For nearly eight decades, the United States has served as the chief architect and guarantor of the international order. But today, under the banner of “America first,” Washington is abandoning responsibility for sustaining the system it built after World War II. As the United States retreats from global leadership and challenges the norms it once fostered and the order it once upheld, the world is waiting to see whether Beijing steps up.

In countries long allied with the United States, views of China are becoming more favorable. A survey conducted by Politico in February 2026, for instance, showed that people in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom support deeper engagement with China amid declining confidence in the United States as a global leader. Beijing has been quick to encourage this view, presenting itself as a defender of multilateralism, a champion of the developing world, and a guardian of what it calls a more “just and equitable” international order. In this telling, China offers stability and cooperation at a time when the United States is acting erratically and unilaterally.

Yet a closer look at China’s record suggests that Beijing is not trying to replace Washington as a global leader or take on the burdens traditionally associated with superpower status. Unlike the United States, which built a network of alliances and underwrote the postwar order, and the Soviet Union, which controlled a formal bloc of communist states through the Warsaw Pact, China has shown little interest in assuming responsibility for a rival order or even a tightly organized coalition. Beijing instead seeks global reach without entanglement, partnerships without binding obligations, and great-power status without the burdens of leadership.

As China has rapidly expanded its network of strategic partnerships and positioned itself at the center of non-Western coalitions, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), it has prioritized flexibility over cohesion or control. China avoids formal alliances and resists long-term commitments in favor of arrangements that can be tightened or loosened at will. Beijing values the ability to act decisively when its core interests are at stake, but it is content to let others bear the costs of managing regional and global crises that fall outside those interests. In this sense, China has been practicing what might be called a “China first” strategy—prioritizing its narrow interests while disclaiming global responsibilities—long predating the current “America first” policy championed by the Trump administration.

Nowhere is China’s approach clearer than in its dealings with its closest partners. In Russia’s war in Ukraine and Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the United States, Beijing has provided economic and diplomatic backing while largely avoiding direct military involvement. Even as its strategic partners have faced existential threats, China has kept its distance. Beijing has also shown little willingness to restrain its partners’ destabilizing behavior or to take on the onus of bringing global conflicts to an end.

This “China first” strategy has in many respects worked to Beijing’s advantage. China has extended its reach without taking on much risk. It has projected the appearance of international leadership and persuaded many governments to support its preferences. Yet this same strategy comes with downsides. By eschewing deeper commitments, especially security guarantees, Beijing has struggled to convert its expanding network into ties that foster loyalty or collective power. Its partners are unwilling to incur major costs on Beijing’s behalf, and they hedge by forging relationships with China’s adversaries. China’s approach also risks destabilizing the broader global system. By minimizing its exposure to crises rather than actively managing them, Beijing perpetuates instability that threatens its own interests.

Although the United States and China have distinct geographies and historical legacies, Beijing’s experience nevertheless offers a cautionary lesson for Washington. A more transactional, narrowly self-interested global posture may reduce short-term burdens, but it comes at the cost of weaker alignment, less reliable support from partners, and a more unstable global order that ultimately leaves the United States—and the world—worse off.

China’s preference for flexible partnerships over formal alliances has deep roots in the country’s history. Since its founding, in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has faced what its leaders describe as the persistent threat of strategic encirclement—the belief that hostile powers, near or far, will rally together to constrain China’s sovereignty, security, and development.

At the outset of the Cold War, Chinese leader Mao Zedong sought to prevent that encirclement by forging ties with the Soviet Union. In 1950, Beijing entered into a formal alliance with Moscow that promised Soviet economic and technological support and a security umbrella. In many respects, the arrangement provided exactly what the new regime needed: resources, training, and protection. But it also came with steep costs. The alliance drew China into the Korean War on terms largely set by Pyongyang and Moscow, resulting in staggering human and economic losses. The war also derailed Beijing’s plans to seize Taiwan. In response to fighting on the Korean Peninsula, the Truman administration deployed the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, and the Eisenhower administration later signed a mutual defense pact with Taiwan. With Washington’s help, the island eluded Beijing’s control, leaving what Chinese leaders still regard as an unfinished task of national unification.

Within a decade, however, the alliance between China and the Soviet Union had collapsed. Ideological disagreements, rivalry over regional spheres of influence, and long-standing suspicions culminated in their split. For Chinese leaders, the lesson was enduring: alliances constrain autonomy and expose China to risks arising from the ambitions and conflicts of others. Since then, Beijing has avoided forging new alliances. Its only remaining mutual defense pact is with North Korea, an agreement it signed in 1961. Today, this lone alliance looks less like a strategic asset than a burden.

Even while formally allied with Moscow, Beijing began gravitating toward a more flexible approach to international alignment. From the early 1950s, Zhou Enlai, China’s first premier and the architect of its early diplomacy, warned against viewing the world as “simply divided into two conflicting camps,” one led by Washington and the other by Moscow. China, he urged, must maneuver among multiple powers, not bind itself to a single bloc. This logic later crystallized in Mao’s concept of “the three worlds.” According to this framework, at........

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