by Collin Meisel, Jonathan Moyer and Mathew J. Burrows
On its present course, the U.S. is set to be overtaken by China as the world’s leading influencer within the next 25 years.
Chinese influence has already surpassed the U.S. in 61 countries due to its substantial trade, investment and development assistance, according to a study we made of influence between pairs of states from 1960 onward with forecasts through mid-century across economic, political and security dimensions. China’s “inroads” include particularly Africa and Central and Southeast Asia in addition to eroding U.S. advantages virtually everywhere else.
Today, the Middle East is no longer fully ensconced in the U.S.’s sphere of influence in view of Beijing’s latest diplomatic coup reestablishing Saudi and Iranian ties and Saudi Arabia’s forthcoming entry into the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, referred to by some as a “semi-alliance” of several large Eurasian countries. And Western support for Ukraine — while the morally and strategically correct choice — has established conditions for further Chinese geopolitical gains in Africa. Western funds previously slated for humanitarian aid on the continent are expected to be redirected toward Kyiv, and Beijing seems poised to fill this gap with its Global Development Initiative.
The persistent loss of U.S. influence to China over the past two decades is the backstory behind the U.S. and West’s failure to lead global public opinion on Ukraine. In both the first and latest United Nations General Assembly votes demanding an end to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, India, the world’s largest democracy, abstained from voting alongside more than 30 other countries.
The gap between the Global South and the U.S. is much deeper than understood, as shown by a February 2023 survey of major Western and Global South publics. The Global South distrusts the Biden administration’s division of the world into democracy versus authoritarianism. For them, the world is already multipolar, and the U.S. and Europe are just one of the poles. Western publics, instead, see the world as divided in two — a Western bloc and a Russian-Chinese one — and believe it is the moral duty of the rest of the world to back the West.