Power, Hannah Arendt reminds us, is not domination. It arises from people acting together in a shared political space. Domination, by contrast, destroys that space. It replaces plurality with hierarchy and substitutes administration for politics.
The danger in the present moment is not simply that American hegemony may give way to Chinese hegemony. The deeper danger is that the transition consolidates forms of rule that further erode the fragile space in which politics—plural, accountable, unpredictable—can exist at all.
Xi Jinping’s grand strategy draws on genuine global discontent with neoliberal globalization. Across much of the Global South, the U.S.-led order appears unequal, selective, and coercive. China presents itself as the corrective: a defender of sovereignty, a champion of development, an advocate for civilizational diversity. The “Community for a Shared Future of Mankind” promises partnership without hierarchy, and cooperation without domination.
But the critical question is not who governs the system. It is whether the system preserves or diminishes the conditions for political freedom.
China’s project is not revolutionary. It does not seek to reconstitute global politics on new foundations of plurality or accountability. It seeks to inherit the architecture of the existing order and recenter it. Hierarchy remains. Economic asymmetry remains. Capitalist logic remains. What changes is the apex.
Arendt warned that modern political systems increasingly replace power—generated through collective action—with forms of rule grounded in bureaucratic administration and concentrated authority. The elevation of Westphalian sovereignty in Beijing’s vision intensifies this trend. By insisting that human rights and governance are purely domestic matters, China strengthens the state as the ultimate authority while weakening supranational constraint.
What disappears in such a system is not merely American primacy. What erodes is the already fragile space of international accountability—the arena in which states can be judged, criticized, and restrained by something beyond themselves.
Multilateralism, in China’s formulation, becomes procedural rather than political. Institutions are valuable insofar as they redistribute influence among states, not insofar as they create binding norms that transcend state power. The result is a world in which sovereignty shields authority from scrutiny and where international cooperation becomes a negotiation among centralized executives rather than a forum for genuine plurality.
China’s economic model reinforces this contraction. The post-Mao synthesis of market capitalism and authoritarian governance did not challenge global capitalism; it perfected participation in it while insulating political authority from democratic disruption. The system Beijing critiques is one it has mastered. Its alternative does not dissolve the exploitative logics of neoliberal globalization; it concentrates them within a more centralized and disciplined political structure.
The “Community for a Shared Future” speaks the language of harmony. But harmony is not a political virtue if it suppresses plurality. Politics requires contestation, unpredictability, and the coexistence of difference. A system that recenters hierarchy—however rhetorically inclusive—risks narrowing the space in which genuine plurality can appear.
The mobilization of the Global South is therefore not insignificant. The grievances are real. But the promise of emancipation may conceal a deeper consolidation of rule. China offers sovereignty without interference, development without conditionality, partnership without liberal scrutiny. Yet sovereignty elevated above all else strengthens rulers, not peoples.
If the United States exported a model that universalized market logic and selectively enforced liberal norms, China exports a model that universalizes state primacy and shields authority from external judgment. Neither dismantles the architecture of hierarchy. Both operate within it.
The danger, then, is not that China seeks power—it is undeniable that power is intrinsic to politics. The danger is that the transition from one hegemon to another further erodes the conditions under which power, properly understood, can arise at all. When sovereignty is absolute and accountability weak, politics gives way to administration.
History does not move inevitably toward liberation. It can move toward consolidation—toward systems in which domination becomes normalized and political action recedes.
If American decline does not produce a renewal of political plurality but instead a more centralized, sovereignty-shielded hierarchy, then the great power transition of the twenty-first century will not mark the birth of a more just order. It will mark the narrowing of the political world itself.
History does not end. It consolidates.
Edited by Ari Fahimi