The United States needs to recognize that global hegemony is not sustainable. It should stop clinging to the postwar structure, with itself in the dominant position, and should learn to play a more ecumenical role in a multipolar world.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework adopted by the United States last year has led to a shift in the way East Asian countries perceive their relations with the world’s two great powers. The notion of reliance on China for economics and on the U.S. for security has begun to tilt westward.

Weaponized interdependence, through which powerful states leverage their position in the global network to achieve strategic goals, is increasingly relevant in the U.S.-China relationship. The U.S. uses its market power and network of alliances to exclude adversaries from the global dollar-dominated system, but this approach has also accelerated the process of global multipolarity and created opportunities for other countries to create alternative ecosystems.

Chinese president’s trip was a positive, good-faith effort to defuse the crisis in Ukraine and prevent bloc confrontations. China wants to maintain international peace and stability while seeking to open up broad new prospects for relations between major powers.

Positive trade mechanisms have emerged. China remains committed to developing its relationship with the U.S. The recent tension over Taiwan was controlled. Such things and others are a basis for optimism, not despair.

The Russo-Ukraine conflict has raged on and looks to continue into the near future, straining relations in Europe. The ripple effects of military conflict involving a pronounced foe of the United States has created an even more tense climate on a global stage that already sees U.S.-China relations declining at an alarming rate.

Major-country relations are changing dramatically. Chinese academics and political leaders should conduct an in-depth analysis of what China faces. The United States has already started a new Cold War in regional and global industrial chains.

Europe’s interests require that it strongly back the global trading system and establish multilateral independence toward other countries, especially China. Strategically autonomy, however, means the EU must break away from its reliance on Washington.

China stands at a crossroads and will be key in determining whether two camps will take shape. President Xi Jinping’s global development and security initiatives inject confidence into a world industrial scheme that has lost momentum and an international order that has lost stability.

In recent years, Sino-Russian relations have become a model of great power relations with high degree of mutual trust, high level of collaboration and high strategic value. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the assessment of the challenges for China-Russia relations in the external environment, the understanding of the conflict’s role in reshaping China-Russia relations, and the examination of the prospects of China-Russia relations have been critical in the analysis of how the Russia-Ukraine conflict will impact the game of great powers.