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The U.S. has historically been said to assume the role of international policeman. But amid global crises and China's continued rise on the international stage, some of the spotlight has shifted to Beijing, despite Chinese leaders maintaining ambiguous positions on recent conflicts. China's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine puzzled many Western observers. At the outset of the war, Beijing expressed concern over NATO expansion while calling for a diplomatic resolution, yet refrained from supplying Moscow with weapons. This balancing act has led to descriptions of “pro-Russian neutrality”: rhetorical sympathy for Russia, without decisive material support. The same pattern recurs elsewhere. On Gaza, Beijing called for a “permanent ceasefire” at the UN, reaffirming long-standing support for the Palestinian cause, but did not appear to commit to any meaningful effort to persuade Israel to stop its massacre in Gaza. On Taiwan and North Korea, China has long mixed firm principles with calculated restraint – tolerating U.S. arms sales to Taipei, and shielding Pyongyang from sanctions but condemning its missile tests.
As Manuel Castells and other international political economy scholars note, global “flows” of capital, technology, and information transcend national borders, while states seek to preserve political cohesion by defining who belongs inside those borders. China exemplifies this dilemma. It relies on global markets and institutions to sustain development, yet it does not fully embrace a system designed and led by the West as entirely legitimate. Its strategy, therefore, is not a linear pursuit of dominance or integration – as most contributions in the debate on China's grand strategy seem to point at – but the careful management of a dialectical tension between dependence and contestation.
Although China's strategic culture is one informed by cautiousness, taken together these examples suggest more than an ad-hoc posture. They reflect a deeper, historical and structural logic of China's grand strategy, one erected on the principle of managing a structural tension between integration into the global economic order and resistance to its geopolitical constraints. Since the shock of the First Opium War, Chinese leaders have grappled with a dual imperative: to modernize through engagement with the world, and to shield sovereignty against Western domination. Xi Jinping's frequent references to the “Century of Humiliation” underscore this historical memory. Modernization remains indispensable, but so does defending political control and regime security.
U.S.-China relations have long been marked by contradiction. Since the 1972 rapprochement, Washington has sought to integrate Beijing into the U.S.-led order, tying China's prosperity to global stability, even as the relationship has grown more competitive — especially since the Obama administration. For Beijing, this creates a dilemma: the United States is both its most significant external challenge and the guarantor of an order too vital to risk disrupting. The result is a strategy of selective engagement: China contests U.S. military and technological dominance while avoiding moves that could undermine the very system on which its modernization depends.
China's strategic posture today is best described as one of selective engagement and deliberate restraint. Even as its power has grown, Beijing has avoided the kind of overextension that historically plagued rising powers. Its approach to crises such as Ukraine, Gaza, and the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates this pattern: willing to issue broad principles or rhetorical support, but reluctant to commit coercive tools or binding alliances. This restraint is not simply a reflection of limited capabilities – which also play an important role. It is a calculated choice to preserve flexibility, avoid premature confrontation with the United States, and keep modernization on track.
At the same time, China is carefully expanding its options. Through initiatives like the Belt and Road and the promotion of institutions such as RCEP, Beijing is preparing hedges against exclusion from the liberal order, while still benefiting from its stability. Militarily, it has enhanced its ability to protect maritime interests in the South China Sea and beyond, but has employed coercion in nonmilitarized forms, signalling a preference for measured revisionism rather than direct confrontation.
This posture, even from China's behaviour over some international chokepoints, reveals both the achievements and limits of China's grand strategy. It underscores Beijing's awareness of the risks of overstretch, and the need to manage a deep structural tension: dependence on global integration, and suspicion of the Western-led order. For policymakers, the lesson is clear. China's ambiguity is not a passing phase but a strategic method – one that enables Beijing to expand influence while minimizing risks. Understanding this dialectic will be crucial for anticipating China's next moves, and dealing with it in a balanced manner.
Policy Implications
For the United States and its allies, this dialectical framework carries important implications. First, China's strategic ambiguity is not temporary. Even as its capabilities grow, Beijing is unlikely to abandon caution. As Chinese scholars themselves debate, overextension poses real risks. Ambiguity allows China to expand influence selectively, avoiding costly confrontations that could derail modernization. The expectation that modernization will automatically translate into unrestrained assertiveness misreads the logic at work.
Second, ambiguity itself may serve as a stabilizing mechanism. By avoiding clear commitments in crises, Beijing reduces the likelihood of premature escalation with Washington. Its deliberate restraint in Ukraine and Gaza reflects not only capability limits, but also a preference for flexibility. For U.S. policymakers, pressing Beijing to “choose sides” risks underestimating how ambiguity helps manage the contradictions of China's rise.
Third, the U.S. should not mistake China's restraint for passivity. Beijing is actively shaping the international environment: through OBOR investments in the Global South, through institutions like RCEP, and through calibrated military expansion. These initiatives hedge against exclusion from the liberal order without requiring a frontal challenge to it. Policymakers should expect continued dual strategies – supporting institutions when they serve China's interests, while preparing alternatives in case the order marginalizes Beijing.
Finally, considering the complexity and duality of the China-U.S. relationship, there may be benefits in considering a less Manichean approach. Washington may adapt by managing, rather than seeking to resolve, China's contradictions. The goal is not to force a synthesis of the complexities highlighted above – for example, to transform China into either a wholehearted partner or a clear adversary – but to anticipate that Beijing will continue to navigate between the poles of integration and resistance. U.S. strategy will need to operate in this grey zone, where ambiguity is not an exception but the defining feature of China's grand strategy. It is possible that the current Trump administration is going in this direction more than the Biden administration, although an official U.S.' China strategy has not been published yet, and it might be too soon to tell.
