A recent Pew Research Center study found that people in most of the 36 countries surveyed now view China more favorably than the United States. More respondents also expressed confidence in Xi Jinping than in Donald Trump on world affairs. The findings suggest that Beijing’s international standing has improved even as Washington’s global image has weakened.
Yet beneath China’s growing international influence lies a striking paradox. As Beijing appears more secure abroad, it has become increasingly preoccupied with reducing dependence on the highly global networks that enabled its rise.
Why would a country that has benefited more than almost any other from globalization become increasingly wary of the system that fueled its ascent? Most explanations point to strategic rivalry with the United States, export controls, and intensifying technological competition. These factors matter, but they explain what China is doing more easily than why it is doing it.
To answer the question, it is necessary to look beyond tariffs, semiconductors and geopolitics to how Beijing interprets its rise. The answer lies not simply in China’s growing capabilities, but in how it understands the relationship between globalization, dependency and national power.
One globalization, two visions
China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 encapsulates one of the defining bargains of the post-Cold War era. However, Beijing and Washington entered that bargain with fundamentally different expectations.
China did not resist globalization. On the contrary, it embraced it with more enthusiasm than almost any other major economy. The difference was not in participation, but in purpose.
For many Western policymakers, China’s integration into the global economy was about more than economic growth. Markets, prosperity, and participation in international institutions would gradually foster political liberalization and closer alignment with the liberal international order.
Beijing viewed the same process very differently. Economic openness was a means of generating the wealth and technological capabilities needed for national renewal through industrial improvement and economic transformation. Markets, investment, and global integration were instruments for strengthening China’s technological and strategic capabilities rather than transforming its political system. Globalization was not an end state, but a stage in a much longer national project.
Both sides entered globalization believing it would be transformative. The West expected openings to reshape China politically; Beijing expected it to strengthen national development and strengthen long-term political stability.
Nor was the expectation entirely wrong. Globalization made China richer, more technologically sophisticated, and more deeply integrated into the global economy, strengthening, rather than diminishing, the state’s capacity to shape national development. As China’s capabilities grew, however, Western expectations of political convergence collided with Beijing’s strategy of self-empowerment and national rejuvenation.
Using globalization to build skills
China’s development strategy reflected this vision. Instead of letting markets determine its trajectory, Beijing used globalization to absorb technology, improve production, move up value chains and strengthen domestic firms. Access to foreign capital, export markets and international production networks formed part of a wider strategy of skill accumulation in which the state remained central to the direction of economic transformation.
Apple’s deep integration into China’s manufacturing base illustrates this approach. Its supply chains did much more than create export capacity. They shared manufacturing expertise, engineering skills, and supplier networks that strengthened China’s broader industrial base.
China became the manufacturing center of the world and accumulated great industrial capabilities. It moved beyond assembling products to building industrial ecosystems capable of designing, manufacturing and improving increasingly sophisticated technologies. These ecosystems emerged through the sustained interaction between state policies, firms, universities, research institutions and global production networks.
The result was one that few Western policymakers had foreseen. Rather than socializing China into the liberal international order, globalization strengthened state capacity, accelerated technological learning, and fostered industrial ecosystems capable of reshaping global competition.
Huawei’s resilience despite years of US export controls, BYD’s emergence as a global electric vehicle leader, and CATL’s dominance in advanced electric vehicle batteries reflect the same reality: China is no longer simply participating in globalization; it is helping to shape some of its most important strategic industries.
In doing so, China challenged a central assumption of the post-Cold War era. Interdependence generated technological leadership and strategic leverage without producing political convergence. Governments increasingly began to see supply chains not simply as engines of efficiency, but as sources of resilience, capability and geopolitical influence. Globalization is not over. It became political.
From ability to weakness
China’s success, however, also revealed a paradox. The same globalization that accelerated its rise created new forms of strategic vulnerability. Access to global markets, advanced technologies, and international production networks enabled China to amass unprecedented industrial capabilities, but these same networks also exposed critical sectors to external leverage. Beijing increasingly concluded that national power depended not only on domestic capabilities, but also on who ultimately controlled the technologies and networks upon which those capabilities depended.
This logic became apparent earlier this year when Manus AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence start-up, reportedly restricted access to its platform to users in some countries while citing compliance with United States export control regulations. Whether the restrictions reflected legal necessity or commercial prudence matters less than the episode revealed. Even a Chinese company operating on the technological frontier remained embedded within the international regulatory and technological structures formed by others. Strategic dependence may persist even after technological advancement.
The lesson was already reinforced by Huawei. Despite becoming one of the world’s leading technology companies, years of US export controls exposed its dependence on foreign semiconductors, software and advanced manufacturing equipment.
Similar concerns extended to semiconductor manufacturing, biotechnology, financial infrastructure and other sectors increasingly seen as fundamental to national security. Beijing’s concern was not simply that access could be cut off, but that dependence itself could become an instrument of strategic leverage.
This marked a fundamental shift in the way Chinese policymakers understood globalization. Interdependence was no longer seen only as a source of opportunity and mutual benefit, but also as a source of asymmetric vulnerability that could be exploited during periods of geopolitical tension. Therefore, the challenge was not to withdraw from globalization, but to reduce exposure to sectors where external dependence carried unacceptable strategic risks. From Beijing’s perspective, the objective is not to reject globalization, but to reshape the conditions in which it participates—remaining globally connected while ensuring that the foundations of national development cannot be constrained by external actors.
When globalization became political
The reassessment of dependence on China was not unique. It reflected a wider shift in the way governments understood globalization. For much of the post-Cold War era, markets were expected to allocate resources efficiently while firms optimized for cost and scale. Instead, governments began to assess economic openness through a different lens: national resilience, technological leadership, and strategic capability.
Governments increasingly began to see firms not simply as commercial actors, but as repositories of critical technologies and industrial capabilities. The question was no longer simply how to attract investment, but what skills the countries could afford to lose. Economic interdependence was understood not only as a source of mutual benefit, but also as a source of dependence, leverage and vulnerability.
The result has been a more selective form of globalization. Cross-border investments, technology transfers and market access are increasingly conditioned by considerations of national security and economic sustainability.
The United States combines export controls with industrial policy to protect critical technologies. Europe now frames trade through the language of risk-free and economic security. Japan’s intervention in the proposed acquisition of Makino Milling by a South Korean private equity firm, along with the controversy surrounding Nippon Steel’s bid for US Steel, reflected the same concern: even transactions between allies are increasingly judged through the lens of strategic industrial capabilities.
Perhaps most revealing is that China itself has moved in the same direction. Even as it encourages firms to expand globally, Beijing has simultaneously sought to reduce dependence on foreign technologies and maintain control over capabilities it considers strategically vital.
The divide in development is not between globalization and deglobalization. It is amid competing efforts to redesign globalization around resilience, technological leadership and national capabilities while remaining deeply connected to the global economy.
For three decades, the main question was whether globalization would change China. The rise of China has largely answered this question. The most important question today is what kind of globalization is emerging now. The next phase is likely to remain deeply interconnected, but will also be more selective, strategic and shaped by competing national development patterns.
The rise of China did not simply produce a more powerful state. It transformed the way globalization itself is understood. Xi Jinping’s call at this week’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference for greater international cooperation in AI, alongside stronger governance and a greater Chinese role in shaping global standards, captures this emerging vision. Beijing is not abandoning globalization; is looking to reshape its rules.
G Venkat Raman, PhD, is Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the School of Government, Peking University
