At the recent summit in Washington, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed that they will not allow the war in Europe to expand, while also establishing the principles upon which the two superpowers will build a new world order. Two factors played a crucial role in reaching these agreements:
- The modern system of international relations is rapidly moving away from the vague and chaotic concept of multipolarity toward the creation of a system of civilizational macro-regions, two of which are emerging as dominant.
The development hubs of these two macro-regions—the most powerful, rapidly growing, and globally dominant—are the United States and China. These superpowers were the first to recognize their status and begin consolidating their respective civilizational macro-regions.
- While the old world attempts to cling to obsolete state institutions and systems, Washington and Beijing—despite differences in social structures and ideologies—are building the future based on a similar, highly pragmatic technological and financial model.
At the same time, other key regional players—from Europe to countries across the post-Soviet space, including Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—are either opting for statism and «controlled stability» or struggling to comprehend their place and determine their destiny, falling out of the development race altogether.
The Historical Roots of Modern China: Stalin’s Covenant to Mao Zedong
To understand how the PRC arrived at the model of its own distinct macro-region, one must return to the origins of relations between the USSR and China, Moscow and Beijing.
In 1949, following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong arrived in Moscow with a proposal for Stalin to incorporate China into the USSR as the sixteenth Soviet republic. He spent three months in Moscow awaiting a meeting and an in-depth conversation with Joseph Stalin, who prepared meticulously for the encounter.
When the meeting took place, the two leaders spent the entire day alone at the Blizhnyaya (Close) Dacha near Moscow discussing Mao’s proposal. Stalin declined the direct integration of the PRC into the Soviet state system as a sixteenth republic. Stalin convinced Mao that China must follow its own autonomous path.
The Soviet leader candidly acknowledged the complexities of building a new society—communism—as a future global social system. He pointed to unforeseen internal contradictions, the lack of theory and understanding of ongoing processes, and the emergence of influential clans within the top echelons of the party and state bureaucracy. Unexpectedly for the old communist guard, these bureaucrats had begun building a shadow economy and using state property to create a corrupt system for personal enrichment by exploiting the goods shortages caused by the destruction of World War II.
It was during this period that criminal cases erupted—including the «Leningrad Case,» the «Russian Case,» and the «Gosplan Case»—shaking the USSR and leading to the arrest, conviction, and execution of figures Stalin had considered his successors.
Stalin’s main instruction to Mao was for China to observe from the outside, learn from the USSR’s experience, avoid its mistakes, account for the immense civilizational differences, and build its own system rooted in Chinese culture and its specific realities.
Mao Zedong accepted this advice with profound respect. Upon leaving Stalin, he remarked: «Today I met a great leader.» Over the subsequent decades, China studied the Soviet experience closely:
- Examining the systemic failures and the bureaucratization under Khrushchev and Brezhnev that buried communist ideals. Mao responded to the threat of such bureaucratization with the «Cultural Revolution.»
- Analysing the institutional and economic collapse of the USSR under Gorbachev.
- Observing the degradation of state institutions and the wave of corruption and criminal privatization of state and public property during the Yeltsin era.
Modern China sees Russia’s current attempts to restore its status as a global superpower, but categorically refuses to replicate the methods used by Moscow. For decades, Beijing has pursued its own path, viewing the Russian experience as a clear demonstration of the mistakes to avoid while building a macro-region where the principles of interaction are defined by Chinese civilization.
The US and China: A Single Mechanism Under Different Ideological Coverings
Despite outwardly fierce ideological and geopolitical competition, the US and the PRC utilize virtually identical mechanics for driving scientific, technological, and financial breakthroughs.
Both superpowers have placed their bets on the accelerated development of artificial intelligence technologies (termed Super Intelligence / SI by the US administration):
- In the US: The White House’s signing of the so-called White House Accord on Super Intelligence with major tech giants (xAI, Meta, OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic, Nvidia) imposes an obligation on businesses to push forward and develop as rapidly as possible, while implementing independent external and internal safety controls and establishing direct accountability for top management in case of errors.
- In the PRC: A similar process is supplemented by control from the Chinese Communist Party through regional and sectoral party organizations, as well as a Chinese variation of the public company (Public Companies) model.
In both the US and China, corporate leaders bear personal—financial and legal—responsibility for technological risks, yet receive a maximum carte blanche for expansion.
The difference in approach lies in the fact that Washington grants tech corporations the authority to decide the directions in which Super Intelligence and related technologies should develop, believing that the market, creative approach, and independent external oversight will ensure ahead-of-the-curve growth rates while protecting society from corruption and potential crimes. Beijing, on the other hand, adds to these factors directions determined by communist ideology and the political leadership of the CCP.
For instance, youth unemployment in China currently reaches nearly 20%, and automation contributes not only to sustaining high unemployment but to driving its growth. However, nearly all unemployed youth are active users of the internet and tech company services—particularly in the information domain, cyberspace, art, and culture. Therefore, the leaders of Communist China task tech corporations not merely with using youth as service consumers and a source of social capital growth, but with developing them intellectually, drawing them into creative processes, and shaping their moral foundation and culture in accordance with the communist ideology’s vision of the future.
In effect, modern China is continuing the tradition established by the early Bolshevik leaders, including Alexander Bogdanov, who spoke of the need to create the «man of the future.» It was precisely these ideas in the early 20th century that formed the foundation of the new «proletarian culture» (Proletkult), providing the impetus for new directions in literature, architecture, science, and art, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s.
Concurrently, both the US and China are revising the concept of modern warfare, discarding outdated bureaucratic approaches:
- In the US: The experience of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk is being extended to the Department of War (the Pentagon). Leaders of technology corporations are being brought in to craft the concept of «new warfare,» displacing the old-school general staff. At the same time, the US is following the path of Ukraine and Russia by establishing a dedicated branch of the armed forces to operate autonomous combat systems—ranging from drones to military robotics—while equipping all military bases and installations with energy sources and data centres that operate autonomously and independently of civilian infrastructure.
- In the PRC: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is likewise undergoing leadership turnover, bureaucratic reduction, and deep technological reorganization focused on AI, unmanned systems, network-centric operations, and the full integration of space, air, and land military domains.
The financial foundation of US and Chinese leadership remains maximum access to capital for businesses and the general population. One need only compare financial policies across the US, China, and Russia to grasp the difference in approaches and priorities.
However, that is a topic for another time…
