Chinese Debates on a Fragmenting Global Order | Digest: February 2026

Today’s digest is published in collaboration with Bill Bishop’s Sinocism, the China newsletter many of us read before reading anything else. — Thomas

What is China’s place in a post-US-led global order? That question—given new urgency by the US–Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader on 28 February—runs through this month’s digest, which was largely compiled before these events unfolded.

In January’s edition, we highlighted the emergence of more assertive calls to recalibrate China’s diplomatic posture. Those calls persist—in Chen Wenling’s proposal that Beijing articulate “untouchable” red lines in the economic realm with the same clarity it reserves for Taiwan and in Tian Feilong’s combative insistence that China maintain an “escalatory” posture over Panama’s voiding of CK Hutchison’s canal contract. However, the corpus remains divided over the nature of the emerging global order and how China should navigate it.

Some of the more concrete proposals for innovation in the international system involve mechanisms to address global trade imbalances. Former MOFTEC official Ma Xiaoye argues that the post-free-trade era will be defined by “managed trade”, with framework agreements setting volumes and values by product category. Meanwhile, Jin Canrong and Di Dongsheng, alongside Ding Yifan of the State Council’s Development Research Centre, sketch out a system of global trade based on collective regulation of trade surpluses and deficits.

Commentary on the Iran conflict from four prominent international relations experts spans the days before and after the US–Israeli strikes. Pre-strike analyses express concern over political rupture, surging religious extremism and the weakening of the “Axis of Resistance”, with Niu Xinchun framing the US–Iran impasse as an irresolvable “mini-Cold War”. Jin Liangxiang describes the nuclear negotiations as a calculated “trap” designed to provide pretext for military action, while noting that China’s strategic oil reserves are sufficient to weather short-term disruption. Zheng Yongnian, writing after the killing, casts the assassination as a “Religious War 2.0” and warns that international order is shifting from one based on rules to one governed by fear.

Japan also receives renewed attention—unsurprisingly given Takaichi’s landslide re-election—but much of the coverage will be familiar to readers of our November briefing: Japan as an unreconstructed right-wing power, constitutional revision on the horizon, and the US-Japan alliance as a vehicle for containing China. One genuine point of contention lies in the question of urgency: while most voices treat Japan’s military modernisation as an unstoppable trajectory, two—Jin Canrong and Zhang Wenmu—stand out ...