Last October’s G20 Leaders’ Summit – held in Rome, and hosted by then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi – produced a declaration brimming with promises to “address today’s most pressing global challenges” and “converge upon common efforts to recover better from the COVID-19 crisis and enable sustainable and inclusive growth” across the world. What a difference a year makes.

Some central banks have followed the U.S. Federal Reserve, but Japan, for example, is marching to the beat of its own drum. The Biden administration and the Fed, meanwhile, claim the surge in U.S. inflation is “temporary.” This reflects a severe misjudgment.

China’s economy has weather the pandemic as well as any other nation’s has in the last few years, but the future seems uncertain as the world order is reshuffled as borders and regulations return to pre-outbreak norms.

The international financial infrastructure has long been dominated by Western institutions. China’s advances in digital currency could help spread its influence on global commerce enough to challenge the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.

China’s fundamentals are resilient and robust, and the trend points to normalcy and growth. Trade is up, inflation has been controlled, and while the U.S. Fed’s rate hike pushed many currencies down, the Chinese yuan has remained stable.

The systemic challenge for the U.S. is not China but the worst inflation in 40 years. In fact, fragmentation does not seem to be happening in the real world. Even an Asia-Pacific version of NATO will not likely divide the region, as China will continue to be a major trade partner.

The American economy will inevitably experience a Volcker-style contraction — think early 1980s — and it will have a global impact. Today’s inflation is stubborn and structural, and it will be virtually impossible to bring it down to 2 percent without tipping the economy into recession.

Europe has taken a strategic stance when it comes to its relationship with the U.S. and with China. While the U.S. has strengthened ties with its European allies to contain China, Europe also supports China’s monetary ambitions regarding the RMB.

Globalization is at a crossroads. Compounded by U.S. geopolitics and the cost of economic development, de-globalization has huge economic and human damages.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has provided new impetus to the centennial change in global order. Combined with the impact of global pandemic, this conflict has accelerated the transformation of international economic order from a US-dominated globalization process to the globalization driven by coexistence of multiple parallel systems.