How China wins future: Beijing’s strategy to seize new frontiers of power

Elizabeth Economy in Foreign Affairs: 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…

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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….