The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order: Summary & Key Insights

During what I call the ‘blunting’ phase, China’s leaders focused on a single objective: to neutralize the instruments of American power that constrained their country’s revival. Following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Beijing faced deep diplomatic isolation and a unipolar world dominated by Washington. Deng Xiaoping’s advice — ‘hide your capabilities, bide your time’ — became the strategic motto. It wasn’t a retreat from ambition but a camouflage for it. The Communist Party recognized that overt confrontation would jeopardize economic development, the foundation of national rejuvenation, so the strategy became one of deflection and restraint.

In practice, this meant avoiding direct challenges to U.S. primacy while quietly working to undermine its structural advantages. Chinese diplomacy in this era stressed terms like ‘peaceful rise’ and ‘multipolarity’ — not as reflections of the current balance but as aspirational efforts to shape global perceptions. Beijing sought to blunt U.S. containment efforts by embedding itself in international institutions, participating in WTO negotiations, and promoting an image of harmless modernization. At the same time, it began incrementally gaining leverage through economic interdependence and targeted technological modernization within the defense sector.

From a strategic standpoint, this period was the incubation stage of China’s long game. The People’s Liberation Army underwent modernization, but always under the radar, focusing on asymmetric capabilities like anti-access area-denial systems designed to counter superior U.S. forces. Diplomatically, China positioned itself as a responsible actor while subtly building influence across the developing world. Its leaders studied the fall of the Soviet Union and concluded that open ideological confrontation against the United States was suicidal. Blunting allowed China to protect its growth, prevent encirclement, and prepare for the next stage — when it could transition from defense to construction.

The 2008 global financial crisis transformed China’s perception of itself and of the international order. For decades, Beijing had assumed that the U.S.-led system was resilient and that its own path to influence would be gradual. Suddenly, however, the credibility of liberal capitalism appeared shaken. For the first time, Chinese policymakers openly discussed the ‘decline of the West’ and the ‘rise of the East.’ This psychological shift marked the start of what I call the ‘building’ phase.

In this period, China turned from hiding its capabilities to tentatively testing them. Under Hu Jintao and then Xi Jinping, the focus moved from blunting American power to constructing alternative pillars of Chinese influence. Economically, initiatives like the Belt and Road began taking form, driven by a desire to bind Asia’s infrastructure, logistics, and trade networks around Chinese capital. Institutionally, Beijing launched or expanded bodies like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — institutions that paralleled but did not directly confront Western ones.

Militarily, the building phase saw a rapid acceleration in capability. The PLA Navy expanded its reach into the South China Sea, constructing artificial islands and airstrips that could serve both defensive and power-projection roles. Diplomatically, China continued using multilateral platforms, but now less defensively: it proposed new security concepts and economic forums, speaking increasingly of a ‘community of common destiny,’ a phrase implying a normative challenge to U.S. leadership.

What is remarkable about this phase is how seamlessly it blended internal development with external influence. Xi Jinping’s rise cemented the belief that China’s moment had arrived. His invocation of the ‘Chinese Dream’ of national rejuvenation was not just a domestic slogan — it was a statement of China’s emerging confidence in shaping global norms. Nonetheless, the strategy remained patient. Direct confrontation with the U.S. was still premature; instead, Beijing built the economic, technological, and institutional foundations necessary to sustain global power in the long term. By consolidating material strength and parallel institutions, China prepared itself for the final phase — global expansion.