-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — In the 15th century, China had the largest and most advanced fleet in the world. Admiral Zheng He’s expeditions roamed the oceans with hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men. Yet, in an act both symbolic and strategic, the imperial elite brought that era to a close: It burned China’s fleet, closed its ports and shifted toward an endogenous and ethnocentric vision, trusting in the self-sufficiency of a vast empire.
That decision marked the beginning of a prolonged decline, which the prominent sinologist Jacques Gernet dates to around 1800. After eight centuries of expansion, China began to crumble just as Europe was lighting the spark of scientific experimentation and the Industrial Revolution.
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Convinced of its supremacy, the Chinese empire scorned foreign trade and military innovation, which left it vulnerable to the Western advance. The result was its “century of humiliation”: Opium Wars, colonial impositions, loss of influence. Its ruling class, clinging to the dominance of the classics, dismissed the need to adapt, and its vast domestic market became a self-serving trap.
Contrary to that process, the United States, while still in a process of formation as a republic, began its rise. The war against Spain in 1898 allowed it to project its power toward the Caribbean and the Pacific, consolidating strategic positions such as Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Inspired by Alfred Mahan’s naval doctrine (whoever dominated the seas controlled trade and global power), the United States invested in an ocean-going Navy to sustain its expansion. Where China retreated, the United States expanded. Today, it seems the roles are being reversed.
Role reversal
Since coming to power, Trump has promoted a strategy of withdrawal. He has questioned multilateral organizations (UN, OAS, NATO, WTO, ICC), cut funding for cooperation agencies like USAID, pressured traditional allies, promoted a protectionist view of trade, canceled U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), weakening the most ambitious economic bloc designed to contain China, and even suggested the world needs the United States more than it does the world. Trump’s “America First” slogan is heralding the new isolationism as he relies, like the Chinese emperors, on the United States’ self-sufficiency and natural superiority.
China, for its part, seems to have learned from its historical mistake. It has not only opened its economy: It has become the main trading partner of more than 130 countries, leads global infrastructure projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, invests in science, technology and R&D, and engages in active diplomacy in international forums. As the writer and analyst Parag Khanna argues, we are in the era of “connectography,” where what matters are infrastructure and supply chains. And China plays this game with ambition and precision.
Trump seems determined to make China great again.
On the military front, too, China’s growth is sustained. In particular, the Navy of the People’s Liberation Army is, with its sustained pace of modernization, on track to challenge U.S. hegemony in the oceans over the coming decades.
It is projecting its presence from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, expanding naval bases in Africa and Asia, and investing in infrastructure that will allow alternative exits via Pakistan in case the U.S. and its allies block its access to the China Sea and the Pacific. It is also forging strategic defensive agreements like the pact signed with Russia in 2024.
Learning from the past
As political economist John Rapley observes, Trump seems determined to make China great again. His foreign policy, focused on retreat and multiple trade wars, has left a vacuum China is exploiting. The U.S. is cutting its international cooperation budget, withdrawing from spheres of influence and underestimating — as imperial China did — the transformative power of emerging technologies. Meanwhile, Beijing is boosting its leadership in renewables, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, especially in the developing world.
If the past teaches us anything, it is that no power remains at the top through inertia.
Is the United States repeating China’s historical mistake? How far does its model of inherited leadership impede a strategic reading of the new global balance of power? Is it China that has rather understood that in this new phase, power is sustained by connectivity, innovation and the ability to forge lasting ties?
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And if the past teaches us anything, it is that no power remains at the top through inertia. As the Chinese case demonstrates, overconfidence can be the first step toward decline. In the 21st century, leadership is not defined by strength alone but by the strategic intelligence needed to understand that openness is not a threat, but an opportunity. China understood this. Will the United States?
