China’s economic crisis, while serious, is far less severe than many others erupting around the globe. Beijing still has several palliatives: its domestic market, productive capacity, technological sophistication, public capital, and state banking system. But there are limits to everything—and when a private company has to wait a year to be paid for a public contract, the warning isn’t orange, it’s red. In Russia, the war economy holds out because the Kremlin has freed itself from any obligation toward the population’s well-being and living standards—unlike the People’s Palace. Brussels expected Putin to go bankrupt after invading Ukraine; yet Trump’s America First and his bullying have knocked Europe to the mat, with France and Germany on the verge of a knockout. It’s naïve to think the world is going to change—it already has. In fact, it’s on the brink of collapse.
It’s the end of a long cycle—stretching back to the end of the Second World War—during which three generations benefited from economic growth and social and political rights. And not only in the United States and Europe. Globalism and multilateralism helped China grow at double-digit rates for years on end; they boosted the Asian Tigers; and even supported the most efficient African and Latin American economies. The downturn today is as drastic as the widespread perception that it hasn’t yet hit bottom. It will still get worse before it gets better.
First came Covid; then the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, which, layered atop this end of a cycle, fostered a more closed, nationalist, and security-oriented mindset. I often lament this growing mindset in China; but truth be told, it’s far from unique to here—it’s the new global virus. Around the café table, among friends, in boardrooms, between business partners; among former trade allies, now in opposing blocs. More than a new order—whatever form that takes—a new reality has already arrived everywhere.
It’s not the end of the world; rather, it’s the end of how we used to see it. And it’s on this chessboard that China plays its new opportunity. After all, despite its explosive growth in recent decades, China has never led international institutions, monetary systems, financial markets, or military power. Nor has a nationalist one-party regime ever before been able to lead global models—but today, everything is different. Looking at the United States, and at the growing radicalism in Europe, it’s easier to see China as an alternative. Its soft power and non-interference in the domestic politics of its partners make China’s economic diplomacy increasingly competitive when compared with Trumpist realpolitik.
The crisis is global—economic and political—but it’s also one of values and, above all, of expectations. The future cannot be imagined without Asia—whose epicenter is China. Yet Beijing, too, must reinvent itself if it truly seeks a new cycle of influence in the emerging order. Macau invents nothing; it lacks the scale and political culture for that. But it can still make a relevant contribution—if integration into the Greater Bay Area gives substance to China’s narrative of opening its doors to the world. On this side of the equation, the greatest ongoing contradiction is the illusion that one can close everything, hide a “China First” within, and convince the world it’s open. The logic is understandable: fear of a Perestroika. But that’s part of the problem—it delays the solution. Finding balance in such a split is very difficult, perhaps even impossible.
*Director-General of Plataforma
