The New Sheriff

China is moving swiftly to fill the void we've left. We're watching a superpower handoff in real time.

In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio snubbed the G20 Ministerial meeting in Johannesburg. It was the first G20 summit ever to be held on the African continent, and South Africa was the first African country ever to hold the group’s rotating leadership. (It’s our turn, next year, but no one knows whether by that point we’ll still be in the G20. Maybe by then we’ll be too broke to host it.)

Elon Musk, apparently, had filled Trump’s head with stories of the sorrows of the persecuted white people in South Africa, which made Trump very sad and caused him to offer the Afrikaners political asylum in the US.¹ (They politely declined.) So Rubio announced, on Twitter, that he wouldn’t go to the G20 because “South Africa is doing very bad things,” among them promoting “solidarity, equality, and sustainability,” which, Rubio thought, was like DEI.

The G20 was formed in 1999 at the initiative of then-Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin and then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. It was designed to be a high-level forum to address the massive debt crises then spreading across emerging markets. Since then, it has convened to as a forum for diplomats to discuss safeguarding global energy supplies, the structure of commodity markets, World Bank and IMF reform, terrorism, refugees and migrants, and competition in financial markets.

It’s highly unusual for a country to miss a meeting. The G20 amounts to about two-thirds of the world’s population, 85 percent of global GDP, and 75 percent of international trade—so most countries are keen to see their perspective represented and their interests defended when it meets. This time, however, the US didn’t send a single high-level diplomat.

South African officials, the Financial Times reported, “appeared to be baffled” by the American boycott. “This is not a South African event,” said one South African MP. “It’s a global event.” The Trump administration, the MP added, seemed “fundamentally hell-bent on isolating the United States, weakening its role in international institutions, and destroying its soft power.”

But China’s diplomats swam in, all sleek and polished. How regrettable that the Americans couldn’t be with us. They’re so peculiar these days. We hope they get the help they need. But there is no cause for alarm about global security. We’re from the CCP, and we’re here to help.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, reassured his G20 counterparts that in this time of “transformation and turbulence,” China had a vision for a “safer world.” Beijing, he cooed, would provide “a new path to security”—one without alliances, “zero-sum competition,” or “bloc confrontation.”

Typically, when China starts in with its shtick about “zero-sum competition,” everyone nods politely and says, “Look at the time! I must be off—I’m late to chair the Energy Transition Working Group conference!” For the past several years, China has been tirelessly promoting Xi’s vision for a post-American world. It has explained this vision, in careful Xi-speak, in massive policy documents, speeches, diplomatic meetings, forums, “global initiatives,” and international gatherings. China has given a great deal of thought to what a world that is no longer led by the US should look like, and until recently, the US has replied, “Dream on—we’re not going anywhere,” and the rest of the world has mostly tried to maintain correct relations with us both and keep a low profile, praying that when the elephants fight, they won’t be trampled.

In truth, the world was privately (and sometimes publicly) cool toward China’s vision. China’s neighbors, in particular, suspected the “zero-sum” world Beijing had in mind might actually be quite disagreeable—heavy on zero-sum surveillance, zero-sum political repression, zero-sum reeducation camps, zero-sum censorship, and zero-sum executions. No one is inspired by the fate of the Uighurs. Or Tibet. Or Hong Kong.

But the United States has gone bug-nuts. The Americans are now an outright threat to themselves, their allies, and the global economy. This has badly frightened a world long accustomed to viewing the United States and its vast power as providers of security, reasonably benign, and when not benign, at least not completely insane.

Frightened people are like baby ducks. If they can’t find their mommy, they’ll imprint on the first thing they see. So perhaps it’s not entirely surprising, even if it’s entirely dismaying, that much of the world has decided it’s time to give China’s vision another look.

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It’s instructive to spend a moment perusing a policy paper titled “Proposal of the People’s Republic of China on the Reform and Development of Global Governance.” Published in 2023 by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it’s a blueprint for a post-American global order. (It’s hardly the only document like this, but they’re all similar.)

The language is bland. It’s like a fortune-cookie stuffed with middle-management corporate jargon. There’s no revolutionary rhetoric. But concealed is this soothing language is Xi’s grand and architectonic vision. The US, it suggests, is the root of the world’s dysfunction. When China replaces the United States, it will be the stabilizer of an unstable world. It will transform chaos into order.

The new international system will not be organized around a single hegemon, nor around liberal, democratic norms. It will be organized around two key principles: sovereignty—meaning everyone minds his own business—and multipolarity, meaning the US will stay in its own neighborhood, where it belongs. As it explains,

… We need to respect the diversity of civilizations, uphold the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations, and let cultural exchange transcend estrangement, mutual learning transcend clashes, and coexistence transcend feelings of superiority. We need to jointly advocate humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, reject imposing values and models on others, and oppose stoking ideological confrontation. We need to attach importance to the inheritance and innovation of civilizations, fully harness the relevance of histories and cultures to the present times, and push for creative transformation and innovative development of all fine traditional cultures in the process of modernization.

Without a Xi-speak translator, this is so bland as to be meaningless. But if you download the app and run this through the Xi-a-tron, you know what these phrases mean. The references to “ideological confrontation” and “feelings of superiority,” are a rejection of liberal universalism. China utterly rejects the suggestion that its system is morally inferior to the West’s. It simply prioritizes different things. The vision is derived from Confucius, not Locke. Order over liberty, harmony over dissent. At home and abroad.

Xi is nothing if not prolific. Over the years he has disgorged list upon list of principles to guide the party in every conceivable circumstance, and it’s well worth your time to become acquainted with Xi Jinping thought, because the new world will be run on it. One obvious point requires mention, because it’s often forgotten: Xi is a Marxist. He adheres to what he believes is a science of history. In this view, capitalism has an inevitable fatal terminus. It collapses under its own contradictions. This is how Xi interprets the events now taking place in the West, and if China seems exceedingly well-prepared to step in as we falter, that’s because it is well-prepared. The Chinese Communist Party has been readying itself for this moment since it was founded in 1921.

Thus China rejects “double standards.” China condemns “unilateral military interventions.” China supports “political solutions” to conflicts. China is consistent. China is predictable. China is law-bound. The constant stress on these points is meant to draw an implicit contrast with the United States, which China always portrays as a nation that talks incessantly about laws and rules, but is in fact just a selfish bully who thinks laws and rules are for everyone else, not itself.

By contrast, China is respectful of others and their unique cultures:

… President Xi Jinping has put forward the Global Security Initiative.² It advocates a commitment to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security; a commitment to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; a commitment to abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; a commitment to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously; a commitment to peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation; and a commitment to maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains, with a view to jointly promoting a global community of security for all.

Again, this language is so bland you might at first think it has no meaning but phrases like “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security” are key to Xi Jinping Diplomatic Thought. They mean that China seeks to replace the current global security architecture, which is made up of alliances and regional groupings led by the US, with an alliance-free system led by China. China will have bilateral relations with everyone, and no one will be part of an alliance strong enough to confront China. By sundering the United States’ alliances, Trump has accelerated the realization of the vision.

China portrays itself as the champion of the Global South. It is critical of the Western model of development assistance, led by the IMF and World Bank. It argues that this assistance comes with strings attached, and these strings involve the West’s interference in things that are none of its business. China’s Global Development Initiative, Beijing says, is not political. If you’re a developing country, China would like to help you get rich, and it knows how to do this, because it has done it, and it has done it without doing all the disagreeable things the West keeps telling you to do: Hold elections! Let girls go to school! Don’t kill the journalists! “The West,” China says to its interlocutors sympathetically, “is always nagging you, pretending it knows what your country needs better than you do. Not China.” When China runs the world, you’ll be allowed to do anything you like to your ethnic minorities and your dissidents. No one will complain. It will be very harmonious.

China is keen to counter any suggestion that its own development aid might, like Western aid, serve cynical purposes. Having been criticized for inveigling struggling countries into debt traps, China now emphasizes smaller projects, stressing phrases like “local ownership” and “social benefits.” It presents itself as a better development partner than the West not just because it builds better infrastructure and asks no questions, but because it is simply better: China understands the problems of the developing world. The West does not. China is modest. The West is arrogant. China doesn’t conceal its rapaciousness with lofty language about human rights. The West does. The West causes problems everywhere. China fixes them.

Policy papers like this stress that China is outstandingly responsible in matters of shared concern, such as the climate:

… China attaches great importance to addressing climate change and maintains that countries should work in concert within multilateral frameworks to tackle this pressing global challenge. It is important to stick to the objectives, principles and institutional arrangements outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement, especially the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Developed countries should face their historical responsibilities squarely, take the lead in significantly reducing emissions, and deliver on their commitments of financial, technical and capacity-building support to developing countries. China will work with the rest of the international community to push for the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and to foster a fair, equitable, cooperative and win-win system of global climate governance.

The call for developed countries to “[face] their historical responsibilities squarely” is calculated to appeal to the Global South, which regularly (and with cause) criticizes Western climate hypocrisy. China now styles itself as an environmental leader owing to its prowess in green development, like solar tech exports and ESG investment, and uses these to promote itself diplomatically and commercially. Once the arch-villain of the COP conference, China has rebranded: It’s now the one-stop shop for the Green Revolution.

Beijing has similar ideas about other arenas of global concern. The same document stresses China’s support for the WHO as the center of a “global health community.” The language is drawn from Xi’s Health Silk Road agenda, inaugurated five years before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. Portraying China as the world’s foremost provider of health goods and assistance blunts, or is meant to blunt, criticism of its handling of the pandemic. Especially now that the US has twice withdrawn from the WHO and the Paris climate accords and ceased funding aid overseas, China’s claim to be the world’s leader in matters of health and the climate has become a reality. In the wake of our precipitous disappearance, countries that have overnight become wholly dependent on China to make up funding shortfalls will obviously know better than to ask impertinent questions about the origins of the Covid virus.

The document also treats technology and AI. When China’s in charge, or so it suggests, you’ll control your digital infrastructure as you see fit, free of Western interference. If you’d like to build a great firewall around your citizens, Beijing encourages this healthful practice. China’s efforts to establish parallel technology norms, particularly through institutions like the Digital Silk Road, are also expressions of this idea. The world China has in mind is not one in which information longs to be free.

As for economic and financial governance, the document suggests that China seeks an order that reflects the demographic and economic changes that have taken place in the world since Bretton-Woods. This would naturally mean a bigger voice for China and the Global South (for which China speaks). Beijing therefore rejects “decoupling” and efforts to re-route supply chains away from China. Most importantly, it challenges US dollar hegemony and the dominance of American financial institutions.

Note that Beijing does not suggest, in this or any similar document, that it wishes to destroy the world’s current financial and economic arrangements. Beijing seeks instead incrementally to remodel this system, and gradually to dominate it. Simultaneously, it promotes parallel architectures, like the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, which serve as alternatives to the West, and may be used at opportune moments to pressure it. So, for example, China both stays in the UN system (while reforming and increasingly controlling it) and it both builds and leads alternatives to it. Using this logic, China joined the WTO while creating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Belt and Road Initiative—a strategy of simultaneous infiltration and innovation. Though perhaps “infiltration” is the wrong word. China has every right to be active in these bodies. If we voluntarily withdraw from them, we can’t really complain when China dominates them.

Until recently, China had few takers for its vision. The US-led order allowed much of the world to become wealthy and free. To be sure, many thought the US could be extremely annoying, but most knew full well that China is not as nice as its policy documents suggest. In Asia, especially, alliances with the United States have seemed a much safer bet than whatever it is China proposes, not least because when Beijing is not offering blandishments about its responsible stakeholdingness and sustainable win-winningism, it is building legions of AI-powered, genetically-enhanced PLA soldiers to surveil, detain, enslave, forcibly sterilize, or assimilate everyone and everything that isn’t ethnically Han and fully subservient.

But just as it’s hard to imagine what more Trump could do to serve Russia’s interests, it’s hard to imagine how Trump could more powerfully make China’s case. China warned our allies and everyone else that it was unwise to repose one’s confidence in the US. Everything Trump has done in since his inauguration has been calculated (I assume unintentionally) to confirm and reinforce this message. How can anyone argue that the US is a “responsible stakeholder” when we let Elon Musk and a teenager named Big Balls Roto-Rooter our federal government and carelessly condemn millions to death? When our president wipes thirteen trillion dollars from the world’s major markets for no reason anyone can discern, unilaterally abrogates trade treaties that he himself insisted upon renegotiating, leaves critical international organizations with a flounce, abandons what we long claimed were sacred security commitments, threatens to annex our own allies, declares economic war on the world, and pointlessly insults everyone on the planet but Vladimir Putin, what can the world conclude but that China has a point—the Americans are just plain bad, and bonkers, to boot?

What was once noxious Chinese propaganda is now uncomfortably close to the truth, and everyone can see it. We are becoming what Beijing always said we were. American allies and partners are speechless and horrified. China is purring. And if the Washington is now disorganized, chaotic, bereft of state capacity, and unguided by any coherent strategic vision, this cannot be said of Beijing. China’s ability to carry out a plan calls to mind what the chess grandmasters said when they first played Deep Blue: “It’s like a wall coming at you.”

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This analysis from Shanghai’s Fudan Development Institute reflects China’s strategy, so far, in response to the Trump administration’s policies:

… China should lead the reconstruction of a win-win cooperation ecosystem by leveraging overseas investment, service trade exports, and its large unified market to strengthen its significance on the global supply chain and reduce dependence on the US dollar. Despite unequal short-term impacts on China and the US, China can accelerate high-quality productivity growth through institutional opening up and internal-external circulation mechanisms, ultimately reversing Trump's policy intentions and promoting global multilateralism. … Trump 2.0 era will undoubtedly weaken the US’ leadership in international affairs … With the US no longer able to dominate global issues as it once did, a new global governance structure may emerge.

Everywhere, as we retreat, China is seizing the opportunity to expand its role. Let’s look at this region by region.

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ASIA

In Southeast Asia, the dismantling of our foreign aid apparatus has left significant vacuum. China is filling it. USAID was funding child literacy and nutrition programs in Cambodia. A week after we announced their suspension, China’s aid agency announced it would fund programs with identical goals. “Children are the future of the country and the nation,” China’s ambassador to Cambodia said primly, standing next to the Cambodian health minister. “We should care for the healthy growth of children together.”

To this day, massive amounts of unexploded American ordnance is littered throughout the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao countryside. It has killed and maimed tens of thousands since the fighting ended. It may well take another hundred years to get rid of it all. Through USAID, the United States had in recent decades become a major donor to efforts to clean it up. The withdrawal of this support has given rise to reporting like this:

… Ho Van Lai was 10 when he came across a cluster bomb in Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province in 2000 while playing with his cousins. He picked up the small round objects, which detonated immediately, killing his two cousins. He lost both legs below the knee, one arm below the elbow and the sight in one eye. Mr. Lai, 34, who is teaching schoolchildren to identify and avoid unexploded bombs, said he was “very sad” to hear that the Trump administration was cutting funding for demining. “The US support for mine clearing efforts in Vietnam has given the US a good image,” Mr. Lai said.

In Cambodia, Sok Eysan, the spokesman of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, said it was the US president’s prerogative to cut these funds, but added: “Who created the wars which left these countries with land mines? Everyone knows.”

Shortly after we cancelled our de-mining program in Cambodia, Beijing announced it would fund it. To be sure no one missed the point, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said,

China’s aid policy remains consistent and clear. China’s principles of non-interference, not attaching any political strings, not giving empty promises remain unchanged.

For Cambodians’ sake, I am very grateful to hear this. The thought of Cambodian kids losing limbs to our bombs should make every American ill. But this is very bad news for us. We did not give this entirely out of the goodness of our hearts. The US has been concerned for some time about Chinese designs on Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base. We’d been working to beef up our defense relationship with Phnom Penh. Last year, Cambodia—for the first time—gave a US warship access to Ream.

Even if you truly do not give a damn about the literacy of Cambodian children whose limbs are still being blown off by the bombs we dropped on them, ask yourself: How likely is Cambodia to trust us next time we ask it to do something that might alienate China?

Since relations were normalized in 1995, the United States has pursued reconciliation with Hanoi. USAID was helping to address the lingering environmental effects of our toxic herbicides, like Agent Orange, and provide assistance to those maimed by the war. The State Department supported groups that cleared our unexploded ordnance. Now, joint projects on health, climate, and technology have been axed, as have efforts to search for the missing remains of Vietnamese and American soldiers. USAID was working with the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City on an exhibit about both countries’ efforts to overcome the consequences of war. It was to mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of relations. The project has been cancelled.

Trump’s tariff obsession is forcing Vietnam to choose between the US and China. Vietnam’s is now the fastest-growing economy in Southeast Asia, owing to an export-led development policy—one we urged upon it. Trump first proposed a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam for no reason, then changed his mind, also for no reason, reducing it to 10 percent during what he said would be a 90- day pause, also for no reason, and no one knows what he’ll do next, or when, or why.

Access to the US market amounts to a third of Vietnam’s GDP. China is its largest trade partner. If at the end of this 90-day hiatus Trump decides to slap 46 percent tariffs on Vietnam again, its economy will be destroyed. Vietnamese officials have been frantically trying to negotiate with Trump. He’s not interested:

Vietnamese officials in recent weeks have offered to buy more American planes and defense equipment and to eliminate all duties on US imports to Vietnam. But Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has said that would not address the root issue. “If they lowered our tariffs to zero, we’d still run about a US$120 billion trade deficit with Vietnam,” Navarro said Sunday. The issue is “nontariff cheating,” he added, citing the issue of transshipment, the practice of Chinese manufacturers rerouting goods via Vietnamese ports—or exporting components to Vietnam to be assembled into products and then shipped to the US. …

For the 17 million factory workers in Vietnam, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Over the past week, trade groups warned of mass layoffs as some US buyers begun pulling purchase agreements from their Vietnamese suppliers.

In 2023, Joe Biden visited Vietnam and upgraded bilateral relations, signing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Hanoi. According to the statement from the US Embassy, Biden and his counterpart

reaffirmed the importance of economic, trade, and investment cooperation and innovation-driven inclusive economic growth as the core foundations and sources of momentum in the bilateral relationship. Both sides pledged to create favorable conditions and facilitate the further opening of markets for each other’s goods and services, support trade and economic policy, and regulatory measures to achieve this aim; and to address issues such as market access barriers via the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. The United States applauds Vietnam’s progress in significant market-based economic reforms, and affirms its enthusiasm and commitment for a broad, strengthened, supportive, and constructive engagement with Vietnam in its transition to a market economy, and subsequently to market economy country status, under US law. ….

The Leaders commended close cooperation between the two countries to overcome the consequences of war, regarding this as a priority in bilateral relations that contributes to the building of mutual trust and understanding. The United States and Vietnam affirmed a commitment to completion of dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa Airport, expanding unexploded ordnance removal efforts, expanding support for persons with disabilities, regardless of cause, assisting in capacity building for the Vietnam National Mine Action Center, including integrating Provincial and National efforts on mine action, and maintaining support for Vietnam in accounting for Vietnamese missing and fallen soldiers from the war, including further supporting its DNA analysis capability.

We’ve undone all of that—and more:

… a program to help American businesses tap into Vietnam’s renewable energy grid. Two agreements to prevent the spread of infectious diseases from animals to humans, signed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A more than US$1 million effort to help prepare Vietnamese for worsening natural disasters. Funding for an American-style liberal arts university that had taken years for Vietnam’s government to approve.

All gone.

In 2018, we volunteered to clean up soil contaminated byAgent Orange at our former air base in Bien Hoa. Directly after this, Vietnam allowed a US aircraft carrier to dock for the first time since the war. We were midway through this project. We’d excavated 100,000 cubic meters of dioxin-contaminated soil. It’s just sitting there. USAID is warning that this cannot be left there, untreated, when the heavy rains arrive. The heavy rains begin now.

Vietnam has always been wary of China, but it now that it can no longer count on us, it needs a new strategy:

“There are questions about US reliability. There are questions about the future of the US-Vietnam relationship,” said a foreign affairs adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss government deliberations. “That old understanding between the U.S. and Vietnam that took years to build—we don’t know. Does it still matter?”

Years of efforts to reconcile with Vietnam have been squandered—and again, we were not pursuing these efforts entirely out of the goodness of our hearts. Upon Trump’s announcement of his new tariff policy, Xi immediately decamped, personally, for a tour of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia. He was received at the airport in Vietnam with (literally) dancing girls. The Global Times proudly reported Xi’s diplomatic triumph:

During the meeting, Xi proposed six measures to deepen the building of the China-Vietnam community with a shared future. China and Vietnam should strengthen strategic focus and jointly oppose unilateral bullying, Xi said.
Xi also called on the two sides to maintain the stability of the global free trade system and industrial and supply chains. Xi said leaders of China and Vietnam should exchange visits frequently like relatives. Building China-Vietnam community with shared future carries great global significance and China's mega market is always open to Vietnam, said Xi. Xi also urged China and Vietnam to jointly tackle online gambling, telecom fraud and other cross-border crimes. China and Vietnam should achieve more positive maritime interaction, Xi said.

In meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Monday, Xi said that China and Vietnam should firmly uphold the multilateral trading system. Xi also urged the two countries to work together to push for an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.

… the visits to the Southeast Asian neighbors show that amid US tariff threats and global trade turbulence, China remains as a trustworthy partner for Southeast Asian countries, and deepening regional cooperation is mutually beneficial for all parties, Xu said. According to Chinese official customs data, China’s exports to ASEAN jumped 8.1 percent in March, particularly, outbound shipments to Vietnam surged nearly 16.5 percent, while imports from the region grew 2.8 percent.

Nguyen Tang Nghi, dean of the School of International Relations, University of Social Sciences & Humanities under the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, told the Global Times that Vietnam, China and other countries in the Southeast Asian region may face similar challenges—all being “victims” of the US tariff policies. Therefore, we need to further open our economies and strengthen mutual trade and investment cooperation. Vietnam and China, in particular, need to be more proactive and decisive in promoting trade and investment, leveraging each other’s strengths as the tariff row becomes more intense and unpredictable, he said.

We’ve written China’s propaganda for them.

Xi returned from his trip with a slew of signed economic agreements. Vietnam’s National Assembly just approved a US$8 billion rail link to China.

We also abruptly ceased funding for the International Rescue Committee, which provided medical care at hospitals for refugees from the conflict in Myanmar. Hospital staff had to tell all of their patients to go home. The whole region saw videos of men carrying the expelled patients out on makeshift stretchers through unpaved streets. The images were all but stamped “Made in America.”

We had been working assiduously, in recent years, to court Nepal. “Washington sees Nepal as a critical constituent of its Indo-Pacific Strategy,” The Diplomat reported in 2023. The article noted a “flurry of high-level US delegation visits,” describing these as a sign of deepening US-China competition in South Asia.

I suspect the competition for Nepal is now over. We abruptly suspended our aid—including an important program to reduce malnutrition and an electricity transmission initiative. China wasted no time strengthening its position at our expense. The Annapurna Express ran stories with headlines like this: “Beijing “ready” to fill the void left by US in Nepal.”

… China is closely monitoring the potential impact of Trump’s policy on Nepal. China has already expanded its assistance in key areas such as infrastructure, agriculture, health, disaster relief, and poverty alleviation. In the health sector, China provides support to several major hospitals in Nepal, including BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Civil Hospital, and Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital. Last year, Nepal and China renewed a Memorandum of Understanding on traditional medicine cooperation, agreeing to establish the China-Nepal Traditional Medicine Cooperation Commission. Additionally, Chinese medical teams have been visiting Nepal regularly to provide healthcare services in rural areas, conduct personnel training, and strengthen medical services. … Chinese universities have also been deepening their engagement with Nepali institutions. Overall, China has significantly increased its support in areas where the US previously played a major role.

If all this is a disaster, the consequences of the shutdown of USAID for our ability to project power in the Pacific have been even worse. The Pacific island states are small, with few natural resources, and they are excruciatingly dependent on aid. The US was the region’s biggest donor. The most aid-dependent countries—the Freely Associated States, including Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia—are also the most strategically important in the event the US must respond to Chinese aggression against Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines. (It is not clear to me that we plan to respond to Chinese aggression—there or anywhere—but some members of the administration claim to be interested in doing so.)

The Biden Administration made a concerted effort to ramp up defense and security assistance to these islands. It signed security agreements with Papua New Guinea and Fiji, renewed the Compacts of Free Association with Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, and opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands.

The Trump administration also claims a keen interest in this region, but its actions are working to the very opposite purpose. Islanders care about one issue above all: climate change. They are uniquely vulnerable to it, and at this rate, they’ll disappear. It’s hysteria when Americans describe climate change as an existential issue. (I hope it is, anyway.) It’s just a fact when Pacific Islanders say this. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accords did little to win hearts and minds in those parts. Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, speaking for many, described the US as “totally irresponsible.”

In 2020, USAID created the Pacific-American Climate Fund to help Pacific island countries survive the effects of climate change. These programs, too, ended when Musk destroyed USAID. Radio New Zealand interviewed the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal, who said the shutdown of USAID was “an opening for anybody else who wants to fill the gap.”

China wants to fill it. On February, 15, the Cook Islands signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with Beijing. China has promised them trade, investment, tourism, new infrastructure, assistance with climate resilience, renewable energy, joint programs in agriculture, and assistance in developing their maritime shipping and seabed minerals. The deal, reportedly, comes with no debt.

Throughout the Indo-Pacific, China is systematically identifying the high-profile programs we’ve abandoned and taking them over. With the US out of the picture, China is intensifying its outreach to all of the small island states in Micronesia and Melanesia, where it has either revived or is expected to revive the infrastructure and climate projects we abandoned. China doesn’t have the long experience of overseas development that USAID did, and it may not be able to replace us seamlessly. But for people cut off from our support, any help, Chinese or otherwise, is better than none. Beijing is earning tremendous good will by taking over where we failed. We have lost it.

All of this profoundly harms Taiwan. It is harmed by our receding influence, obviously, and by the sandblasting of our credibility. Beyond this, though, our retreat from the region makes it much harder to deter or respond to China with economic pressure. Tariffs, threatened or imposed, raise barriers and uncertainty for trading with the United States. Other countries, including our allies, are now restructuring their trade networks to bypass us. Recently, Indonesia became the tenth nation to join the BRICS, which now includes half the world’s population and more than 40 percent of its total economic output. (Eight more countries, including Bolivia, Thailand, Kazakhstan and Uganda, are on the path to becoming full partners.)

Our isolation from these trade networks reduces our ability to maneuver in foreign policy. It decreases our non-military leverage. All of this makes it nearly impossible credibly to signal our commitment to Taiwan. It is no longer plausible to imagine we could muster up a coalition, economic or otherwise, to respond to Chinese threats in the Taiwan Strait. (USAID helped Taiwan, too, by collaborating with Taiwan on initiatives to bring development assistance to Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, for example in the Caribbean and Pacific. That’s over.)

In East and Southeast Asia, China’s dominance in trade is growing. Beijing is the powerhouse in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest trade bloc, which binds Southeast Asian economies to China’s market and from which the United States is conspicuously absent. Our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017 (and our absence from its successor, the CPTPP) had already indicated our retreat from Asia’s trade architecture.³ Trump’s trade war has now persuaded Asia’s leaders that the United States is a hopeless laggard with no hope of ever catching up to the region’s trade integration.

China not only trades heavily with ASEAN countries, it provides the consumer goods and investments that fuel their growth. Southeast Asia now sees Chinese products, from 5G networks to electric vehicles, as equal or superior to American ones. Our technological prestige is eroding. The trend is particularly visible in Thailand and Indonesia, where Chinese electric cars and smartphones are rapidly gaining market share​. Our new tariff policy is accelerating the trend. China has meanwhile redoubled its economic diplomacy. It has expressed keen interest in signing high-quality trade agreements and offering bilateral deals with other Asian countries. This will cement its role as Asia’s hegemon, and we will be irrelevant.

Cambodia and Laos were firmly in China’s camp even before Trump took office. But now, the countries that traditionally favored us, like Thailand and the Philippines, are hedging. The Philippines under Marcos Jr. balanced the US and China. Our unpredictability and our willingness to abandon our commitments to our allies has made even our closest Asian allies extremely nervous. China isn’t going anywhere. It will always be their neighbor. Its military and economic power is growing. Perhaps, they are thinking, a confrontational stance toward China is unwise.

ASEAN nations will keep trying to maintain good relations with us both, but from now on, they will lean toward accommodating China, not us. In the South China Sea, they will be more willing to cut deals with Beijing. Malaysia and Indonesia have now suggested they’re open to joint development with China.

Our treaty allies will try to keep us engaged, as insurance. Japan, India, and Australia have been trying to increase their role in Southeast Asia, through the Quad and through infrastructure financing, to offer alternatives to China. So China will not dominate the region outright, right away. But China holds most of the economic cards, and if US policies persist, it will hold all the diplomatic cards, too. It certainly now holds the propaganda cards, not least because USAID funded independent media in Southeast Asia. Chinese-controlled outlets such as Xinhua are now ascendant instead.

We also axed Radio Free Asia. Its shortwave services in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Lao were the only reliable source of news in those regions. Tibet is now an information black holes. No one in North Korea, China, Laos, Myanmar, or Vietnam now hears any news that has not been approved by a repressive regime apparatus.

Throughout Asia, China is filling the void we’ve left with purpose and discipline. It would be admirable—it is admirable—but for the fact that the world they mean to build involves a boot harmoniously stamping in the human face, forever.

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AFRICA

China has not been slow in its efforts to fill the void we’re leaving in Africa, either. Deeply unfortunately, there is little chance it will do so where it is most needed: There is no way China will be able to make up the shortfall in humanitarian aid. The people PEPFAR was keeping alive will die. China is not capable of running programs like those.

It’s trying hard to learn, though.

America’s aid machinery distinguished the United States from China and Russia in Africa. Moscow deploys mercenaries who kill everything in their path. Beijing mines for rare minerals, but Washington saved millions of lives. There is no longer a significant point of difference among the three powers, from Africa’s perspective. China will take over as the biggest provider of humanitarian aid. Beijing just announced, for example, an early childhood development project in Rwanda (where USAID’s similar program was cut off).

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the US has retreated from economic engagement entirely. Trump has no interest in Africa. We plan to close embassies. We’ve ended development finance programs​. So China is deepening its economic foothold across Africa, which it’s been cultivating over two decades of steady trade and infrastructure investment. In the late 2000s, it became Africa’s largest trading partner. In recent years, trade has exceeded US$200 billion annually, dwarfing US-Africa trade. Beijing has offered African countries what they most want: huge loans for railways, highways, and power plants; resource-for-infrastructure deals that secure oil, copper, and cobalt for China’s industries.

Reuters recently reported that China is building space technology partnerships in Africa—providing satellites, space tracking centers, and joint labs in an effort to establish itself as the world’s dominant space power​. China has now signed nearly two dozen space cooperation pacts with African countries, offering high-tech investments that Africans like very much, all while advancing Beijing’s strategic surveillance network​.

African leaders welcome Chinese capital for desperately needed infrastructure and appreciate China’s policy of “no nagging about human rights, no strings attached” in its economic deals. In exchange for this investment, strategic African resources (from rare minerals to telecom networks) are falling under Chinese control.

Beijing hosted a major China-Africa summit in late 2024. Xi pledged US$50 billion in new loans and investments for Africa over three years. That pledge, made before the USAID freeze, demonstrated China’s commitment to Africa’s development. Now that the US is in full retreat, those funds will assume even more significance. In the next few years, we can expect Chinese development banks to expand financing for African roads, railways, and industrial parks—all projects that yield influence—and perhaps to offer targeted grants in areas such as agriculture or health.

From infrastructure to peacekeeping, China expands in Africa to fill the space we vacate. Chinese naval access in African ports will grow as US security assistance wanes. Lacking American alternatives, African countries will adopt Chinese tech and its standards, like 5G networks by Huawei.

The Trump administration’s response has mostly been to demand access to African minerals or support for our diplomatic positions in exchange for assistance. This is only serving to alienate African countries and push them further toward Beijing.

It’s not just good will at stake. Around the world, our development programs were tied directly to our security interests. We were combatting al Qaeda in the Ivory Coast through a USAID program, for example, and collecting intelligence about it. In Iran, we were documenting detentions, executions, and the abuse of women’s rights. Now, no one is tracking this. We funded Persian-language media outlets. They had to fire everyone. So much for maximum pressure. We managed only to apply it to the regime’s opponents.

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LATIN AMERICA

The story is the same in Latin America.

China had already largely superseded the US as the leading trade partner for South America. In 2023, South American nations exported US$91.2 billion in goods to the US, but double that—US$181 billion—to China. (Two decades ago, the US was the top trade destination for almost all countries in the region.) Our new trade policies are accelerating this trend. China’s trade with South America already exceeded Washington’s; now, China is ramping up its lending.

Trump’s threats of additional tariffs on neighbors like Mexico and Canada have sent a very clear signal to Latin capitals.​ Beijing has been quick to capitalize. A striking example is the megaport of Chancay in Peru, a US$3.5 billion Pacific port project part-owned by China, which President Xi Jinping personally inaugurated in 2024​. In light of Trump’s tariffs, the region is now reorienting supply lines through the Chinese-backed port. Colombia announced a new shipping route via Chancay, and Brazil fast-tracked its use of the port to shorten transit times (by ten days, compared to Atlantic routes).

Developments like this not only increase China’s logistical influence, but put Peru in a position that was unthinkable 10 years ago: It’s now a key trade hub​. Given the volatility of the US, Latin American leaders are welcoming Chinese investment and markets, and nothing we say to them about the unwisdom of this is apt to be persuasive. (At this point, I wouldn’t be persuaded, either.)

China has now secured long-term oil and mineral supply deals in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Chile, stepping in as US involvement recedes. The US remains the largest trading partner for Colombia and Ecuador—but the trend is decisively toward China.

So we are seeing the end of the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. The US has been the dominant external power in the Western Hemisphere for two centuries, but Latin American is now welcoming extra-hemispheric players like China (and Russia, to some extent) to balance us, and Trump’s nuttiness and antagonism is hastening the process. Brazil, under Lula, has re-engaged enthusiastically with China, and with Trump back, Brazil is fast-tracking integration with Chinese trade infrastructure. US protectionism makes Chinese markets even more crucial.

US foreign aid was a key tool in Central America, where grants were designed to lessen migratory pressures, and the Caribbean, where we provided disaster relief and development aid. The freeze of almost all US foreign aid is driving Latin American countries closer to China.

Colombia, for example, received about US$385 million in USAID funding in 2024. Now the Chinese government is keen to put up money to help fill the void. Northern Triangle countries, for example—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador—will lose US aid aimed at economic development and countering gangs. (This will drive northward migration, naturally.) China can’t solve this, but it will support visible development projects. Chinese companies are already active in Latin American infrastructure and energy. They build highways, power plants, and telecom networks. With US funds gone, governments are now turning to Beijing for investment in everything from ports to public housing.

In Venezuela, sanctioned by the US, Chinese aid (often in the form of oil-for-loan deals) has long been a lifeline. China will continue to support the countries we ostracize. Cuba will capitalize upon the opportunity to get more help from China.

Latin America isn’t a traditional foreign aid recipient the way Africa and Asia are: Many Latin countries are middle-income. So the impact of US aid withdrawal is felt more in political terms and in targeted programs (like peace-building in Colombia or anti-narcotics efforts). But China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere will grow by default: The US is writing off the region, treating it as nothing more than a source of migrants and drugs, but China is bringing commerce and development.

Smaller countries that once relied on US aid or security cooperation are no longer getting it, so what’s the downside in deepening ties with Beijing? Even Colombia, a close US ally, historically, is hedging: Gustavo Petro is engaging with China on areas like tech and perhaps even security training as relations with the US go downhill.

The region will play China and the US off for its own benefit. Countries that are already heavily indebted to China (like Ecuador, with oil-for-loan deals) are more cautious now about taking on new Chinese loans. Pro-US constituencies—militaries, center-right parties—in some countries will resist a close alignment with China. So the shift may not be uniform: we might see a split where some nations align more with China (Venezuela, Bolivia, maybe Argentina, if its politics swing left again), while others maintain stronger US ties (Paraguay, which still recognizes Taiwan, or Mexico due to whatever we now call NAFTA, if we don’t pull out of it). But the overall landscape will be one of a greatly enhanced Chinese presence—economically, through investments and infrastructure, diplomatically, through forums like CELAC-China summits, and even culturally, with growing interest in Mandarin and Chinese tourism.

The Trump administration has been trying desultorily to pry countries away from China’s orbit, pressuring Panama to quit the BRI, for example. Panama did withdraw under US pressure when Trump threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, claiming (falsely) that China controlled it. But this kind of pressure will amount to nothing if we have nothing attractive to offer. If US aid and economic cooperation dry up, Latin American leaders have no reason to resist China, and if we continue to bully countries like Panama, they will have every incentive to draw closer to China, instead. The long-term outcome will be hemispheric realignment, with China enjoying far more access and clout in a region we once considered our sphere of influence.

Beijing exploits every one of Trump’s insults. When Trump publicly threatened the president of Colombia, China’s ambassador in Bogotá jubilantly tweeted that China’s ties to Colombia were at their “best moment,” posting cheery photos of Lunar New Year celebrations in Bogotá.

We, of course, just keep insulting everyone.

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EUROPE

European Union countries have closed ranks. Rather than capitulate to Trump, major EU economies are trying to strengthen the EU’s trade defenses and reduce its vulnerability. But Trump is encouraging Europeans to open their minds about engagement with China. Europe’s leaders don’t want to be beholden to a wholly unpredictable US.

Beijing sees this as an opportunity to repair and enhance relations with Europe. Chinese officials have indicated their interest in reviving an investment deal with the EU. They’re emphasizing cooperation on climate change and free trade, suggesting that Europe and China could align against US protectionism​. Ursula von der Leyen just joined climate talks with Xi. China, as usual, positioned itself as a stable economic partner and counterweight to Trump’s erraticism. The US didn’t show up.

Beijing will try to drive wedges between the US and EU by offering Europe incentives like preferential access to the Chinese market for European companies—in much the way drug dealers give out the first sample for free—or collaboration in reforming global institutions where the US has withdrawn. Beijing will probably offer Europe partnerships, for example, in green technology or finance. The extent to which Europe leans toward China will vary by country. Eastern European states like Poland or the Baltics remain deeply wary of both Russia and China and will probably try to cling to the US security umbrella with all their might. Western European powers might be more open to balancing relations.

Europe remains cautious about China, of course. The EU still labels China a “systemic rival,” and it’s proceeding with de-risking strategies (like screening Chinese investments in sensitive sectors). But if this continues, EU-China economic cooperation will deepen by necessity.

China is already one of Europe’s top trading partners EU-China trade in goods exceeded €700 billion in 2024. Europe will probably try to stay aligned with the US on core security issues, if it can, while pursuing trade and investment with China to hedge against US volatility.

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China’s ascent isn’t completely unchallenged. Japan, India, and many EU states are bolstering their own coalitions, like the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a project the US endorsed to counter the BRI​, hoping to prevent Beijing from setting all the rules of global trade. But the overall direction is clear.

Over the past two decades, China’s global development financing was already comparable to that of the US in dollar amounts, though very different in character. A comprehensive AidData study found that China spent about US$1.34 trillion on 18,000 overseas projects between 2000 and 2021 (mostly through loans and infrastructure investments), averaging US$61 billion per year​. In roughly the same period, the US disbursed about US$1.24 trillion in foreign aid, including military aid. Annual US foreign aid outlays in recent years were around US$45–50 billion (USAID paid out $43.8 billion in 2023)​ So China and the US have been comparable players, financially, in global development.

But the composition and intent of the funding differed markedly. Most US assistance was provided as grants or highly concessional loans, focused on humanitarian relief, health (like PEPFAR), education, and governance. The US invested in human capital and stability​. China deployed the bulk of its funds as loans or commercial investments in sectors like energy, transport, and mining—high-visibility infrastructure that advanced China’s trade interests​. In Africa, the US fought AIDS and Ebola; China financed railways and dams​.

Despite China’s vast loans, the sudden US aid freeze still leaves a void that can’t be filled. American aid programs were deeply embedded in local communities. It’s not just money that disappeared with USAID, but decades of technical expertise and relationships that can’t be easily replaced.

Beijing won’t bankroll all the programs the US supported, because it can’t. Chinese knows how to build infrastructure, it doesn’t have the capacity to build social services, and China faces its own economic constraints, given its slowing growth. It’s more risk-averse in lending now than it was a decade ago.

But the shift in perception is night and day. African leaders now see China as reliable and steady and the US as fickle, treacherous, and more than a bit ridiculous. Even American allies like Kenya and Ghana are deepening their ties to China lest they be left exposed by our disengagement.

Chinese state media are hammering the point home, insisting that USAID was a tool of US hegemony and cheering its dismantling​. The Global Times claimed the US used aid to spark color revolutions and “indoctrinate proxies.” China’s aid, it stressed, is respectful of sovereignty​. This propaganda resonates in some of these countries. It’s backed by China’s record of non-interference in matters of human rights.

Even partial efforts by China will yield outsized political gains, given that America’s reputation as a reliable partner is now so tarnished. Worldwide, leaders and publics are watching the way the US treats its allies and drawing the obvious conclusions. These stories aren’t prominent in the US media. But they are prominent everywhere else. To gain influence, China doesn’t need to replace every dollar of US aid. It only needs to present itself as more dependable and respectful than the US—and right now, that’s not hard, because we’re setting new lows in flakiness and disrespectfulness.

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US foreign policy has long derived its strength from our ability to attract and persuade other nations by promoting a culture, values, and policies they have seen as legitimate. The United States is committing soft power suicide. The combination of slashing foreign aid, publicly berating allies, embracing autocrats, and politicizing traditionally independent institutions has severely eroded America’s image​. Trump’s lunacy—for example, threatening NATO partners while flirting with their adversary—has left even our closest allies deeply estranged. American moral authority is in the gutter. ​This is entirely to China’s benefit.

Xi just attended a virtual climate summit with other world leaders. The US wasn’t even invited. He took the opportunity to rebuke US protectionism and unilateralism, saying “some major country’s persistent pursuit of unilateralism and protectionism” was disrupting the international order​. He pledged that China “would not slow down its climate actions” and bragged about China’s world-leading investments in renewable energy​. The symbolism was lost on no one. China and the rest of the world are forging ahead on global issues while the US is absent.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, also in attendance, reinforced this by saying “no group or government can stop the clean energy revolution,”​ an implicit rebuke of the Trump administration’s climate policies. We might gag, but this carefully cultivated image plays well in many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In recent years, Xi announced China’s Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative. All come with Xi-isms about “win-win cooperation” and “indivisible security.” At that G20 foreign ministers’ forum in February, Wang Yi repeated the call for a “new path to security” without military alliances and bloc confrontations. This is sounding better and better to countries who are uneasy about US-China rivalry and looking for a middle path. When China says, “Let’s have a safer world where development matters more than ideology,” it’s appealing, particularly when it contrasts with US moralizing and coercion. There are many reasons to doubt that the world to come will be as happy as China says, but when people have nowhere else to turn, they hear what they want to hear.

Beijing’s diplomats are adept at using social media to speak directly to foreign publics directly. American envoys are on the defensive (or worse, the offensive). China’s diplomats tend to avoid criticizing their host countries. Ours—writing for their audience of one—have a growing tendency to castigate their hosts.

Chinese state media amplifies the notion that the US is in decline and China is rising. Chinese media tirelessly promote China’s benevolence, with stories of Chinese vaccines saving the day during the pandemic, Chinese engineers building roads and bridges. Chinese state broadcasters (CGTN Africa, for example) and radio have expanded their reach, offering programming that stresses China’s achievements in development and its great friendship with and respect for the target nation. Trump axed Voice of America and other US broadcasters, so Beijing’s line has no competitors.

China conducts cultural diplomacy, too, through programs like the Confucius Institutes, scholarships for foreign students, and high-profile international events. We now become hysterical when the State Department funds a comic book promoting education in the United States.

Foreign students have become wary of studying in the US. China is offering university scholarships to thousands of students. Many Malaysians, for example, are now studying in China on Chinese government grants. Exchanges like these create a network of foreign elites familiar with and often sympathetic to China, just as they did when those elites studied in the US. Beijing also organizes training programs for foreign officials in governance and development, implicitly promoting the Chinese model—economic growth without freedom.

China will host the Asian Cup football tournament in 2027 and perhaps bid for the Olympics. And as China’s middle class travels, Chinese tourists and businessmen act as informal ambassadors. Meanwhile, US cultural influence, long disseminated through Hollywood, universities, and popular culture, is fading. Stories of tourists being abused or kidnapped by our border police have caused tourism to the US to plunge.

Of course, this doesn’t mean everyone is suddenly blind. The world still sees Chinese warships and fighter jets. These dampen the goodwill. Democracies remain deeply skeptical of China’s political system. European publics might do business with China, but they will still prefer American culture, especially in its Canadian form.

China’s ability to deliver on its promises, too, is constrained by its economic and fiscal situation. After a decades-long lending spree, China faces a backlash over debt: Several BRI recipient countries, such as Sri Lanka and Zambia, have struggled to repay Chinese loans, making Beijing more cautious. China’s leadership prioritizes domestic economic stability: It may not be able to pour out enough money abroad to fully capitalize on US mistakes.

The values of the EU and major states like Germany and France align far more with the old US-led order than with China’s vision. But we are no longer keen to defend that order, and Europe is pursuing “strategic autonomy.” Macron has been courting Xi, suggesting that Europe won’t be “America’s followers” on issues like Taiwan. If Trump’s America continues to be an unreliable partner or a rival in a trade war—or even a shooting war—Europe will incrementally deepen engagement with China to protect its interests. Trump has vindicated everyone in Europe who ever argued for more independence from US foreign policy. Should that translate into concrete policies—like the EU developing its own global infrastructure fund (as it has with the Global Gateway, a sort of answer to BRI)—the global leadership gap might be filled by China and Europe together, rather than by China alone​.

There have been protests against Chinese mines in Africa; there is skepticism of Huawei in Europe, and it is no simple thing to translate economic power into political affection. No one can fully replace what American leadership provided, especially in global public goods such as disaster relief or security guarantees.But the world is unhappily adjusting to its new circumstances. The US has now become unreliable, and a proliferation of regional and issue-based coalitions have emerged—from the strengthening of cooperation among middle powers like Japan and India, to efforts by European and Asian allies to increase their self-reliance. Trump is bringing into being a multipolar world in the place of one centered on Washington. This is exactly what China has always wanted, and it will be the single biggest beneficiary.

If the current trajectory extends through Trump’s term, we’ll see the entrenchment of new relationships and institutions led by China, and we will see Chinese standards dominate the developing world. This will be lasting. It will never be undone. A “new global governance structure,” as China puts it, could indeed emerge, one without US primacy. The US might someday realize what it’s lost and attempt to reclaim its leadership—but that will be an uphill battle.

China’s vast market and financing capabilities have made it indispensable, economically, across multiple regions, precisely as we are making ourselves intolerable. Rather than isolating Beijing, the US has isolated itself.

1. It is absolutely true that white farmers in South Africa have been murdered at a staggering pace. So have black farmers, however—at exactly the same pace—and neither white nor black farmers are being murdered at the rate of the general population. The number of farmers (of any race) murdered every year has been roughly the same as the number of South Africans murdered every day. The issue is not race, but South Africa’s appalling homicide rate, which is one of the highest in the world. (The top six, in order, are Brazil, Nigeria, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States.)

Source: The Washington Post

The land bill signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa allows seizures by the state without compensation, but not arbitrarily; the law sets out specific procedures, rules, and regulations for expropriation. This is not, in fact, a new policy: The pre-democratic Expropriation Act of 1975 also allowed the government to expropriate land. But the reasons for doing so have changed.

Land reform has long been a violently contested issue in South Africa. The Natives Land Act of 1913 restricted black people from buying or renting land, leading to the forcible removal of black farmers from land they had long been cultivating. After the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC government said it wanted to return 30 percent of this land to its previous owners by 2014. This didn’t happen. Only white farmers, by this point, possessed the skill and the capital required to farm efficiently, and there were (reasonable) concerns that transferring the land without those would lead to crop failure and starvation. The ANC concluded that Zimbabwe’s disastrous land reform was hardly an attractive model to emulate, and plans for land reform stalled.

Nonetheless, the problem remained. Everyone appreciates that land tenure in South Africa rests on an unjust foundation—white people make up 7 percent of the population, but own 80 percent of the farmland—but no one has been sure what to do about it. The new law, which passed with multi-party support, was the product of a five-year consultative process and a presidential panel established to study the issue. It is unlike Zimbabwe’s policy in that expropriations in Zimbabwe proceeded without the oversight of the legislature or the courts and entirely at the president’s pleasure. On paper, at least, the new law is not significantly different from those in many democratic countries that reserve the right of expropriation in the public interest (best known to Americans as eminent domain). We’ll see how it goes in practice. Problems like this require Solomonic wisdom. I’m not sure I’d describe South Africa’s government as possessing this in abundance, but I don’t really know much about South Africa. This is supposed to be a good book about South African land reform, if you’re interested. I haven’t read it.

Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson have promoted the claim that white South Africans are facing genocide, for which there is no evidence at all. Trump believed them, though, so he issued an executive order offering Afrikaners asylum in the US, the sole exception to his policy of halting all refugee resettlement in the US. He also used the issue to justify halting all aid to Africa, including PEPFAR funds. Afrikaners, who had been lobbying the Trump administration to put pressure on the government to repeal the land bill, were horrified:

… Afrikaner groups hastily called a press conference on Saturday to respond to the Trump order. “We did not accuse the government of large-scale, race-based land grabs or distribute false information in this regard,” said Flip Buys, leader of the Solidarity Movement, a coalition of Afrikaner groups. “We did not and will not ask for sanctions against South Africa, or for funds for vulnerable people to be cut off by the US government,” he added.

… “We want to say categorically that we are fully committed to the African continent and to this country,” said [Kallie Kriel, chief executive officer of AfriForum, the largest lobby group in the Afrikaner community] whose organization has 315,000 members. “As Afrikaners, we will not survive elsewhere. So we will not be leaving the country.”

2. This devolves from Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy—“a major theoretical achievement of combining the basic principles of Marxism with the diplomatic practice of major countries with Chinese characteristics. It is the concentrated embodiment of the Party Central Committee’s thought of governing the country and rational government with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core in the field of diplomacy.” During the first five years of Xi’s leadership, China’s budget for diplomacy doubled. Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy contains Ten Insistences (the CCP loves numbered lists—perhaps a sinologist in the audience could explain why.). It insists upon

1. strengthening the centralized and unified leadership of the Party over foreign affairs with the maintenance of the authority of the Party Central Committee as the overall guide;

2. promoting China's major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics with the mission of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation;

3. promoting the building of a community of common destiny for humankind with the purpose of maintaining world peace and promoting common development;

4. strengthening strategic confidence with socialism with Chinese characteristics as the fundamental principle;

5. promoting the construction of the “Belt and Road” with the principle of extensive consultation, joint construction and shared benefits;

6. taking the path of peaceful development based on mutual respect and win-win cooperation;

7. building a global partnership based on deepening diplomatic layout;

8. leading the reform of the global governance system with the concept of fairness and justice;

9. safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests with the core interests of the country as the bottom line;

10. shaping the unique style of China's diplomacy with the combination of the fine traditions of foreign affairs and the characteristics of the times as the direction.

3. See one of the first stories we published at CG: Forget it, Jake. It's China's Town.