In the accelerated contemporary world, dominated by short electoral cycles, permanent crises and decisions made on the wave of the emergency, China appears as a historical anomaly. While other superpowers – or former superpowers – seem to move in an eternal present, Beijing continues to think in terms of decades, sometimes centuries. It is not just a difference in political style: it is a different conception of time, power and history. And it is precisely this difference that places China in a position of structural advantage today.

The strategies of Washington and Moscow

The United States and Russia offer an almost didactic contrast in this respect. Both react to immediate, often military stimuli with an approach that favours the quick result: contain, strike, deter. Wars for control of finite resources – first and foremost oil – are an emblematic example. In a world racing towards energy transition, continuing to base one’s geopolitical strategy on a resource destined to run out (or to lose centrality) is tantamount to fighting the last war of the previous century.

Beijing and ‘energy foresight’

China, on the contrary, has made a different choice. Without renouncing pragmatism – and without any idealistic naivety – Beijing has invested massively in the future of energy: renewables, power grids, batteries, industrial supply chains linked to the green transition, control of rare earths. Not out of environmental altruism, but out of strategic calculation. Whoever governs the energy of the future will also govern the geopolitics of the future. In this sense, China is not chasing the present: it is preparing it.

This ability to think ‘forward’ is rooted in a deep historical and cultural tradition. Chinese civilisation has always conceived power as continuity, not as an event. TheConfucian idea of harmony, the imperial administration based on bureaucracy and planning, the centrality of the long term: all contribute to a vision in which success is not measured in immediate victories, but in stability over time.

It is here that the parallelism with the early Roman Empire becomes illuminating

Rome did not only conquer with legions. It conquered by integrating. It did not systematically suppress local identities, but absorbed them, recognised them, and sometimes enhanced them. The deities of the subjugated peoples entered the Roman Pantheon; local elites were co-opted; infrastructures – roads, aqueducts, cities – became instruments of soft Romanisation. Power endured because it was accepted, not just imposed.

The Chinese model: mercantilism without morality

Contemporary China, mutatis mutandis, seems to apply a similar logic through what we now call soft power. It does not invade, it does not occupy militarily on a large scale, it does not export revolutions. It exports infrastructure, credit, trade, technology. Its growing presence in Africa is the most discussed and often misunderstood example. Beijing builds ports, railways, roads, energy networks. It offers investment where the West has often only offered political conditionality or military intervention. It is not philanthropy: it is strategic interest. But it is an interest that produces, at least in the short and medium term, development, employment, growth.

This approach makes China, in the eyes of many emerging countries, a more reliable and less intrusive power. It does not ask for ideological adherence, it does not demand cultural conversions, it does not present itself as a moral judge. It asks for stability, access to markets, continuity in relations. In a world weary of failed interventions and broken promises, this apparent neutrality becomes an enormous competitive advantage.

Of course, this does not mean that the Chinese model is free of shadows or contradictions

The issues of rights, transparency, and economic dependence are real and should not be evaded. But on a strictly geopolitical level, China is building something that other powers seem to have lost: a reputation for predictability. And in the international system, predictability is a valuable currency.

While Washington and Moscow oscillate between escalations, sanctions, sudden retreats and changes of course dictated by domestic political urgency, Beijing proceeds by slow, patient, almost invisible accumulation. It does not raise its voice, but stretches its shadow. It does not seek frontal confrontation, but inevitability.

In this sense, China is naturally bidding to be perceived as a stable, commercially and politically credible global power. Not because it is more ‘good’, but because it is more consistent with the world to come. In an era where everyone seems to live hand-to-mouth, those who think in terms of generations end up, almost inevitably, coming first.

Having lost the West, we perceive the Dragon

Here it is that the ignorance, presumptiousness, and arrogance of a Western leadership increasingly emptied of the values of freedom and progress, a mini-board of businessmen acting like gangsters towards historical allies, often in the name of a ‘common defence’ against the Chinese tiger, manages to make that tiger perceived as the most affectionate and reliable of pets.

To put it in Yin and Yang principles, the told image of the Tiger is giving way to an increasingly perceived presence of the Dragon.

After all, given the same questionable regimes, why continue to favour the one that mocks you, threatens you on a daily basis and does not honour agreements?

Read also:

The Dragon in the ‘backyard’: The new map of power in South America; Y. Brioschi, L’Europeista

Shaking the sovereign’s mats: why we need to understand China; D.D’Andrea, L’Europeista