Foreign Affairs
How China Wins the Future
Beijing’s Strategy to Seize the New Frontiers of Power
Elizabeth Economy
January/February 2026
Published on December 9, 2025
When the Chinese cargo ship Istanbul Bridge docked at the British port of Felixstowe on October 13, 2025, the arrival might have appeared unremarkable. The United Kingdom is China’s third-largest export market, and boats travel between the two countries all year.
What was remarkable about the Bridge was the route it had taken—it was the first major Chinese cargo ship to travel directly to Europe via the Arctic Ocean. The trip took 20 days, weeks faster than the traditional routes through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope. Beijing hailed the journey as a geostrategic breakthrough and a contribution to supply chain stability. Yet the more important message was unstated: the extent of China’s economic and security ambitions in a new realm of global power.
Beijing’s efforts in the Arctic are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As early as the 1950s, Chinese leaders discussed competition in the world’s literal and figurative frontiers: the deep seas, the poles, outer space, and what the former People’s Liberation Army officer Xu Guangyu described as “power spheres and ideology,” concepts that today include cyberspace and the international financial system. These domains form the strategic foundations of global power. Control over them determines access to critical resources, the future of the Internet, the many benefits that derive from printing the world’s reserve currency, and the ability to defend against an array of security threats. As most analysts focus on the symptoms of competition—tariffs, semiconductor supply chain cutoffs, and short-term technological races—Beijing is building capabilities and influence in the underlying systems that will define the decades ahead. Doing so is central to President Xi Jinping’s dream of reclaiming China’s centrality on the global stage. “We can play a major role in the construction of the playgrounds even at the beginning, so that we can make rules for new games,” Xi said in 2014.
Beijing has positioned itself well for this contest. It approaches these frontiers with a consistent logic and playbook. It is investing in the necessary hard capabilities. It is partnering with other countries to embed itself in institutions and flooding these bodies with Chinese experts and officials, who then campaign for change. When it cannot co-opt existing institutions, it builds new ones. In all these efforts, Beijing is highly adaptive, experimenting with different platforms, reframing positions, and deploying capabilities in new ways.
American policymakers have only started waking up to the full extent of China’s success at building power in key areas of today’s world. Now, they are at risk of missing its commitment to dominating tomorrow’s. The United States, in other words, is not just abdicating its role in the current international system. It is falling behind in the fight to define the next one.
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
In 1872, the British sent a ship to retrieve the world’s first store of polymetallic nodules: clumps of ocean debris that can contain critical minerals such as manganese, nickel, and cobalt. But it was not until the early 1960s that scientists posited these nodules could have significant financial benefits. In the mid-1970s, the U.S. company Deepsea Ventures, a subsidiary of Tenneco, claimed that it could fill nearly all the military’s demand for nickel and cobalt by mining the Pacific Ocean floor.
Deepsea Ventures never got the permissions it needed to dredge up huge quantities of nodules, and eventually, it folded. But meanwhile, other international actors had begun negotiations over countries’ rights and obligations regarding the world’s oceans. These negotiations culminated in the adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which came into force in November 1994. It included governance rules over the deep-seabed resources that lay beyond countries’ territorial waters. The parties to the convention established and, along with the world’s major mining companies, funded the International Seabed Authority to manage these resources.
China began its own research into deep-seabed mining in the late 1970s. Its scientists and engineers developed prototypes of submersibles and machines that can mine as well as survey the ocean floor. In 1990, Beijing established the state-controlled China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association to coordinate its seabed prospecting and mining in international waters. It built seabed mining capabilities into its five-year plans starting in 2011. And in 2016, Beijing passed a deep-seabed law designed to develop China’s scientific and commercial capabilities and to provide a framework for engaging in international negotiations regarding ocean floor resources. In the process, China created at least 12 institutions dedicated to deep-sea research and built the world’s largest fleet of civilian research vessels.
Xi has targeted the deep seabed as a priority area for Chinese leadership. “The deep sea contains treasures that remain undiscovered and undeveloped,” he said in May 2016. “In order to obtain these treasures, we have to control key technologies in getting into the deep sea, discovering the deep sea, and developing the deep sea.” China already dominates land-based global supply chains of rare-earth elements, and a lead in deep-seabed mining would only enhance its chokehold over these minerals. Deep-seabed mining would also advance another Chinese security imperative by facilitating the mapping of the seabed and the laying of undersea cables that can be used in support of naval and submarine warfare. “There is no road in the deep sea,” Xi said in 2018. “We do not need to chase [after other countries]: we are the road.”
When China cannot co-opt existing institutions, it builds new ones.
As China’s domestic capabilities have expanded, so has its role in the International Seabed Authority. Since 2001, Beijing has served almost continuously on the ISA Council, the 36-member executive body that makes key decisions about mining regulations, contract approvals, and environmental regulations. China supplies significant support to the body, including by submitting papers and commenting on drafts. It has placed its own experts and officials in key ISA technical roles, and it provides more monetary support for the ISA than any other country. It has positioned itself to exert greater influence in shaping the rules and regulations that govern the exploration and exploitation of seabed resources. Chinese firms have already secured five seabed mining exploration contracts from the ISA—the most of any country.
China is actively courting emerging and middle-income economies with its deep-sea capabilities, encouraging countries and companies that need Chinese-built platforms, vessels, or processing capabilities to align themselves with Beijing’s interests. China has established a research partnership with the Cook Islands with an eye toward eventually exploiting the seabed minerals in the area, and it is exploring a similar agreement with Kiribati. In 2020, in partnership with the ISA, Beijing established a training and research center in Qingdao to provide officials from developing countries with practical experience, such as operating underwater vehicles, and with opportunities for joint research. And within the BRICS, a ten-country group named for its first five members (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), China has sought to build cooperation via a BRICS deep-sea research center in Hangzhou.
But Beijing has also faced troubles along the way. Despite its cooperative initiatives, China is in a small minority of countries that advocate for a more accelerated approach to mining. According to a Carnegie Endowment report, in 2023 Beijing “single-handedly” prevented the ISA from discussing marine ecosystem protection and a precautionary pause on mining licenses. This places it at odds with almost 40 other ISA members, which support a pause or moratorium on mining until rigorous monitoring and environmental safeguards are in place. China has also not convinced BRICS members: Brazil supports a ten-year precautionary pause, and South Africa wants strong environmental frameworks and economic protections. India favors faster development but is wary of China’s use of research vessels for military purposes. And many governments in the Asia-Pacific, such as those in Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Palau, and Taiwan, are worried about military-motivated incursions into their exclusive economic zones by China’s deep-sea survey vessels. Although Beijing has not yet won the rule-setting battle in the ISA, it is not sitting still. It is investing furiously in dual-use seabed mining technologies—those valuable for both civilian and military purposes—such as autonomous underwater vehicles and crewed submersibles that will enable it to dominate commercial seabed mining and, as one Chinese military analyst wrote, attack opponents’ large ship formations and naval bases.
OUT IN THE COLD
The deep ocean is hardly the only frontier that Xi wants to master. In 2014, he also declared his intent to make China a great polar power. Like the seabed, the Arctic is rich in natural resources, containing an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil supplies, 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas, and significant stores of rare-earth elements. As the ice there melts, it will also be home to new shipping corridors—like the one used by the Istanbul Bridge. In a 2018 white paper on the Arctic, Beijing promised to build a “polar Silk Road” by developing such routes and investing in the region’s resources and infrastructure. It also reframed Arctic governance to include issues such as climate change and to advance the rights of non-Arctic countries. “The future of the Arctic concerns the interests of the Arctic states, the well-being of non-Arctic states, and that of humanity as a whole,” the paper declared. “The governance of the Arctic requires the participation and contribution of all stakeholders.”
Beijing’s interest in the Arctic is not new. In 1964, China established the State Oceanic Administration, a government agency whose mandate included conducting polar expeditions. Its Arctic-related research accelerated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1989, the government founded the Shanghai-based Polar Research Institute, and it expanded its Arctic research capabilities and partnerships throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2013, China became an observer to the governing Arctic Council, which consists of representatives of Canada, Denmark (which includes Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States, as well as indigenous peoples. Since then, China has become one of the council’s most active observer members, participating in a wide array of working groups and task forces. Chinese researchers continue to argue that China should play a larger role in Arctic decision-making because climate change has made the Arctic an issue of global commons and because Chinese companies are essential to Arctic shipping and energy.
Beijing’s efforts have encountered resistance. Arctic countries have grown concerned about becoming overreliant on Chinese investment and the resulting security risks. Canada, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden all rejected or canceled a number of Chinese Arctic projects in their territories. According to a 2025 study by the Belfer Center, of China’s 57 proposed investment projects in the Arctic, only 18 are active.
But while democratic countries have mostly closed themselves off to new Chinese investment, a different kind of state has opened its doors: Russia. Since 2018, China and Russia have institutionalized their bilateral consultations on the Arctic. Their relationship became especially pronounced after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022 and was economically isolated from the rest of the Arctic Council’s members. Since then, Chinese companies have signed agreements to develop a titanium mine and a lithium deposit, as well as to construct a new railway and deep-water port. Together, China and Russia’s capabilities for Arctic exploration, commerce, and patrol far exceed those of the United States. China has also used its partnership with Russia to enhance its military access to the region. Starting in 2022, the two countries have even conducted multiple joint exercises, including in the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and the greater Arctic Ocean, as well as a joint bomber patrol near the coast of Alaska. Beijing and Moscow have also teamed up to bring the BRICS more directly into Arctic discussions. They established a BRICS working group on ocean and polar science and technology, and Russia has invited the body to develop an international scientific station on the Svalbard archipelago.
China’s outreach, however, has come up short. Brazilian and Indian engagement with the Arctic has been primarily through bilateral partnerships with Russia. Some Indian analysts have expressed outright concern about China’s expanding role in the region. And despite the seeming alignment between China and Russia, Moscow has not supported Beijing’s pitch for an expanded role in Arctic governance. Their shared military exercises are largely performative. In 2020, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy to the Arctic Council, Nikolai Korchunov, agreed with then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comment that there are two groups of countries, Arctic and non-Arctic, and suggested that China had no Arctic identity. That same year, Moscow charged a Russian professor who studies the Arctic with high treason after he provided China with classified materials relating to submarine detection methods.
BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE
Then there is the final frontier: space. As early as 1956, China deemed space exploration a national security priority. On the heels of the Soviet and U.S. satellite launches in 1957 and 1958, Chinese leader Mao Zedong pronounced, “We too shall make satellites.” The country then followed through, launching Dong Fang Hong 1 into orbit in April 1970.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, China created an extensive space program driven by scientific, economic, and military imperatives. In 2000, the government published its first white paper outlining its priorities in outer space. They included making use of the resources of space, achieving crewed spaceflight, and undertaking space explorations centered on the moon. Space is also a particular priority for Xi. “Developing the space program and turning the country into a space power is the space dream that we have continuously pursued,” he said in 2013. In 2017, China laid out a road map to become a “world-leading space power by 2045,” with planned major breakthroughs. It has delivered: in addition to its advancing commercial space program, China has developed sophisticated space warfare capabilities, including a growing constellation of reconnaissance, communications, and early warning satellites. Of the more than 700 satellites that China has placed in orbit, over one-third serve military purposes. The country’s 2022 white paper heralded all this progress. Some U.S. space officials and experts believe that China will surpass the United States as the leading space-faring nation within the next five to ten years, including by being the first to return humans to the moon since the U.S. Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
As with the deep seabed, China’s significant technological capabilities and the frontier’s more open governance enable Beijing to play a significant leadership role in space. Beijing has become an important partner for other less developed countries interested in space research and exploration. It boasts bilateral agreements with 26 states. It also collaborates with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs to carry out experiments from its Tiangong space station.
Beijing’s most meaningful bid for space leadership, however, is the planned International Lunar Research Station, a joint effort between China and Russia first announced in 2017. It is slated to begin as a permanent base at the moon’s south pole and eventually expand into a network of orbital and surface facilities supporting exploration, resource extraction, and long-term habitation. China aims to get 50 countries, 500 international research institutions, and 5,000 overseas researchers to join the ILRS by offering them opportunities for scientific training, cooperation, and access to some Chinese and Russian space technologies. To that end, it has pitched the ILRS through multilateral organizations, such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
A Chinese rocket carrying three astronauts blasting off near Jiuquan, China October 2025
Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
Beijing and Moscow have positioned the ILRS as an alternative to the U.S.-led Artemis program—Washington’s attempt to get back to the moon—and to the Artemis Accords. The accords, established in 2020 by the United States and seven other countries, set forth nonbinding principles and guidelines for peaceful space exploration, the use of space resources, the preservation of space heritage, interoperability, and the sharing of scientific data. The accords are designed to be consistent with existing international space treaties and conventions; as of early November, 60 countries have signed on.
One senior Chinese expert described the accords as an American attempt to colonize and establish “sovereignty over the moon.” But China has been relatively unsuccessful at drawing countries into its venture. The ILRS has attracted only 11 states in addition to China and Russia, several of which have either no space program or only a nascent one. Two of the countries that joined the ILRS, Senegal and Thailand, later also joined the Artemis Accords. The broader appeal of the latter stems from several factors. Unlike the ILRS, the accords build on existing scientific, security, and commercial relations between NASA and other countries. They provide smaller states with opportunities to advance their own space industries. They offer clear norms of transparency, interoperability, and data sharing, and they do not entangle countries in Russia’s isolation from much of the world’s economic and scientific endeavors. Finally, unlike with the ILRS, countries that sign the Artemis Accords will have an opportunity to send their astronauts to the moon through NASA’s lunar program.
China’s broader approach to governing space has also run into difficulties. In 2022, only seven other countries joined it in voting against a UN First Committee resolution to halt direct-ascent antisatellite missile tests, which produce destructive space debris. In 2024, China abstained from a UN Security Council vote condemning the placement of nuclear weapons in outer space—a motion supported by all other members except Russia. Beijing and Moscow’s attempts to draft their own treaty on preventing and placing weapons in space have garnered support from only a limited number of countries, such as Belarus, Iran, and North Korea.
But Beijing has plowed ahead. It continues to push its governance frameworks and invest in space-related technologies. And if Beijing does return humans to the moon first, it will gain a powerful symbolic edge over the United States that will boost its efforts to shape norms and technologies in the space race.
HARDWIRE AND HARD POWER
China wants to dominate more than just physical domains. Xi also wants Beijing to rule the cyber realm. Over the course of his tenure, China has become a telecommunications powerhouse. His 2015 Digital Silk Road initiative has enabled two Chinese telecommunication companies, Huawei and ZTE, to earn approximately 40 percent of the market in global telecommunications equipment, measured by revenue. China’s Beidou satellite system boasts greater positioning accuracy than does GPS in many parts of the world. Chinese undersea cable technologies are also rapidly increasing their share of the global market.
Beijing also wants to set the global standards for future strategic technologies. Its initiatives, such as the China Standards 2035 strategy, have dramatically increased the number of Chinese participants in and proposals before standard-setting bodies. In 2022, according to Nature, Huawei alone submitted over 5,000 technological standard proposals to more than 200 standards organizations. (Some outside observers have reported that Beijing has undermined best practices by insisting that Chinese companies vote as a bloc for Chinese proposals and by offering companies financial incentives to make them, leading to a large number of poor proposals.)
For China, setting standards is not only about securing commercial wins. It is also about establishing favorable political and security norms. China’s proposal for a new Internet architecture, called New IP, is a case in point. In 2019, Huawei, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly submitted New IP to the International Telecommunication Union’s telecommunication standardization advisory group. According to the Financial Times, Chinese officials argued that the 1970s-era Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, today’s system for routing and delivering data, will not be able to support the demands of the future Internet—such as the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. Beyond technical practicalities, Chinese leaders believe that the current Internet, built on a U.S.-designed protocol, reflects an American-led governance system that does not align with Beijing’s interests. New IP, by contrast, embeds state control, including by making it easier for central authorities to shut down parts of the network. New IP is thus China’s bid to hardwire its own technical and political preferences into the global Internet.
Xi has targeted the deep seabed as a priority area.
The negative reactions to China’s proposal from Japan, the United States, and Europe, as well as from leading Internet engineers, were swift. Experts argued that the existing system was flexible enough to evolve and that New IP would fragment the Internet into state-controlled networks. Europeans pointed out that the current protocol had not hindered the development of AI or other important technologies. They also argued that established technical bodies, not the International Telecommunication Union, should set standards.
China worked hard to recruit support for its vision from emerging and middle-income economies. It created a BRICS Future Network Research Institute to coordinate R & D in 6G, AI, and new Internet protocols. It also made the case that its proposed Internet protocols, combined with its Digital Silk Road financing, equipment, and training, would help close the digital divide with emerging economies. A handful of African states—Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—stepped up to support the New IP proposal. But enthusiasm elsewhere was muted. Notably, as the China analysts Henry Tugendhat and Julia Voo have observed, there was no correlation between a country’s receipt of Digital Silk Road assistance and its support for New IP.
Some of China’s other digital efforts, however, are making more progress. Many BRICS countries, including Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, are cooperating commercially with Huawei. And China is trying to lay the foundations for a state-controlled Internet through a succession of new proposals and technologies. Huawei, for example, has rebranded China’s New IP proposal as “Future Vertical Communication Networks and Protocols.” As a group of Oxford University researchers has noted, China “forum shops” its proposals, often presenting the same or similar ones in multiple bodies, looking for buy-in. At a March 6G workshop before a standard-setting organization, Chinese participants pushed for a “completely new 6G core network” technology that enables greater control, which Huawei is already developing. Moreover, China continues to advance a routing system for Internet data that would grant network providers and governments more control over data traffic. Experts say that Beijing has rolled this system out in several African countries.
A RENMINBI FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
One of the last remaining pillars of U.S. global predominance is the central role of the dollar in the world economy. The dollar remains both the most traded currency and the dominant reserve currency. This grants the United States several advantages: lower borrowing costs for its government and corporations, the ability to restrict access to dollar-denominated transactions, and the continued primacy of U.S. financial markets.
China, however, is committed to expanding the international use of its currency, the renminbi, and to knocking the dollar off its pedestal. In the wake of the global financial crisis, China piloted a renminbi trade settlement scheme in 2009 with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Hong Kong, and Macau. China’s initial efforts to internationalize the renminbi did not gain traction, but it persisted. It introduced renminbi-denominated bonds, expanded currency swap lines with more than 30 countries, and established clearing banks to facilitate renminbi transactions in major financial centers. In 2015, it launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, which is designed to provide an alternative to the U.S.- and European-dominated Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT. Today, China’s payment system connects more than 1,700 banks globally.
Global finance, more than in any other frontier domain, has been fertile ground for China’s efforts to advance its interests through multilateral frameworks. Beijing has used the Belt and Road Initiative to push partner countries to accept renminbi in contracts. Some Chinese economists have even advocated requiring Belt and Road participants to settle in renminbi. These endeavors have worked: by June 2025, the share of China’s bilateral goods trade settled in renminbi reached almost 29 percent.
A humanoid robot at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, Beijing, August 2025
Tingshu Wang / Reuters
China’s efforts have been bolstered by U.S. and European sanctions. In a speech before the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Finance Work Conference in October 2023, Xi underscored the point. “A small number of countries treat finance as tools for geopolitical games,” he said. “They repeatedly play with currency hegemony and frequently wield the big stick of financial sanctions.” Iran and Russia, among the world’s most sanctioned countries, have obviously abandoned the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade. But Brazil, India, and South Africa have also supported the adoption of local currencies and a connected BRICS payments system, even if they have not expressed interest in undermining the dollar’s central role.
As with its other strategic endeavors, China’s efforts to promote its currency have faced setbacks. The renminbi accounts for only 2.9 percent of global payments by value, and its share in global foreign currency reserves actually peaked in 2022, at 2.8 percent. Today, it is hovering around 2.1 percent. Full renminbi internationalization requires greater capital account openness, financial liberalization, and less government intervention in monetary policy—steps that would risk undermining the Communist Party’s control over the economy.
But China is also willing to move away from the dollar and expand the use of local currencies without increasing the use of the renminbi. And at that, it has succeeded, thanks in part to Washington’s weaponization of the dollar and other countries’ concerns about the sustainability of American debt. Foreign ownership of U.S. treasuries has declined from 49 percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2024.
RACE TO THE TOP, RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Xi has made it clear that he wants to reform the international system in ways that reflect Chinese economic, political, and security interests. He wants China to lead in the exploitation of the deep seabed, the Arctic, and space. He wants to create a new Internet protocol that cements state control. He wants to create, invest in, and trade within a global financial system that the United States and the dollar do not dominate. To realize these objectives, Beijing has spent years—in most cases decades—marshaling an extraordinary level of state and private resources, developing human capital, trying to capture existing institutions, and developing new ones. Perhaps most important, Beijing has persisted. It bides its time, adapts its tactics, and seizes opportunities to make gains as they arise.
China has not won yet. In fact, in many respects, the country’s efforts have come up short. The world has not fully embraced China’s vision of change in any domain. Even middle-income and emerging economies, which China often purports to represent, have been wary of Beijing’s proposals. But China’s strategy has yielded notable success in each frontier. The government holds a leading position within the ISA. It has established itself as a leader in commerce in the Arctic, gained military access to the region, and is reframing narratives about who gets a seat at its decision-making table. In space, it has transformed itself into a top scientific and military power. It is making headway in standard-setting bodies that will help create and govern the world’s technological infrastructure. It has diminished the role of the dollar in the international financial system, increased the role of its own currency in foreign trade, and expanded the reach of its alternative payment system. And the capabilities China has accumulated in each of these domains, whether scientific, diplomatic, military, institutional, or physical, position it to keep advancing its vision. That means despite its failures to date, Beijing is unlikely to change course, and it will continue to make progress.
To respond, the United States has three options: step back and grant China the space it wants, try to find common ground, or actively compete. Option one is untenable; stepping back would impose material costs on the United States’ ability to ensure its political, economic, and national security. Option two is attractive, and the two countries could expand scientific cooperation in the deep sea and in space. But in most domains, the gap between the countries’ respective visions is too vast to bridge, at least in the near term.
That leaves only option three. But to compete, defend, or improve current governance in frontier domains, the United States will need to rebuild its capabilities and reclaim its reputation as a responsible global leader. Washington’s hard capabilities—including polar icebreakers, deep-seabed mining prototypes, financial payment innovations, telecommunications technology, and lunar exploration and other space technologies—either already lag well behind those of China or soon will. To fix that, the United States will need to invest in each.
Beijing could return humans to the moon before Washington does.
U.S. President Donald Trump has taken some initial steps in this direction by issuing executive orders that support the construction of Arctic security cutters, that deregulate space-related industries, and that support sending astronauts to Mars. Trump’s orders also support the development of seabed mining technologies. And Washington is backing stablecoins and other digital assets to enhance demand for the dollar, as well as promoting the American AI technology stack globally. But these steps do not provide the type of long-term road map that China has given its officials and industries. The United States needs a comprehensive strategy in each domain that includes a clear vision of U.S. economic and security objectives, significant investment in critical near-term hard capabilities, and sustained support for research and development to ensure long-term competitiveness. Financing these investments will require innovative forms of government–private sector cooperation, along the lines of the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act on semiconductors and Trump’s Defense Department partnership on rare-earth minerals with MP Materials. The United States will also need to work with allies and partners to ensure that these domains’ governing institutions reflect values of transparency, openness, and market competition. Otherwise, the United States will not be able to match China’s ability to change a domain by simply claiming it.
Washington will also have to reestablish its stature as a responsible global leader. Trump’s tariff war, for example, has accelerated de-dollarization by making the United States an unreliable arbiter of the global economy. As the economist Kenneth Rogoff has noted, threatening countries only encourages them to diversify their currencies. The Trump administration’s threat to ignore International Seabed Authority prohibitions on seabed mining will cause rifts with many U.S. allies and may upend the ISA regime. This could trigger a literal race to the bottom—one that China is far better prepared to win than the United States, given its capabilities. In areas such as Internet governance and the global financial system, Washington will need to deploy its full suite of technological, financial, and diplomatic tools to get other countries to buy into the U.S. vision.
The United States still has a window of opportunity to reaffirm its value proposition and align the world with its leadership. Despite Trump’s erratic behavior, Washington remains a more desirable partner for most governments. But the administration will need to reconcile its “America first” orientation with the reality of an increasingly multipolar world by combining transactional deal-making with a broader strategic framework that delivers real benefits to other countries. The first Trump administration’s creation of the Artemis Accords offers a useful model. It framed the accords as rules-based, transparent, cooperative, and inclusive while also providing capacity-building programs in areas such as space law, resource governance, and satellite data. Initiatives that embody this same type of innovation, openness, and true partnership distinguish American leadership from Chinese leadership, and they provide the best chance for sustaining U.S. influence across the uncharted frontiers of the international system.
