The World Peace Forum, convened annually at Tsinghua University, provided a platform this week for China’s leading foreign-policy thinkers to dissect a rapidly evolving international landscape. According to participants, the recent conflict in Iran has accelerated a perceived erosion of United States credibility: prominent scholar Yan Xuetong declared that “more nations now view China as more trustworthy than the United States.” The same discussions identified technology—especially artificial intelligence—as the new axis of global competition, with nations sorting into AI standard-setters, innovators and consumers, a classification one expert predicted would become universally recognised within a decade.

From Beijing’s standpoint, the international system is pivoting from unipolarity toward bipolarity, a transition officials described as dangerous but manageable because China sees itself as broadly satisfied with the existing order. Jia Qingguo of Peking University argued that Beijing prefers to reshape institutions by emphasising sovereignty over human rights rather than overturning them outright. Washington’s priorities, analysts in China note, differ sharply: the United States focuses on institutionalising crisis communication, especially between military commands in flashpoints such as the South China Sea, yet planned visits by American defence officials remain stalled—symptomatic of what forum participants called “clogged” channels.

That Chinese confidence coexists with commercial friction. European think-tanks such as Bruegel have highlighted severe overcapacity in China’s clean-tech industries, which they argue distorts global markets and threatens strategic autonomy. Viewed from Brussels or Berlin, the scale of Chinese output in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles squeezes domestic manufacturers; from the perspective of many developing economies, the same cheap exports are essential climate tools. Chinese analysts counter that Western alarm reflects an inability to compete rather than any breach of trade rules.

The technological contest extends into space, where Chinese start-ups are racing to match American commercial supremacy. Firms such as LandSpace and iSpace have drawn record investment, while state entities test new propulsion systems that cut satellite deployment times. A minority strand of Western defence analysis—voiced by former US intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler—goes further, speculating that China might exploit Russia’s military exhaustion in Ukraine to secure the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic, a scenario official channels dismiss but which illustrates the depth of mutual suspicion.

Beneath the geopolitical jostling, talent flows signal a quieter competition. The departure of energy transition scientist Chen Peipei from Cambridge to a laboratory in Hong Kong, partly driven by research start-up grants unavailable in Britain’s financially squeezed universities, mirrors a broader Chinese push to build scientific capacity as Western institutions retrench. The forum in Beijing concluded without altering the basic condition: neither China nor the United States yet shares a common definition of a “constructive relationship,” even as they agree on the need for strategic stability. The dossier advances haltingly—military dialogue remains incomplete, and no date has been set for the next high-level economic talks.