We are living through a period of profound global transformation. The unipolar order that dominated the late 20th century is visibly fraying, its institutional armor corroded by internal contradictions and shifting global economic weight. Yet, as Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci famously observed, the established machinery of a dominant state system possesses immense inertia and resistance. Confronting such a system head-on is neither viable nor responsible.
History teaches that declining hegemonies often resort to unilateral force when they perceive their dominant status threatened. The U.S. has a demonstrable track record of violence, evidenced by the fact that between 1946 and 1989 it initiated on average 2.4 military interventions per year, and between 1990 and 2019 this rose to 3.7 interventions per year on average (Duffy Toft and Kushi, 2023 Dying by the Sword). Indeed, America’s wars since 2001—ostensibly in the name of fighting global terror—have led to millions of deaths and countless more displaced, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.
Recognizing the danger of this penchant for violence and reflex for military intervention, China acts assiduously to defuse risks extend trade truces, and maintain operational guardrails with the United States. China seeks to reform existing international bodies where possible, without naively banking on their seamless transformation.
At the same time, China is actively fulfilling its role as a great enabling power, a concept I first proposed in 2024 to capture China’s unique role in the contemporary international system. An enabling power does not seek to establish a new hierarchy or impose its own hegemony over others. Instead, it creates alternative capacities, infrastructure and institutional platforms that empower nations across the Global South to chart their own independent development paths.
We see this enabling function vividly demonstrated through the growth of multilateral frameworks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the expanded BRICS mechanism, and the China-proposed four global initiatives on development, security, civilizations and governance.
These platforms and institutions provide practical, non-coercive alternatives for trade, development finance, security consultation and technological cooperation. They also couple economic development with mutual security, anchored by the principle of indivisible security in which the security of one nation can’t be bought at the expense of the security of others.
Crucially, this process does not require pulling down the old order by force. Instead, as the countries of the Global South gain access to new infrastructure, industrial capacity and financial channels, a rising tide of collective development emerges. This rising tide will gradually rejuvenate global governance, transforming the global architecture from within while the old unipolar arrangements gradually adapt or recede.
During Chinese President Xi’s recent state visit to the U.S., this logic of enabling diplomacy was on subtle display. China showed no appetite for triumphantly celebrating America’s domestic challenges or economic policy stumbles. When Washington’s unilateral sanction threats were politely ignored by global markets and third countries, Beijing did not engage in inflammatory rhetoric. Instead, it offered steady engagement, extending trade agreements and fostering cultural ties through student exchanges and loans of panda.
By avoiding unnecessary provocation, China prevents the U.S. political establishment from consolidating public support around a dangerous war footing. It gives the American political economy space to adjust to the reality of multipolarity at its own pace, minimizing the risk of erratic or destructive global violence. Recent public opinion surveys in America confirm that attitudes toward China and collaboration with China are warming, especially among younger Americans.
The emergence of a multipolar world is an irreversible historical trend, but its trajectory depends heavily on how rising powers exercise their influence. China’s approach, as an enabling power, represents a fundamental departure from traditional Western imperial models.
In doing so, China is managing the decline of unipolarity with extraordinary care, ensuring that as the old order gradually yields to the new, the transition is defined not by ruinous conflict, but by shared opportunity, systemic peace and collective human progress.
The author is an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia
Copyedited by G.P. Wilson
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