Even China isn’t convinced it can replace the U.S.

U.S.-China relations

By | Jessica Chen Weiss , New York Times

5/4/2023

There’s a view in Washington that China seeks to supplant the United States as the leading world power and remake the international system, , the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the �鶹��Ƶ and �鶹��Ƶ, writes in an . And China has fed these fears by building up its military, partnering with a revanchist Russia, pressing disputed territorial claims, and with its own rhetoric.

“But such ideological proclamations are in part motivated by insecurity – most Communist states have collapsed, and the Chinese leadership fears being next — and are meant more to instill domestic confidence and loyalty to the party than to reflect actual policy or fixed beliefs,” . “Ideology in China is itself malleable, rather than a rigid cage that determines policy and has been continually tweaked to justify the maintenance of one-party rule through decades of great change.”