Since the end of the Cold War and China’s re-entrance onto the world stage, one often reads about “China’s Rise.” Analysts from the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), a nonpartisan organization that advances the transatlantic partnership, offer a typical response to China’s rise. They write, “In a world reshaped by China’s growing economic might and influence, the United States and Europe have struggled to adjust and respond to this new geopolitical reality. As the implications of China’s rise prove costly, the ability to compete and defend will require coordinated action.”[1]

People often forget that China’s place on the world stage as a major actor is not new. That’s not surprising. Political analyst Bruce Mehlman reminds us that we often suffer from “recency bias.”[2] However, for much of history and for many people, China was considered the center of the world. China has a rich cultural, political, and economic history. China once laid claim to world’s most advanced civilization, with significant contributions to various fields such as paper, gunpowder, and the compass. The Chinese people also played a pivotal role in global trade and culture. Traditionally, the concept of China as the “Middle Kingdom” further emphasized China's central role in world history, with maps and educational materials often depicting China at the center of the world map.

China’s Global Ambitions

There is little doubt that China harbors global ambitions that would make them, once again, the Middle Kingdom. These ambitions are not recent. Elizabeth Economy, the Hargrove Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, observes, “As early as the 1950s, Chinese leaders discussed competition in the world’s literal and figurative frontiers: the deep seas, the poles, outer space, and what the former People’s Liberation Army officer Xu Guangyu described as ‘power spheres and ideology,’ concepts that today include cyberspace and the international financial system. These domains form the strategic foundations of global power. Control over them determines access to critical resources, the future of the Internet, the many benefits that derive from printing the world’s reserve currency, and the ability to defend against an array of security threats.”[3]

Back in 1992, as China was commencing its latest remarkable rise, China’s enlightened leader, Deng Xiaoping, insisted rare earths were going to be as important to China as oil was to the Middle East.[4] Today, China dominates the rare earths market and processes nearly 80% of world rare earths. This dominance is likely to continue. China has laid claim to five seabed exploration sites, 90,000 square miles — the most of any country. The U.S. has none because the Senate has refused to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty.

China is also surging ahead in technology and manufacturing. Having watched the West age rapidly, Chinese leaders have understood for some time that they are in a race to make China rich before it grows old. They have also observed how Japan has leveraged technology to help offset some of the challenges an aging workforce. Futurist Mark Van Rijmenam reports, “China has fused AI, hardware, and manufacturing at a depth the West still treats as an aspiration. The consequence is a world where cost curves collapse, capability spreads faster, and geopolitical assumptions crack under the weight of new realities.”[5]

On the geopolitical stage, China is also moving. Chinese leaders understand that growth markets are now found in the so-called Global South. Most of the world’s population (about 85% of it) lives in the Global South. While the Global North is growing old, the Global South remains young. Jason Hsu, founder and CIO at Rayliant Global Advisors, explains why this is important. He writes, “Famed French sociologist and philosopher Auguste Comte said that demography is destiny. Indeed, aging demographics is one of the most predictable macro challenges for humanity — the ultimate slow-motion train wreck. The world is getting older. … Over the next 20 years, aging developed markets will lean on emerging markets for their younger and more plentiful workforce, giving emerging markets newfound bargaining power.”[6] China is flooding the Global South with its products and technology so that those countries and their consumers become reliant on China.

Playing the Long Game

Are Chinese tactics working? The short answer is “yes.” Even though the United States and Europe are trying wean their economies off of Chinese goods, journalists Jason Douglas and Jon Emont report, “Chinese industrial production broke records this year as its factories churned out more cars, machinery and chemicals than ever before. … The Chinese manufacturing juggernaut shows little sign of slowing. China reported a goods trade surplus of more than $1 trillion for the year through November, while manufacturing output in the first 10 months of the year was up 7% compared with the same period in 2024.”[7] To counter the West’s efforts to decouple their supply chains from China, Douglas and Emont report, “Chinese policymakers conclude they need to dominate more industries to shield their economy from U.S. pressure and give them more chokepoints they can exploit to further their own political and economic aims.”

Mehlman writes, “Success compounds over time. Shortcuts rarely do. Great businesses, investors and families play the long game … seeking slow & steady progress while avoiding big mistakes.” I believe playing the long game is also a characteristic of great nations. China knows how to play the long game. Journalist Catherine Baab reports that over the past decade Chinese exports to the U.S. have fallen from 25% of exports to 10%. She observes, “Beijing has spent the intervening years engaged in a long game, building more direct trade relationships with the rest of the world. … Supply chains may be slow to adapt and change, but once they’re rerouted toward a more distributed system without the U.S. as its center or end-point, the U.S. becomes straightforwardly less important and powerful.”[8]

Part of China’s long game is embracing the future of green energy, which will be of particular value to the Global South. China’s interest in green energy is due, in no small part, to the fact it is a net importer of energy. However, by developing its own green economy sector, China is already well-placed to dominate the rest of the world in this area (i.e., solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles). In 2023, China added more solar power than America has in total. And, between 2009 and 2023, China reportedly invested over $230 billion to advance its electric vehicle market. Earlier this year, Ford President and CEO Jim Farley conceded that Chinese EV technology is far better than Ford’s, calling it “far superior” and “humbling.”[9]

Concluding Thoughts

Elizabeth Economy concludes, “Beijing has positioned itself well for this contest. It approaches these frontiers with a consistent logic and playbook. It is investing in the necessary hard capabilities. It is partnering with other countries to embed itself in institutions and flooding these bodies with Chinese experts and officials, who then campaign for change. When it cannot co-opt existing institutions, it builds new ones. In all these efforts, Beijing is highly adaptive, experimenting with different platforms, reframing positions, and deploying capabilities in new ways.” The same is true in the area of technology. Van Rijmenam predicts, “2026 is the year China stops being framed as a challenger and becomes an architect of the technological order.” Nevertheless, he doesn’t believe the rest of the developed world should simply concede the future to China. He writes, “The opportunity for leaders is not to mirror [China’s] model, but to build a more distributed, values-aligned future that harnesses competition for collective good.”

Competition is generally considered a good thing. Monopolies, on the other, have a checkered history when it comes to promoting the common good. China stands on the cusp of monopolizing many economic sectors. In the long run, that could hurt the global economy. Most experts believe that economic competition remains important. To be competitive, however, the West needs to play the long game in order to compete successfully with China in the years ahead.

Footnotes

[1] Staff, “Global Implications of China's Rise,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, December 2025.

[2] Bruce Mehlman, “Six-Chart Sunday (#100) – How to Navigate an Age of Disruption,” Bruce Mehlman's Age of Disruption, 23 November 2025.

[3] Elizabeth Economy, “How China Wins the Future,” Foreign Affairs, 9 December 2025.

[4] Patti Waldmeir and Peter Smith, “China predicts rare earths shortage,” Financial Times, 3 September 2009.

[5] Mark Van Rijmenam, “China Overtakes the West,” The Digital Speaker, 9 December 2025.

[6] Jason Hsu, “Demographic Shifts: How Aging Economies Impact Emerging Market Assets,” Rayliant Insights.

[7] Jason Douglas and Jon Emont, “China’s Manufacturing Is Booming Despite Trump’s Tariffs,” The Wall Street Journal, 8 December 2025.

[8] Catherine Baab, “China shrugs off Trump's tariffs with a world-record $1 trillion trade surplus,” Quartz, 8 December 2025.

[9] Tim Levin, “ ‘The Most Humbling Thing I’ve Ever Seen’: Ford CEO On China’s Car Industry,” Inside EVs, 30 June 2025.