
Meanwhile, a proxy war of attrition continues to drag on in Ukraine. With revamped ammunition production, the Russians are outgunning the Ukrainians 10 to 1 (5) while NATO military supplies fell far short (6). Nor could America’s long-neglected traditional ammunition systems fill the gap, financial aid to Ukraine being no substitute.
As Putin re-adjusts military strategy to consolidate gains in the Donbass region with strategic Black Sea access, the stage is set for an inevitable settlement, perhaps much sooner than some people think. This could take the form of a negotiated Korean War-styled armistice, freezing the situation on the ground without formal sovereignty concessions. That’s probably what Trump meant when he said he would end the war in a day. If a diminished yet nuclear-armed Russia survives the Ukraine war with territorial gains, however called in name, it is likely to remain an existential menace for the rest of Europe, particularly those in Russia’s immediate neighbourhood.
The continuing Gaza humanitarian catastrophe is another marker of an unsustainable world order. Thousands of civilians, including many women and children, continue to be killed or maimed as unavoidable collateral damage, driven by an uncontrollable Netanyahu, confident in the Jewish Lobby’s cast-iron grip of America’s body politics, Secretary of State Blinken’s serial visits to Jerusalem regardless.
As self-appointed custodian of a world order based on human rights and natural justice, the United States’ world leadership is beginning to lie in tatters in the eyes of the Global South, increasingly piqued by American double standards and unilateralism. Three-quarters of UN member states now recognise Palestine as a state, joined by more Western countries including Norway, Ireland and Spain. A “two-state solution” for lasting peace is gaining traction, potentially changing the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape following the historic Saudi Arabia-Iran rapprochement brokered by China.
All these developments are stroking a rising solidarity amongst diverse nations in the Global South with their long history of Western oppression or marginalization, not least U.S dollar-hegemony. Their economies have grown over the years, their sense of national sovereignty and dignity on the ascendant. They are now rallying together to demand a fairer and more inclusive world, where nations, regardless of size, can safeguard their own sovereignty, ideology and development interests. Witness the latest BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit hosted by President Putin in Kazan.
More and more developing nations are joining the BRICS group and the Eurasian SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). However, this doesn’t translate into old Cold War blocs. Most nations want to maintain good relations with the United States but hedge to avoid being forced to take sides.
As forewarned by the late foreign policy doyen Zbigniew Brzezinski, US national interests are now being threatened by an “anti-hegemonic” coalition of Russia, China and Iran, (not forgetting North Korea), united not by ideology but by contemporary US-induced grievances. (7) All told, they have outsized influence over the security, stability, and trajectory of nations in the Eurasian continent. Moreover, Russia has the world’s largest number of nuclear warheads while both Russia and China possess the world’s most advanced hypersonic intercontinental nuclear weaponry delivery systems, not forgetting Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear leanings.
With the Manichean mindset of the United States and its close Western allies, manifest in a crusading call of “democracy versus autocracy”, and with the United States’ penchant for maximum coercive force, usually involving the military, the risks of miscalculations and unintended consequences are too terrifying to imagine. Read the meticulously-researched, much-acclaimed book Nuclear War: A Scenario (Dutton, 2024) by New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen. (8)
Despite unprecedented headwinds, China remains self-confident. Its remarkable rise has brought unprecedented improvements in the standard of living for the vast majority of its people, including 800 million of them lifted out of poverty in recent years. According to independent research by the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Centre (9), the New York-based Edelman Trust Barometer (10), the Paris-based IPSOS Centre (11), and Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre (12), the Chinese Communist Party government is amongst the top in terms of people’s trust and happiness, multiple ranks above many Western democracies including the United States. After all, elections are but a process. What counts is the outcome in terms of people’s overall satisfaction. The narrative of “democracy versus autocracy” is losing its credibility.
Regardless of the United States’ nano semiconductor-chip stranglehold, China is becoming a “scientific superpower”, as boldly declared in The Economist cover story of 12 June 2024. (13). It now contributes around 40% of the world’s AI research papers, compared with some 10% for America and 15% for the EU and Britain combined. Its Chang’e 6 robotic spacecraft made history by successfully bringing back earth samples from the never-before-reached far side of the moon.
However, China has been lagging far behind the United States in science Nobel Laureates. Even if over-hyped, The Economist piece tallies with recent findings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). (14) Surveying some 2.2 million peer-reviewed scientific papers, the Institute finds that China leads in 37 out of 44 critical technologies, often producing more than five times as much high-impact research as its closest competitor the United States.
These observations are perhaps not surprising. They are underpinned by China’s vast scientific manpower pool, according to George Town University’s CSET (Center for Security and Emerging Technology. (15) By 2025 China’s universities will be producing more than 77,000 STEM PhDs per year compared to approximately 40,000 in the United States. Excluding international students, Chinese STEM PhD graduates would outnumber their U.S. counterparts more than three-to-one.
Regardless, China’s technological advance is fuelling American worries about a ‘pacing challenge’ to its scientific supremacy.
China is becoming the new Detroit for electric vehicles (EVs), threatening to decimate other nations’ automobile industries, absent a win-win solution. China’s EV dominance is largely due to its far superior price-quality ratio, making its sleekly-designed and technologically-advanced models highly affordable despite massive tariffs. In any case, EVs are crucial in reducing global carbon emissions, of which the transportation sector (48% represented by cars and vans) accounts for some 20%. (16)
Meanwhile, Climate Change with extreme weather conditions is becoming up close and personal, turbo-charging global green energies and green economies, and driving many countries towards a greener future. Before long, the famous dictum of former Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Sheik Yamani would be validated. Like the Age of Stone, the Age of Oil is coming to an end, not for lack of oil. (17).
China’s long-awaited five-yearly Third Plenum (15-18 July) is shaping the country’s ambition of becoming moderately well-off by 2035, pivoting towards self-reliant innovation, domestic consumption, and ‘common prosperity’.
Pending release of the next Five Year Plan (2026-2030), China’s doomsayers are playing up the nation’s gigantic headwinds, including worsened demographics, housing bubble, youth unemployment, anaemic domestic consumption, and hostile geopolitics. There are talks of Japan’s “lost decade” and “Peak China”.
Little weight has been given to China’s capacity for technological innovation, embracing the “Digital Age” of the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions that define the 21st century.
Nor much cognisance is taken of China’s superior domestic “productivity-boosting connectivity”. Along the nation’s eastern seaboard and further inland, clusters of smaller municipalities form close economic nodes around giant cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. All these “city clusters” are now connected with the world’s fastest and most extensive high speed rail system. This is measuring some 50,000 km by 2025, well above the total length (11,945 km) of high speed rail networks of the rest of the world combined. This is bound to boost China’s overall productivity.
Many of China’s retirees are able-bodied and remain economically active. Beijing has recently increased the national retirement age over a 15-year period, starting January 1, 2025, from age 60 to 63 for men; from age 55 to 58 for female workers; and from age 50 to 55 for female blue-collar workers.
Beijing is also loosening the “household registration system”, providing full citizenship to many of the nation’s 200 million migrant workers in various mid-size cities and municipalities. When provided with subsidized housing, perhaps utilizing myriads of empty apartments characteristic of some “ghost cities”, this massive cohort of migrants-turned-citizens will add economic impetus to China’s existing middle-class of 700 million consumers in helping the country to pivot towards domestic consumption. (18).
Despite unremitting headwinds, based on latest IMF forecasts, China is set to be the top contributor to global growth over the next five years, with 22% share, bigger than all G-7 countries combined, followed by India, adding about 15% through 2029. (19) The world’s economic locomotive is increasingly being driven by the two largest economies of the Global South. However, the extant Bretton Woods institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, remain weighted in favour of the United States and its Western allies.
Another World War II legacy global institution, the United Nations, is proving more and more impotent to resolve global conflicts. Witness the wars over Ukraine and Gaza. Nor does its current Security Council Permanent Membership reflect the distribution of global powers in the 21st century. Calls for its reform are growing louder by the day. I penned a tentative reform blueprint in these columns dated 1 December 2023: How the Fractured Global Order could be better Managed through Reform of the UN Security Council (20).
However, vested national interests die hard. Heaven forbid, but the whole world would perish first if it takes World War III, which will be nuclear, to shock global powers into meaningful reform of the World Order.
Nevertheless, as outlined above, geostrategic sands are shifting. New power groupings and institutions are emerging, like the BRICS-Plus Group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the New Development Bank (the “BRICS bank”), and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In one way or another, the Global South is bound to have a much larger say in shaping the World Order of the 21st century.
Author: Andrew KP Leung, SBS, FRSA – International and Independent China Strategist. Chairman and CEO at Andrew Leung International Consultants and Investments Limited. He previously served as director general of social welfare and Hong Kong’s official representative for the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, Russia, Norway, and Switzerland. He has been an Elected Member of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and of the Governing Council of the King’s College London (2004-10); a Think-tank Research Fellow at Zhuhai Campus (2017-20); an Advisory Board member at the European Centre for e-Commerce and Internet Law, Vienna, and a Visiting professor at the London Metropolitan University Business School.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image Credit: Sputnik International