A blueprint for Chinese global leadership

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The writer is an FT contributing editor and writes the Chartbook newsletter

Why did America launch a war against Iran? How should China respond? What is your assessment of the 15th five-year plan?

Anyone who was willing to answer questions for the swarming press pack at the recent China Development Forum in Beijing faced these three questions, again and again. Their juxtaposition, as well as the relative difficulty in answering them, is a marker of the state of the world in the spring of 2026.

The answer to the first question is an embarrassing void. One can make educated guesses, but in the court of the mad king, Donald Trump, there is no real knowing. Trump himself cannot give a cogent explanation. Congress and the media, who are supposed to hold the executive branch to account, have failed completely. The mechanisms that are supposed to produce a sense of common purpose in democracies are out of action. The very real indignation of a large part of the American public is not channelled into a movement to stop the war.

To the third question, the answer, at least as portrayed at meetings like the forum, is obvious. One need only look to the eager speeches of the American and European corporate leaders assembled there. They took turns reciting the buzzwords of the plan — sci-tech, win-win, sustainability, resilience. As these sorts of documents go, the 15th five-year plan is a sensible continuation of its predecessors. Under Communist party leadership, China is the last true bastion of technocratic “growthmanship” in the world economy. Corporates who are willing to face the heat of Chinese competition love it.

But what about question number two? What should China do? This is the strategic question.

It is a truism of the moment that China is the last adult in the room. If Beijing chose to play the part, global leadership would be there for the taking. If you were drafting a five-point plan for Chinese hegemony at a think-tank in Beijing, it might look like this.

Start by offering to backstop multilateral efforts to provide short-term balance of payments support to countries facing financing issues. With its huge trade surplus, Beijing has dollars aplenty.

China could then make a gesture of sharing its privileged status in the Strait of Hormuz. It is not by accident that tankers are rumoured to have been rebadging themselves as Chinese.

Beijing could also offer to contribute some fraction of its huge petroleum reserve to a global oil stability pool. It might offer to do this in co-operation with big suppliers like the Saudis, Malaysians and the Brazilians.

At the same time, Beijing should band together with a coalition of the willing to launch a comprehensive global green investment push, boosting demand for its green industries. Europe would find this hard to resist. But everyone, even the Saudis and the Emiratis, are interested in China’s clean electrotech. The sharp distinction between petrostates and electrostates exists mainly in the minds of fossil-fuel ideologues, not for those interested in cheap, clean power.

Finally, and most ambitiously, China could declare that in the interests of global stability there must be immediate ceasefire negotiations in both Ukraine and the Gulf. Until those talks begin, it is no longer in China’s interest to export critical supplies to combatants in either region. This would exert pressure both on Moscow and Washington. Without Chinese rare earths, the US and Israel cannot continue their missile war for long.

Of course, any such proposal will be dismissed as naive. First and foremost because a move to assert hegemonic leadership will produce a reaction. The Marshall Plan was a key moment in the escalation of the cold war. The extension of the EU and Nato into eastern Europe triggered resentment on the Russian side. If China were to use the threat of export bans to bring either the US or Russia to the table, it would be a power move that defined a new era of global politics. There are hawks in Washington who would welcome the chance to raise the stakes.

Beijing has adopted a defensive stance, prioritising its own supplies. In a world as messy as ours, playing the role of adult is hard. It is far easier for Beijing to bide its time and to wait out the crisis, allowing the US to destroy its own credibility and Russia to become more and more dependent. Meanwhile, at events like the CDF, the participants, including representatives of the US, pontificate about “global geopolitical risks” as though they were natural disasters rather than the result of decisions made by the US and Israel.

But the choice lies with Beijing. The script for Chinese leadership is more or less writing itself.