China’s bid to challenge the Western-led order may expose its greatest vulnerability: continued dependence on the global economic system that fueled its ascent
Why it matters: Beijing increasingly sees itself as the architect of a post-Western global order. But a new Foreign Affairs essay argues that China’s greatest strategic constraint may be the very international economic system it is trying to move beyond.
The big picture: In a striking analysis, two prominent experts Enrico Fardella and Sergey Radchenko argue that China’s rise was never built outside the Western-led order — it was built through it. From
- Deng Xiaoping’s reforms onward, Beijing leveraged access to global markets, Western technology, foreign capital and international supply chains to transform itself into an economic and military powerhouse.
- That history matters because China’s current strategy assumes it can gradually reshape the international system while continuing to benefit from its openness.
- According to the authors, this is becoming an increasingly risky assumption.
Between the lines: China’s economic model still depends on external demand. Weak household consumption and persistent industrial overcapacity mean that Chinese growth continues to rely heavily on foreign markets absorbing its surplus production.
- As the U.S. reduces strategic dependence on China and Europe hardens its economic posture, that external environment is becoming less accommodating.
Decoding the analysis: The debate is often framed as one of tariffs, export controls or geopolitical rivalry. Fardella and Radchenko suggest something deeper is unfolding:
- The more Beijing doubles down on industrial dominance without rebalancing domestic demand, the more it encourages other economies to diversify supply chains, adopt defensive industrial policies and reduce exposure to Chinese manufacturing.
- In other words, China’s own success is accelerating the fragmentation of the international system on which that success still depends.
Europe’s dilemma: If Washington continues closing its market, Europe becomes even more important for Beijing. But that also makes the EU the key arena where tensions over Chinese overcapacity, de-risking and industrial competitiveness are likely to intensify.
- Whether Europe can maintain a unified approach may become one of the defining questions of the next phase of economic competition.
What they’re saying: The authors are not predicting China’s decline. Their argument is more nuanced: great powers can accumulate extraordinary economic and technological capabilities while remaining structurally dependent on the international order that enabled their rise.
- The danger, they write, comes when success is no longer viewed as the product of circumstance and effort but as historical destiny.
In a nutshell: “The future of global economic stability may depend on China’s willingness to reconsider the logic that has underpinned its ascent,” wrote the two scholars.
- “Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-hegemonic strategy has been remarkably successful in reshaping the international environment and creating space for China’s extraordinary rise—an achievement rooted above all in the hard work, discipline, and resilience of the Chinese people.”
- “Yet history offers a cautionary lesson. Great powers encounter danger when they cease to view success as the product of contingency and effort and begin to view it instead as the expression of historical destiny.”
- “If Beijing falls into this trap, and refuses to heed Western warnings, it will trigger a vicious trade war that will leave the world much worse off, and the dream of China’s national rejuvenation in tatters.”
The bottom line: The next chapter of U.S.-China competition may not be decided by who produces more, but by whether Beijing can adapt its own growth model before the rest of the world adapts to it.
