At bustling Yangpu Port on China’s southern island of Hainan, ships carrying crude oil and petrochemicals ply briny, blue-green waters – a snapshot of the growing trade that is energizing Chinese workers on Hainan, now the largest free-trade zone in the world by area.
Luo Bin, a Hainan native who has worked at the port for a decade, says China’s trading heft and Hainan’s zero-tariff policies will allow it to weather the turbulence that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught has created for global commerce.
“The port is full,” says Mr. Luo, wearing a hard hat as he surveys crane operations on one dock at the facility, which handles millions of containers each year on 63 routes covering Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and the rest of China. The port’s throughput is growing rapidly, with new construction expanding its capacity, port officials say.
Why We Wrote This
For decades, Beijing has worked toward the same overarching goal: Rebuild China’s power, displace the U.S., and reshape the world order to better serve its interests. Under a second Trump presidency, it has found new opportunities to advance that plan.
“The impact [of the trade war] hasn’t been as big as we imagined. We have confidence,” says Mr. Luo.
Indeed, when Mr. Trump makes his anticipated trip to China this May, he’ll find a country emboldened by a trade clash in which it held its ground and, many would argue, came out ahead.
Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor
Chinese leader Xi Jinping matched Mr. Trump blow by blow in the trade war last year, leveraging his country’s dominance over rare earths and other vital supply chains to force the United States to a truce. The country opened up new overseas markets to increase total exports, racking up a trade surplus of $1.2 trillion in 2025. China’s exports surged a whopping 21.8% year on year in the first two months of 2026, far outpacing expectations. Criticizing U.S. protectionism, Beijing has used the opportunity to cast itself as the new world champion of free trade.
Overall, Mr. Trump’s second term has proved to be a gift for Chinese leaders, whose long-range goals include upsetting U.S. hegemony and elevating China as the preeminent global power. To be sure, China has massively benefited from the post-World War II order, and Mr. Trump’s destabilizing moves – including the Iran war – have clear downsides for Beijing. Still, every time the Trump administration chips away at the existing world order – by withdrawing U.S. aid or backing out of climate agreements, for instance – it gives China the chance to present itself as a more reliable defender of the global system. The trade war is perhaps the starkest example.
On that front, Washington seriously underestimated Beijing’s determination and readiness to fight back, experts say.
“China flexing its rare earth muscle was a game changer in the relationship and frankly in China’s position on the global stage,” says Elizabeth Economy, senior fellow and co-chair of the Program on the U.S., China, and the World at the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford University.
“The trade negotiations were bungled,” says Dr. Economy, who served in the Commerce Department during the Biden administration. “The United States dug a hole; then we basically managed to crawl ourselves back out.”
The upshot, in Beijing’s view, is a clear victory for China in the power dynamic between the two countries.
“This is a tipping point in terms of strength,” says Wang Yong, director of the American Studies Center at Peking University. For China, he says, this translates into “a new window of opportunity.”
“The East is rising”
China’s leadership deliberations are often described as a black box. In contrast to the openness and dynamism of the U.S. and other Western democracies, with their rapid churn of leaders, policies, and campaign pledges, tight-lipped Chinese officials stick to the script of tedious, multiyear plans.
But what it lacks in agility, China’s government gains in continuity. Historical research into high-level Communist Party speeches, documents, and media reports reveals that the government’s overarching goal hasn’t changed for decades: Rebuild China’s power, displace the U.S., and reshape the world order to better serve its interests.
To achieve this, China’s post-Mao leaders have doggedly and skillfully pursued the country’s economic, technological, diplomatic, and military rise, while at the same time working to blunt American influence, says Rush Doshi, director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“China had to pitch basically a perfect game to break into the ranks of the top industrialized countries, and it did it,” says Dr. Doshi, author of “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy To Displace American Order.”
Under Mr. Xi – considered one of the most powerful Chinese leaders since Mao Zedong, who led the revolution to found Communist China in 1949 – the push to eclipse the U.S. has become more aggressive.
Vernon Yuen/Nurphoto/AP/File
Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has wielded China’s trade and manufacturing dominance to punish other countries and coerce them to cooperate with Beijing’s agenda.
He has also used carrots such as Hainan Free Trade Port, a plan he announced in 2018, to deepen trade ties with the world, along with reduced tariffs and other measures. This year, for the first time in decades, China’s average tariff level dropped below that of the U.S. (measured by tariffs on the rest of the world, excluding each other). The shift helps legitimize Beijing’s claim to replace Washington as protector of the world trade system.
“China should become … a leader of global trade rules,” says Cai Qiang, director-general of the Hainan province Finance Department.
China’s global military reach still lags behind that of the U.S., as underscored by Washington’s war with Iran, which Beijing has largely watched unfold from the sidelines. But it’s catching up quickly. China has massively increased its defense budget in recent decades, nearly tripling it to $277 billion – second only to that of the U.S. – under Mr. Xi’s tenure.
In recent years, Mr. Xi has repeated a four-character phrase that speaks to China’s confidence about the future: Dōng Shēng Xī Jiàng, or “The East is rising; the West is declining.”
Dr. Doshi, who served as deputy senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the National Security Council during the Biden administration, says China has succeeded in gaining a dominant position in Asia, and is now advancing its vision for a China-
centric world order.
China is now so powerful, he says, that efforts to counter Beijing’s influence would require “collective action” with U.S. allies. “This is about keeping the U.S. at the leading edge, staying ahead, and even, in some cases, catching up,” he says.
But China is courting those allies, too.
Rallying the Global South – and Europe
In a gigantic, gleaming conference center in northern Beijing, hundreds of officials and scholars from around the world gathered in November for the Global South Modernization Forum.
With soaring musical introductions for each speaker, lavish banquets, and award ceremonies for friendly foreign dignitaries, Beijing promoted itself as a stable, responsible, and peaceful world leader – in contrast to Washington. It claimed to uphold core tenets such as sovereignty and free trade, and promised to make the world order more democratic, namely by giving Global South countries a bigger voice.
“No matter how the international landscape evolves, China will always be a member of the Global South, [and] keep the Global South in our heart,” Li Shulei, a member of the Communist Party’s powerful ruling Politburo, told the audience. Calls for developing countries to unite against the U.S. and West were also common at the conference.
“Global economic governance mechanisms have been killed by MAGA,” said Jiang Shixue, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, referring to Mr. Trump’s political movement during a panel session at the conference. “Developing countries need to speak with one voice to counter the U.S. attempts to drive a wedge.”
Beijing is also lobbying hard to win over European countries, with some success, calling for them to practice “strategic autonomy” in a bid to divide the traditional Western alliance.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP/File
Leaders from France, Britain, Germany, and Canada have flocked to China in recent months, despite concerns over China’s industrial dominance and support for Russia in Ukraine.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Mr. Xi in Beijing in January and struck a deal to reduce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for reduced Chinese tariffs on Canadian farm products. Days later, Mr. Carney warned at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, of the demise of the “old order.”
For observers in China, the speech was evidence that the global tides were turning.
Davos marked “the death of the Global North” as a concept, wrote Zheng Yongnian, dean of the School of Public Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, in an online Chinese publication following the summit. Western allies were “beaten awake” by Mr. Trump, and “the old order has collapsed,” said Dr. Zheng, a leading Chinese expert on the U.S.
China is waging a relentless propaganda campaign, both at home and abroad, to portray Mr. Trump’s policies as proof of the hypocrisy of U.S. diplomacy and the bankruptcy of American democracy.
Triumphalist commentaries in China’s state-run media have dubbed the U.S. a “failed state.”
Mr. Trump’s actions have “ripped away Uncle Sam’s splendid robe, leaving the empire’s disgrace exposed and making the world suddenly realize: So this is America – this is the real America,” said a commentary in the official Beijing Daily in October. “The halo is a mirage; the myth is fragile.”
What kind of world leader would China be?
Yet China is not as beneficent or benign as its propaganda suggests, experts say. Beijing has not stepped up to fill the void left by the U.S. in areas such as foreign aid, climate policy, and global security, preferring to focus on its narrow interests.
“China likes the rights of being a global superpower, but not really all of the responsibilities,” says Dr. Economy. “It is not interested in bearing the burden of global security and development, so it’s not prepared to be the sole superpower … the way the United States has been.”
Even China’s espousal of free trade is closely tied to its status as a manufacturing juggernaut. Beijing has relied upon overseas exports to drive its growth, especially following the collapse in 2021 of its property sector, and few countries can keep up with its manufacturing prowess.
Mr. Xi has been explicit in laying out this strategy: “We must leverage our strengths … tightening the dependence of international industrial chains on our country,” he said in a 2020 speech.
China can make most products “better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else,” says Deborah Elms, head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore. “They are such good living proof of the use of trade for economic growth and development, they’ve made it harder for everyone after them to follow a similar path.”
At the same time, Beijing has grown more bellicose under Mr. Xi, a quality that could complicate China’s ascent.
Take Japan’s Takaichi Sanae. Soon after making history in October by becoming Japan’s first female prime minister, she sparked Beijing’s ire by suggesting that her country could offer military support to Taiwan if China were to invade the democratically ruled island.
Beijing, which views the island as part of China, demanded that Ms. Takaichi recant her statement, and unleashed a scorched-earth campaign to punish Japan when she refused. This included a return to “wolf warrior diplomacy” that saw a Chinese envoy literally call for Ms. Takaichi’s head to be cut off, as well as a slew of economic sanctions.’
Ms. Takaichi held her ground, winning fresh public support and a landslide victory for her Liberal Democratic Party in snap elections earlier this year, cementing her power at home. Mr. Trump – who has generally been ambivalent on the issue of Taiwan – endorsed Ms. Takaichi as a “strong, powerful, and wise leader,” and the pair have worked to deepen Japan-U.S. relations.
The ongoing conflict with Japan illustrates the harsher reality of China’s rise, as developing and advanced countries alike feel the bite of Beijing’s diplomatic, economic, and military coercion – and highlights the ways China’s boldness could backfire.
Yet, even in the case of Taiwan, Mr. Trump’s return to office has opened new opportunities for Beijing.
Last year’s tariff war forced China to play the rare earth card, and revealed just how much power China’s supply chain dominance gives it. Beijing now seeks to maximize its choke hold over rare earths, semiconductors, and other supply chains, to use them as leverage in other situations, including Taiwan.
“Rare earths is a very effective tool, and they intend to keep it,” says Dan Wang, China director for the Eurasia Group. “It’s not just to fend off the threat from the U.S., but also the threat from Japan, Australia – all the other countries that potentially could go against China if something happens in Taiwan.”
China could also conduct an economic blockade of Taiwan – a military exercise it has actively rehearsed in recent years – to test the Trump administration’s will to intervene.
“China’s top leadership wants to take advantage of the time when Trump is in office,” Dr. Wang explains. If Mr. Trump’s response is “inadequate,” she says, it would give China’s leadership confidence to “do things that are unexpected.”
