China’s Time

The Power Shift Nobody Planned

The October 2025 summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea revealed a power dynamic fundamentally transformed from their 2019 meeting. Xi entered negotiations from a position of strength, leveraging China's control of 70% of rare earth mining and 90% of processing to force US concessions. Trump reduced tariffs from 20% to 10%, rolled back technology export controls, and removed restrictions on Chinese companies. In exchange, China agreed to a one-year pause on rare earth export controls—renewable annually at Beijing's discretion—and promised to purchase US soybeans. Analysts across the political spectrum described the outcome as an "uneasy truce" that largely restored the pre-April 2025 status quo, representing what Gabriel Wildau of Teneo called a decisive shift in negotiating leverage toward Beijing. Chinese analyst Wang Wen observed simply: "China's strength has compelled the US to learn respect."

This diplomatic outcome reflects deeper structural shifts. China spent 2024 and early 2025 systematically preparing for confrontation: $1.4 trillion in stimulus to reduce local government debt, aggressive monetary loosening to stabilize the economy, and strategic diversification of supply chains. Beijing reduced dependence on US soybeans by more than half, shifting to Brazilian and Argentine suppliers before the trade war escalated. Meanwhile, US military and technology industries discovered their critical dependence on Chinese rare earth materials with no viable short-term alternatives. When China deployed export controls as leverage, Washington had no counter. The trade war that was supposed to bring China to heel instead demonstrated that China could absorb more economic pain than the US political system could tolerate, particularly when Midwest farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana—key Republican constituencies—faced devastation from the soybean embargo.

The alliance dimension tells an equally stark story. A February 2025 YouGov poll found that 73% of Europeans view Trump as a threat to peace and security, only nine percentage points below their assessment of Vladimir Putin. More than half of Europeans now consider Trump an enemy of Europe. This represents the systematic erosion of America's decisive advantage over China: its alliance network. China cannot replicate the web of partnerships that gave the United States unmatched global reach, but it doesn't need to when Trump is methodically destroying those relationships himself. Threats to withdraw from NATO, unpredictable tariffs targeting allies, withdrawal from counter-disinformation efforts, and the general chaos of American policy have left European allies fundamentally questioning US reliability. Consumer boycotts of American products are spreading across Europe and beyond, while European tourism to the United States has plummeted. The Center for American Progress assessed the situation bluntly: "The United States today confronts China with less leverage, fewer friends, and a fractured front."

China has responded to American disarray not with triumphalism but with methodical positioning. Only after Trump's return became a "real prospect" in late 2024 did Beijing launch a diplomatic offensive to improve relations with India, Japan, and Australia—US partners that China had previously treated with hostility. In October 2024, China and India suddenly resolved their four-year military standoff in Ladakh. Following Trump's election, China invited India's National Security Adviser to Beijing and offered concrete deliverables: pilgrimages to Tibet, cooperation on shared waterways, and trade expansion. With Japan, Beijing ended its ferocious criticism over radioactive water releases and extended invitations for high-level visits. For Australia, China unilaterally announced a 30-day visa-free policy. This wasn't panic—it was strategic opportunism, recognizing that Trump's approach to allies created openings for Chinese relationship-building.

Simultaneously, China has positioned itself as the defender of international order and multilateralism. As the United States withdraws from institutions and attacks the rules-based system, Beijing presents itself as the responsible stakeholder committed to stability and cooperation. At the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, leaders from Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran gathered for the first time, joined notably by India's Narendra Modi making his first visit to China in seven years. While this loose alignment lacks the integration of US alliances, it represents an expanding network of countries willing to work within a China-centered framework. As one Foreign Affairs analysis noted, China isn't trying to force the United States out of its leading position or overturn the existing order—it's "exploiting Trump's rapid, willing abdication of Washington's role" and building up power and prestige within existing institutions to shift their centers of gravity toward Beijing. If this succeeds, it will "transform the international order from the inside out" in ways future American administrations may find difficult to reverse.

The Trump administration's "reverse Nixon" strategy—attempting to court Russia to split the Sino-Russian partnership—appears fundamentally flawed. Unlike the ideological Sino-Soviet split that Nixon exploited, today's Russia-China relationship is built on shared opposition to Western dominance, not communist theology. The two countries conduct $250 billion in annual trade, share advanced military technology, and coordinate diplomatically in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. More than 90% of their bilateral trade uses domestic currencies rather than dollars, representing successful de-dollarization. Russia needs China economically and diplomatically; Moscow has no incentive to scuttle this partnership for uncertain American concessions. Chinese analysts express confidence rather than anxiety about US-Russia rapprochement attempts, viewing Trump's approach as a sign of weakness rather than strategic sophistication. Carnegie Endowment analysis concluded: "Russia is extremely unlikely to want to contain China—they have too much in common."

What distinguishes this power transition from historical precedents is its fundamentally self-inflicted character. American advantages remain real: the largest economy, technological leadership in key sectors, the dollar as reserve currency, geographic security, and potential alliance networks. These advantages aren't being overcome through Chinese strength alone—they're being voluntarily undermined through policy choices. Trump's approach prioritizes immediate, visible wins for domestic political consumption over sustained strategic positioning. China has learned to provide performative victories—soybean purchase agreements, summit handshakes, one-year deals—while consolidating structural advantages in supply chain dominance, institutional influence, and relationship building. The Atlantic Council observed that China has "figured out that Trump has certain things he really wants" and provides those things while securing substantive long-term gains.

Multiple analysts note the risk of policy chaos within the Trump administration, with different factions canceling each other out without firm strategic direction. If Beijing concludes that resolving differences through diplomacy is futile, the Brookings Institution warns, China will likely "double down on efforts to hedge risk," making the "axis of upheaval" among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea "more entrenched, concrete, and formalized." The pattern is clear: orders rarely collapse in a single moment but erode gradually, often undermined by the very powers that once upheld them. Every hegemon eventually provokes resistance, but the risk now is that the United States, in trying to preserve dominance through unilateral action and alliance coercion, accelerates its own decline along with the order it created.

Yet the most profound asymmetry may be temporal rather than material. China operates on civilizational time scales while American policy increasingly operates on electoral cycles. Chinese strategic culture views the nation as a 5,000-year continuous civilization that experienced temporary disruption during the "century of humiliation" from roughly 1839 to 1949. From this perspective, China isn't rising—it's restoring its historical position of centrality. The Western-dominated era from approximately 1800 to 2000 represents a 200-year anomaly within a much longer pattern. Current Chinese policy is framed not as revolutionary change but as civilization restoration, which produces fundamentally different planning horizons and risk calculations.

Chinese leadership can conceive and execute strategies spanning decades. The Belt and Road Initiative isn't a ten-year infrastructure project—it's the reconstruction of Silk Road trading networks that positioned China at the center of Eurasian commerce for centuries. Projects with 30-50 year return horizons are acceptable because the planning frame extends beyond individual leadership tenures. The question isn't whether this benefits the current administration but whether it benefits China in 2075. Meanwhile, the United States operates under pressures that optimize for immediate results: presidents focused on legacy within 4-8 years, congressional cycles of 2 years, markets demanding quarterly earnings, media operating on 24-hour news cycles, and major policy reversals between administrations. During the Cold War, the United States demonstrated capacity for sustained multi-decade strategy through the containment doctrine maintained across multiple presidencies. Current evidence suggests declining capacity for such consistency given increased political polarization and policy discontinuity.

China's strategy emphasizes what might be called the accumulation approach—modest gains that individually appear unremarkable but collectively reshape system architecture. A port acquisition here, infrastructure investment there, currency swap agreements proliferating, educational exchanges building relationships, technology partnerships deepening dependencies. None individually decisive; over decades, transformative. Each defensible, even benign; in aggregate, they shift the center of gravity. This is the strategic logic of Go rather than chess: victory through gradual encirclement rather than direct capture, every move preparing multiple future options, territory accumulated through patient positioning, apparent losses acceptable if they advance long-term position.

Chinese civilization has survived Mongol conquest, internal collapse, colonial domination, civil war, famine, and the Cultural Revolution. This historical experience produces institutional and cultural confidence that current challenges are manageable within the long view. Temporary setbacks are normalized; persistence is validated by civilizational survival. When Chinese leadership observes American political chaos, alliance fracturing, and policy incoherence, they recognize familiar patterns of hegemonic decline observed across dynasties and empires throughout history. The response isn't panic but patient positioning for the post-decline environment, confident that civilizational endurance outlasts imperial volatility.

The waiting strategy becomes explicit policy. China doesn't need to defeat adversaries through direct confrontation if time itself can be leveraged as a strategic asset. When the United States attacks allies, China waits—the damage compounds without Chinese action required. When the US initiates trade wars, China absorbs pain, calculates that the American political system has lower tolerance thresholds, then waits for reversal or compromise. When the US withdraws from international institutions, China fills the vacuum gradually and waits for the new normal to consolidate. Xi Jinping personally dislikes chaos and volatility—he's not a revolutionary like Mao but seeks control and stability. Yet despite Xi's personal discomfort, "the more chaos Trump causes, the better for China overall" because it creates strategic opportunities while America undermines itself. Chinese officials are described as "cautious, confident and confused all at once"—they can prepare for multiple scenarios but face genuine uncertainty about Trump's next moves. The chaos isn't welcomed, but it's workable.

At the October 2025 summit, China made tactical concessions that provide Trump immediate political wins—soybean purchases he can tout to Midwest farmers, a one-year rare earth pause he can claim as victory—while China's structural position continues strengthening. Supply chain dominance remains intact. Institutional influence expands. Alliance building proceeds. The rare earth controls can return in 2026, or 2027, or whenever Beijing judges appropriate. Meanwhile, the fundamental architecture shifts incrementally but inexorably. This is the patient century playing out in real time.

The profound question is whether democratic systems with four-year electoral cycles can compete effectively with centralized systems operating on 30-year horizons. Can America maintain coherent strategy through 2050, 2075, and beyond when policy reversals occur between administrations, infrastructure projects are abandoned mid-execution, trade agreements are negotiated then withdrawn, and alliance commitments are questioned then reaffirmed then questioned again? China's underlying bet is that if it maintains strategic consistency while the United States demonstrates increasing policy volatility, time favors Chinese positioning regardless of short-term setbacks. By 2030, the American political landscape may change completely while China's strategic direction remains constant. By 2040, infrastructure investments mature and dependency relationships deepen. By 2050, alternative financial architecture becomes fully operational and institutional reorientation completes. By 2075, historians may mark this period as the inflection point toward a Chinese-centered order.

The risk to this approach requires that assumptions of Chinese stability and American instability hold across decades. Major disruptions—Taiwan conflict, Chinese economic collapse, American political realignment, technological breakthrough—could invalidate the patient strategy. China faces serious internal challenges: economic slowdown, a $9 trillion local government debt burden, demographic decline, and social stability concerns. These aren't trivial. But the question is whether these challenges prove more destabilizing than America's alliance erosion, political fragmentation, and strategic incoherence. The evidence through 2025 suggests China is managing its challenges more effectively than the United States is managing its advantages.

Chinese citizens have given Trump a nickname that captures the irony perfectly: "Trump the Nation Builder" (川建国). They view his policies as inadvertently advancing Beijing's global ambitions by systematically undermining American leadership. He provides China with something no amount of Chinese effort could achieve—the voluntary dismantling of American structural advantages. Every attack on European allies, every unpredictable tariff, every institutional withdrawal, every demonstration of policy chaos removes an obstacle to Chinese positioning without Beijing needing to act. Trump does the work for them.

What emerges may not be a new hegemonic order analogous to American dominance but something analysts describe as "mercenary multipolarity"—a world less integrated, more regional, more contested, with transactional relationships replacing alliance commitments and multiple competing governance models coexisting without universal standards. China doesn't need to dominate this system the way the United States dominated the post-1945 order. It simply needs to be the stable, predictable center around which others orient when American reliability has evaporated. That's a lower bar, and one China is methodically clearing.

From a millennial perspective, the period from 2025 forward may not represent Chinese ascendance but the restoration of historical norms after a brief Western interlude. China was the dominant power in its region for most of recorded history. The collapse of that position from 1839 onward was traumatic, but temporary. The question isn't whether China can achieve something unprecedented, but whether it can reclaim what it considers its natural position. That frame—whether accurate or not—shapes Chinese strategic patience and willingness to absorb short-term costs for long-term positioning in ways that electoral democracies struggle to match.

The transition, if occurring, is characterized by gradual institutional reorientation rather than dramatic confrontation—structural power shift rather than hegemonic war. The most significant shift isn't military or even economic but gravitational: which capital others orient toward when making strategic decisions, whose currency they prefer for trade, whose institutions they join, whose development model they emulate, whose stability they trust. On each dimension, the evidence through 2025 shows movement toward Beijing and away from Washington, not because China is forcing this reorientation but because American policy is making Chinese alternatives increasingly attractive by comparison.

The tragedy is the avoidability. Nothing required this trajectory. American advantages were substantial and could have been maintained and leveraged. Instead, they're being systematically dismantled through choices made daily and celebrated as patriotic. The American empire may be ending not with external conquest but with internal incoherence—not with a bang worth remembering but with a chaotic whimper that somehow proves more humiliating than honest defeat.

China doesn't need to beat America. It just needs to outlast American attention span, American political coherence, American willingness to maintain the global order it built. Every day that passes with America attacking its own foundations, China simply continues its methodical work. Time is on their side. They've been here for five thousand years. They'll be here for the next five thousand. The question is whether America, as currently configured, will be coherent enough to matter in fifty.

That's China Time. And by that clock, we're barely past dawn.