Chandran Nair explores the global stakes of U.S.-China rivalry and argues that China may have a clearer vision for the future world order. We live at a moment when everything we thought we could rely on to understand our world seems to be becoming unglued, and when crisis after crisis is said to represent “existential” risk to peace and prosperity—wherever you live. 

Whether it’s “uncharted waters” or the “break up of global order” or “the end of the American century,” at the least we are entering a period of change and chaos unlike anything that most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Whatever emerges is likely to be shaped in important ways by the evolving relationship between China and the United States.

Those are the only two countries with the power, the ambition, the history, and the hubris to imagine themselves as great enough powers not to rule, perhaps, but to shape the new world.  The problem, of course, is that no two countries—indeed, civilizations—could be more unlike each other. 

In the past, that set-up has been a formula for competition, even conflict, but as Henry Kissinger pointed out, such competition never before played out in a truly globalized world like that of the 21st century. The potential for catastrophe is obvious.

Avoiding such a worst-case scenario must begin with U.S. leaders and elites gaining a clear understanding of China—and Chinese leaders and elites doing the same with the United States.