For some observers, America’s economic weakness, Europe’s uncertain future, turmoil in the wider Middle East, and challengers to Western leadership from Moscow to Tehran signal a new moment in world politics. It is characterized by the decline of free nations whose power and principles have shaped international society for centuries — and the emergence of an autocratic Chinese superpower whose seemingly unstoppable economic ascent shatters the comfortable belief that capitalist development leads to democracy. Should the liberal West brace itself for the global projection of Beijing’s model of authoritarian modernity in preparation for the time, as the title of Martin Jacques’s latest book foresees, “when China rules the world”? Not yet. China’s geopolitical ascent is creating what Mao Zedong would have termed a “contradiction”: China’s rising power makes the United States increasingly important to nearly every Asian nation, including China itself. By and large, Asian leaders seek closer (and more equal) relations with Washington, scold their U.S. counterparts for neglecting the region, are insecure about hints of any American pullback, and increasingly identify democratic political values as a basis for closer cooperation with America and each other. Popular majorities in countries as diverse as Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, and Vietnam hold the United States in high regard. Even China cultivates America as its most important external partner. North Korea’s totalitarian ruler covets a special relationship with Washington and has developed nuclear weapons in a perverse effort to secure it.

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