In just the first few weeks of 2025, the familiar picture of the world vanished as swiftly and irrevocably as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who until recently had been its guarantors. U.S. President Donald Trump has called into question everything that, until now, constituted the «creed» of the Western world: from multiculturalism and «inclusivity» to the promotion of globalization and the defense of democracies against the encroachments of dictators. In place of a cumbersome and ever-complicating set of values comes a compact set of interests, which, quite likely, will define international politics for the coming decades. If we proceed from this assumption, the most pressing question for the Western world inevitably becomes: who is its primary enemy, and against whom should it focus its efforts in the years ahead?
For a long time—at least the past twenty years—the standard answer to this question has been China. While maintaining a communist system as the foundation of its political structure and not endorsing Western notions of human rights and democratic norms, China has nonetheless managed to adopt market economic mechanisms, becoming the world’s largest producer of industrial goods, as well as a leader in export volume (which grew 14-fold from 2000 to 2022) and trade surplus (reaching $ 992 billion last year). China’s economic successes had, by the mid-2010s, triggered significant trade deficits with all Western countries (the combined deficit of the U.S., EU, UK, and Canada grew 6.1 times over the same period, reaching $ 730 billion annually) and turned China into the largest creditor of the Western world (the People’s Bank of China currently holds $ 759 billion in U.S. government securities and a comparable amount in European bonds). At the same time, China has long appeared to be the primary revisionist power, advocating for multipolarity and attempting to match the U.S. militarily, increasing its defense budget more than tenfold over the past two decades and beginning to assert control over oceanic territories (a move many strategists say heightens the risk of confrontation with the U.S.). Against this backdrop, discussions in Washington and Brussels have long focused on the dangers of a Russia-China rapprochement. Proponents of this view argue that every effort should be made to detach Russia from China and bring it back into the Western orbit.
Meanwhile, alongside this debate, Russia has only grown more resolute in its «pivot to the East,» becoming increasingly aggressive and decisive. While the West has spent years discussing the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Russia has annexed two regions from Georgia in 2008, occupied and annexed Crimea in 2014, sparked a «civil war» in Donbas in 2014−2015, and finally launched a full-scale aggression against Ukraine in 2022, openly declaring its intent to alter Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin leaders openly describe the conflict in Ukraine as a war between Russia and the West, periodically threatening their adversaries with the use of nuclear weapons.
This raises a question that no one has yet posed directly: who is more committed to upholding international law today—China, suspected of wanting to seize Taiwan (though not only Beijing but no major country recognizes it as a sovereign state, considering it part of China [since 2016, nine of the 14 states that previously maintained diplomatic ties with the island have severed them]), or Russia, which in less than a decade has invaded a country three times, a country with which it had signed treaties on borders, friendship, and cooperation (and from which it has annexed sovereign territory)? The possible answers to this question (of which there are few) allow for a fresh assessment of whether the West should continue appeasing Moscow in the vain hope of breaking its «alliance» with China. Such arguments can still be found today to varying degrees (examples include statements by Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio). However, from today’s perspective, Russia’s actions appear more dangerous than China’s.
This completely upends the traditional worldview in terms of «enemies» and «friends.» A more realistic approach, aligned with current realities, calls not for «detaching» Russia from China and reintegrating it into the collective West—of which it was a part for centuries—but rather for «isolating» Russia with China’s help and global efforts to compel it to peace. In other words, it suggests recreating a bipolar world, with Washington and Beijing as its future centers, capable of maintaining order by influencing their satellites and junior partners. Such a system, which existed for forty years in the 20th century, prevented major conflicts along the lines of direct confrontation between the two opposing blocs, relegating the main «hot spots» to the global periphery. In the 21st century, the situation could be even less problematic, as China is not an ideological proselytizer bent on transforming the world, possesses a market economy, and is tied to Western countries by far stronger economic relations than the Soviet Union ever was.
Today, Russia is critically (and disproportionately) dependent on China. China’s share of Russia’s foreign trade rose from 17.9% in 2021 to 36.9% in 2024. Russia exports 42% of its natural gas, 48% of its coal, and up to 50% of its oil to China. Chinese cars captured 60% of the Russian market last year, while Chinese laptops and smartphones reached shares of 82% and 87%, respectively. Over the past year, the Chinese yuan has become the only currency Russia’s Finance Ministry purchases for its reserve funds. Examples of this dependency abound. At the same time, Russia has no significant leverage over China: even its main exports (oil and gas) account for no more than 20% and 30% of China’s imports of these resources, respectively. In other areas, cooperation with Russia is simply insignificant for China. By contrast, China’s economic ties with the West are far more substantial: even though trade between Russia and China hit a record $ 245 billion last year, it remains six times smaller than China’s combined trade with the U.S., EU, and UK. When it comes to accumulated direct investments, the total between China and Russia does not exceed $ 15 billion, compared to over $ 600 billion mutually invested by China and the U.S., EU, and UK. Thus, economic concessions or attractive offers from the West could significantly alter China’s stance toward Russia—and if paired with, say, pressure to «seek peace» regarding Taiwan’s president, comparable to that currently applied to Ukraine’s president, rapprochement between China and the West could accelerate at an unprecedented pace.
Recently, we’ve heard provocative claims that if the U.S. fully turns toward Russia, Europe should do the same with China. But such a scenario would only fracture the Western world and do nothing to curb Russia’s aggressive ambitions. Both Moscow and Beijing are willing and eager to negotiate only with Washington, and Europe would be wiser to either seek joint actions with the U.S. or remain somewhat in Washington’s shadow. Meanwhile, a major shift in the Western world’s course toward more constructive economic relations with China would seem a reasonable long-term strategy.
First, economically, China and Western countries complement each other more than it might appear. As long as the U.S. and EU remain issuers of global reserve currencies, China’s accumulation of their debt poses no serious threat: in 2020−2021, much of U.S. government borrowing was financed by the Federal Reserve, and if it managed to increase its bond holdings by $ 3.4 trillion then, buying back $ 760 billion from China would be effortless. China excels at producing high-tech yet mass-market goods, while the West still leads confidently in know-how, operating systems, social networks, and technological platforms (the author of this article calls this division of labor «parallel globalizations,» which do not directly threaten each other). Finally, the unprecedented dominance of American companies in the global stock market (exceeding 50% for the first time in history) also undercuts fears of potential Chinese leadership. Donald Trump’s hysteria over Chinese imports seems too reminiscent of his obsession with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attire.
Second, China’s revisionist ambitions may concern many, but they are not rooted in a long history of colonial conquests and do not overly threaten the Western world. Even in Taiwan, the idea of reunification does not provoke universal rejection, and if the U.S. and Europe mediated negotiations that led to a compromise (such as autonomy for 50 years, as was done with Hong Kong in the late 1990s), they could render the world a great service (and relocating Taiwan’s renowned high-tech factories wouldn’t be that difficult). China’s claims to coastal waters also pale in comparison to a war in Europe that has already claimed about a million lives. Competition between the U.S. and China over the global periphery will persist—but this is a natural and manageable process, unlikely to lead to world war or significant economic losses (if Beijing wants to spend billions aiding the «fourth world» and replace the U.S. as a global benefactor, it would be foolish to stop it—gratitude from recipients will remain elusive, as it has for all prior donors).
Third, it’s doubtful that Western countries today have effective tools to contain China. Unlike Russia, China boasts a fully self-sufficient economy, a constantly improving education system, and a defense industry that doesn’t rely on foreign technology. Even the example of sanctions against Russia shows that economic warfare against a large market economy is likely to inflict greater harm on its adversaries and fail to halt aggression if the leader waging war remains steadfast. Finally, it’s worth noting that China’s political elite is far more diverse and meritocratic than Russia’s. Chinese businesses have their own interests and vast resources, and they are not always dependent on the state. Xi Jinping’s departure in the 2030s will surely revive demands for collective and rotational leadership—especially since the Chinese population is unaccustomed to stagnation (which, unlike Russia, China hasn’t experienced in over 30 years), and an economic crisis could pose a far greater danger to Beijing than to Moscow (some signs of which already seem noticeable and are worrying Chinese leaders).
Given these circumstances, the West would be wise to pursue rapprochement with China—especially now, as issues of democracy and human rights are likely to take a backseat (after all, why can the U.S. and EU maintain close alliances with Saudi Arabia but not China?). A condition for this rapprochement could be the complete cessation of all economic ties with Russia and its satellites—the EAEU and CSTO countries—until they exit these organizations. Additionally, the West should press China for a decisive condemnation of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and its joining the coalition supporting Kyiv. Beijing might realize that in such a scenario, the days of Putin’s regime would be numbered, allowing China to soon resume accessing Russian resources while retaining the Russian market, which Western companies are unlikely to reenter anytime soon. For publicly rebuking Moscow, gaining normalized relations with the West, «returning Taiwan to its native harbor,» and joining the club of leading powers would surely seem an enticing option to Beijing (though, of course, this cannot be asserted with certainty in advance).
Today, such a pivot may seem unrealistic, but it is far more advantageous to the West than «appeasing» Russia and undermining the world order by openly acknowledging the possibility of altering international borders by force.
