Occidental Fall: Assessing Chinese Views of U.S. Decline

Jonathan A. Czin and Allie Matthias CLM Issue 87 March 2026.pdf

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China’s leadership, state media, and foreign policy analysts consider the U.S. a declining but dangerous power. That assessment has remained durable since Michael Swaine analyzed views in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in his 2021 essay for China Leadership Monitor, though the frequency of that assessment has fluctuated. The resilience of such views in the PRC press reflects genuine assessments of U.S. internal contradictions, the Chinese Communist Party’s Leninist predisposition to see capitalist powers as declining, and a desire to buttress the party’s own propaganda. Notably, contrary to previous expectations, the persistence of PRC views of U.S. decline do not seem to have prompted a shift toward a more aggressive policy. Instead, until recently, this assessment seems to have led Chinese officials to judge that time is on China’s side, and the PRC should avoid provoking the U.S., which has the capacity to lash out at China even as it declines. The PRC has focused insulating itself against the U.S. and bolstering its international prestige with its various Global Initiatives.

China’s top officials and foreign policy elite see the U.S. as a declining but dangerous power. President Xi Jinping in a 2023 speech to new members of the Central Committee highlighted: “Today, Western countries are increasingly mired in difficulties,” and he noted “the stark contrast between ‘the rise of the East and decline of the West’ and ‘order in China and chaos in the West.’”[1] The context of the speech suggests that it was designed to motivate new members of the leadership team, yet the timing of Xi’s speech highlights that the vicissitudes and vacillations of U.S. politics and foreign policy have not dissuaded PRC officials from this assessment over the past five years since Michael Swaine published his 2021 China Leadership Monitor essay examining Chinese views of U.S. decline.[2] If anything, the Chinese perspective seems to have settled into a safe assumption between Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and his return to office last year. Our review of authoritative, semi-authoritative, and non-authoritative sources yields three key insights: 

1) There is a deep and wide consensus among both the Chinese officials and pundits that the West—and the United States in particular—is in decline. This in part reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s congenital Leninist view that capitalism is doomed to decline.

2) While there has been a certain consistency and durability to the PRC view of U.S. decline, the use of certain turns of phrases associated with the idea of Western decline has ebbed and flowed, significantly spiking in semi- and non-authoritative sources after Trump’s election and re-election.

3) These shifts in Chinese views of U.S. decline are not closely correlated with shifts in Chinese foreign policy, as some analysts prognosticated around the time of Swaine’s piece.[3] China instead seemed to focus on fortifying itself at home for strategic competition while Xi rolled out his signature Global Initiatives, culminating in Xi’s September 2025 unveiling of his Global Governance Initiative, an effort seemingly designed to further insinuate China and its interests into global governance but that so far has lacked the heft and resources of Xi’s earlier Belt and Road Initiative. 

China’s Diagnosis: Decline

Although it was originally made in 2023, Xi’s speech highlighting the decline of the West was not published until January 2025 in Qiushi, the official theoretical journal under control of the Central Party School and the Central Committee. It is the most authoritative statement we have in the public record that the leadership sees the West as in decline. Even though the speech came at a moment of peak confidence domestically, shortly after he had secured a third term and solidified his dominance of China’s leadership at the previous fall’s 20^th Party Congress, the timing of Xi’s comments is still somewhat remarkable. After all, Xi and his lieutenants were also coping with the fallout from Xi’s sudden termination of his signature Zero COVID Policy—a centerpiece of PRC media’s claims of the superiority of China’s system over the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. had largely recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and was turning in strong economic growth—a turnaround from the mismanagement of the pandemic’s early phases that had invigorated Chinese narratives of U.S. decline. Washington was also intensely focused on competition with China. The CHIPS and Science Act became law in August 2022. Washington imposed export controls on the sale of advanced semiconductors to China in October 2022. Outside the government remit, the November 2022 rollout of ChatGPT demonstrated the continued capacity of the U.S. for technological innovation. The backdrop of Xi’s comments suggests that Chinese perceptions of U.S. decline are durable and unlikely to change anytime soon.[4]

However, our research reveals that Xi’s statement occurred at the same time as a marked diminution in the use of phrases associated with U.S. decline in PRC academic journals. For instance, there has been a significant decline in uses of the “East is Rising, the West is Declining” (东升西降) and “Great Changes Unseen in a Century” (百年未有之大变局) in academic journals since 2021 (see figures 2 and 3 below). Yet even then, the evidence suggests that Chinese discourse has remained at a markedly higher level than before Trump’s first election—underscoring endurance of the idea even amid a downtick. 

Figure 1: CNKI full-text search “The East is Rising and the West is Declining” (东升西降) in newspapers.

Figure 2: CNKI full-text search “The East is Rising and the West is Declining” (东升西降) in academic journals.

Figure 3: CNKI full-text search “Great Changes Unseen in a Century” (百年未有之大变局) in academic journals.

Figure 4: CNKI full-text search “Great Changes Unseen in a Century” (百年未有之大变局) in newspapers.

Figure 5: CNKI full-text search “美国衰落” or “American decline” in all sources (newspapers, academic journals, conferences).

Over the past year, these terms are experiencing a renewed sharp uptick of usage in PRC newspapers, likely in response to growing domestic confidence in China’s global power, President Trump’s return to power as well as the administration’s erratic decision-making on both domestic and foreign policy.[5] If anything, figures 1 and 5 demonstrate that some Chinese analysts anticipate that U.S. internal contradictions will intensify over the course of 2026 in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections. Indeed, some Chinese analysts see the U.S. as particularly vulnerable in the coming year as Trump faces the possibility of Republicans losing their majority in the House of Representatives, and a “hollowed out and inflated” economy.[6] 

Some American commentators have argued that recent U.S. actions against Venezuela—coming on the heels of U.S. strikes on Iran last year—might prompt China to recognize the vim and vigor of the U.S. under the Trump administration.[7] Yet this perspective has not been reflected in official Chinese media. Instead, official Chinese media have stated that U.S. strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in July 2025 as well as Trump’s ongoing tariff threats “are further tarnishing its reputation, destroying its image,” and “accelerating the collapse of its reputation.”[8] Similarly, after the military operation in Venezuela, an article in Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the Beijing Municipal Committee, affirmed that the U.S. “is dragging the world back to a dark age of plunder and division through superior military might.”[9] Though party newspapers may be capitalizing on U.S. dysfunction and international behavior for propaganda reasons, local newspapers do demonstrate how Chinese authorities are painting the U.S. to domestic audiences. In the PRC view, the international behavior of the U.S. is not only accelerating its own internal collapse but causing the world to ascend into chaos.[10] While the raid that brought President Nicolas Maduro to U.S. soil was remarkable, this act more likely confirmed, rather than upset, the Chinese leadership’s assessments of Trump. After all, Xi himself famously got a lesson from Trump’s propensity for unforeseen violence when he learned of U.S. strikes on Syria directly from Trump over “the most beautiful chocolate cake” during the two leaders’ summit at Mar-a-Lago in April 2017.[11] Moreover, the notion that capitalist forces will become more violent and dangerous as communist forces threaten their hegemony is an idea that dates back to Lenin himself—and it allows analysts in China to cite U.S. pushback as evidence of its own decline.

Pride & Prejudice: Assessing the PRC’s Diagnosis of Decline

As Swaine notes, the most recent iteration of PRC views of U.S. decline in China goes back at least to the Global Financial Crisis.[12] But the longevity of this assessment also in part reflects the ideological, and even teleological, nature of the PRC diagnosis of U.S. decline: if the U.S. is more dominant on the global stage, including when it pushes back against China either unilaterally or in tandem with its allies, PRC officials tend to characterize such moves as a symptom of the U.S. attempting to cling to its dissipating dominance. Alternatively, if the U.S. chooses to go at it alone and disengage from international institutions, PRC observers will characterize that diametrically opposite policy as also indicative of decline, as evidenced by the above commentary on U.S. actions against Iran and Venezuela. Indeed, reading these assessments from the last five years feels a bit like seeing a Monty Python-esque doctor whose diagnosis remains unchanged regardless of the patient’s symptoms. The unsubtle PRC depictions of U.S. decline reflect the Chinese Communist Party’s Leninist predisposition that American capitalism and society are bound to fall.[13] Each news or journal article about the decline makes use of all moments of poor governance or societal ills as evidence of a pre-determined outcome. Indeed, Lenin concludes his 1916 tract on Imperialism by noting that capitalism is “a shell which may continue in a state of decay for a fairly long period, but which will inevitably be removed.”[14]

The durability of the declinist view likely reflects that PRC officials judge that this assessment of U.S. decline is not only true, in their view—but also useful. For PRC officials and analysts this assessment is a happy marriage of convenience and conviction. Indeed, the PRC propaganda system tends to glom onto and amplify any Western expert who claims the U.S. is in decline. People’s Daily regularly quotes economist Jeffrey Sachs as evidence for the futility of the U.S. trying to maintain hegemony.[15] Chinese periodicals also regularly cite more objective Western observers to enhance the credibility of their own criticisms. Drawing on a Financial Times essay by Nobel-prize winning economist Daron Acemoglu, a Xinhua article resolutely concludes: “The most fundamental reason for America's sudden decline is the collapse of its system.”[16] Xinhua and Chinese academics have also recently highlighted recent research and public appearances by James Zogby, Francis Fukuyama, and Jonathan Capehart, among others, on malfunctions in American politics.[17]  

As a result, even when the U.S. takes a more active role in the international system, the Chinese leadership and analysts judge that the U.S. is both reacting to its inevitable decline and worsening that decline by taking those actions. During the Biden administration, PRC commentators were invigorated whenever the U.S. flexed its muscles in the strategic competition with China, depicting the U.S. as antiquated in holding onto a “Cold War mentality.”[18] Both semi-authoritative and non-authoritative sources described the U.S. taking active steps in leadership of the international order as a symptom of its “hegemonic decay” and “hegemonic anxiety syndrome.” In February 2023, People’s Daily criticized the U.S. buildup of alliances and partnership under the guise of being democratic as “embarrassing self-deception. … The beauty filter of American democracy has long since collapsed.”[19] Similarly, a 2023 Xinhua article describes the Biden administration’s “de-risking” policy as reflecting “the U.S.’s uneasy and anxious state of mind.”[20] Authoritative sources and Chinese leaders did not go so far as to describe competitive policy actions toward China under Biden as “hegemonic decay.” Rather, Wang Yi labeled U.S. use of export controls or tariffs for national security concerns as “hegemonic bullying.”[21] A Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesperson directly told the press the day after the U.S. launched the export controls that the tariffs would only blockade itself and backfire—and thus exacerbate its decline.[22]

On the flip side, Chinese commentators now characterize many of the Trump administration’s “America First” isolationist actions as symptoms of “anxiety of its declining hegemony.”[23] As a June 2025 Xinhua article succinctly puts it: “The Trump administration abandoned its previous ‘alliance system’ and resorted to naked unilateralism and power politics. This is essentially a manifestation of the decline of American hegemony.”[24] Another Xinhua article states: “The United States now resembles a cornered beast: engaging in tariff blackmail, threatening to annex other countries' territories, and wantonly launching military attacks against other countries.”[25] Similarly, after the Trump administration rolled out its Liberation Day tariffs on China in April 2025, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said: “The U.S.'s unscrupulous suppression of China does not prove its strength; on the contrary, it exposes that the U.S. has lost its confidence and lost its composure.”[26] Primarily because of perceived U.S. decline under the second Trump administration, an article by CICIR, the Ministry of State Security’s in-house think-tank, declaratively stated that the world was entering a new multipolar reality in 2025.[27]

Finally, regardless of the U.S.’s international behavior, PRC media capitalize on U.S. domestic problems to present a tendentious depiction of the purported superiority of its own system against the United States. Citing examples of the U.S. mass shootings, the role of money in elections, or homelessness, Xinhua pointedly stated: “The hypocritical and ugly nature of American "democracy and freedom" has been exposed, America's ‘soft power’ in commanding the world has been greatly weakened.”[28] Government officials took a similar tack: In February 2023, the spokesperson for China’s MFA mocked the U.S. opioid crisis on X.[29] Other officials from the MFA were quick to point out the U.S.’s “racism, gun violence, social injustice, and violations of the rights of refugees and immigrants,” and the “violent political culture” in 2023 and 2024, even as the U.S. played a more active role on the international stage.[30] 

Similarly, after the 2024 election, several Chinese academics described the U.S. as regressing, or in a “crisis,” due to the rise of populism, the decline of American democracy, the residual effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and racial and economic inequalities.[31] Wang Jisi, a prominent Chinese academic at Peking University, points out that whether U.S.–China relations are on a positive or negative trajectory, “the ‘stability’ and ‘steadiness’ of Chinese politics stand in stark contrast to the ‘chaos’ and ‘turbulence’ of American politics.”[32] Zhong Yan, likely a party pseudonym meaning “the party’s voice,” specifically describes the phenomenon of “the kill line” as indicative of U.S. structural problems that are accelerating its decline:

It doesn't describe abject poverty but rather a widespread state where resilience is squeezed to the extreme: many American families, despite having jobs, have meager savings. Once faced with unexpected events such as unemployment or serious illness, their finances could be completely depleted, triggering a catastrophic fall into disarray, including loss of home and bankruptcy. … The "kill line" vividly reveals the structural economic fragility of American society.[33]

Causes	Symptom Terminology
1.       The U.S. takes active steps internationally	Unipolar hegemony is declining; hegemonic anxiety; hegemonic decay; hegemonic anxiety syndrome; international disruption; “the Cold War trap”
2.      The U.S. retreats internationally	The world is shifting toward multipolarity, unipolar hegemony is declining; “the East is rising and the West is declining”; “great changes unseen in a century”
3.      U.S. domestic political instability	“Order in China and chaos in the West”; economic structural imbalances, widening wealth inequalities, populism, “political system failures,” sociocultural divisions
4.      For domestic Chinese audiences	“Great changes unseen in a century”; “the East is rising and the West is declining”; “Order in China and chaos in the West”

Yet important lacunae remain in the PRC assessment, particularly in the official perspective on U.S. decline. In Swaine’s own words, he states it was not clear “how those many Chinese who see the U.S. as being in decline view the specific origins, nature, and extent of that decline and its implications for China.” Indeed, Chinese officials and analysts pin the sources of U.S. decline to multiple causes. The most authoritative assessment may come from Minister of State Security Chen Yixin, who in his December 2025 Qiushi piece assesses: “Unipolar hegemony by major powers is becoming increasingly unsustainable, accelerating democratic transformation, economic decline, and social fragmentation domestically, and accelerating credit collapse, hegemonic decay, and the shattering of myths internationally.”[34] While Chen’s assessment is more of a laundry list than a concise or precise analysis, it nonetheless captures the key features of the Chinese diagnosis reflected in semi-authoritative and non-authoritative sources. Though the most authoritative sources do not provide clear causes of the U.S.’s external and internal diminution, the semi-authoritative and non-authoritative scholarship does, which appears to inform the top-level view. For example, a Qiushi article by Wang Dong, a professor at Peking University, articulates some of the systemic causes of U.S. decline:

The rise of right-wing populism in the United States has not only profoundly reshaped the domestic political landscape but also has exerted a complex, multi-dimensional, and systemic influence on its economy, society, and foreign policy. … As long as the deep-seated problems in the United States, such as the economic structural imbalances, widening wealth inequality, political system failures, and socio-cultural divisions, remain unresolved, populism will inevitably evolve from an "underground current" into a "surface torrent" at certain historical junctures, exerting a sustained influence on U.S .domestic and foreign policy.[35]

The PRC’s Prescription: Patience

Notably, when Dr. Swaine published his piece, there was also a debate over what the Chinese assessment of U.S. decline might mean for both U.S. and Chinese foreign policy. Swaine himself commented that “Chinese public statements on the decline offer no conclusive evidence supporting the claim that Beijing is basing its policies on the sure conviction that the U.S. is in an irreversible, structural decline benefiting China and that Beijing is therefore committed to a policy of taking advantage of this decline.”[36] At the time, other analysts, such as Jude Blanchette, raised the possibility that China’s assessment would lead to overconfidence and concomitantly to “an international posture that is more emboldened, confident, and confrontational.”[37] Meanwhile, Rush Doshi argued that this perception prompted Beijing to expand its influence “beyond Asia and contest the foundations of the U.S. global order,” and that “the most urgent task in Washington is a policy…that proves to Beijing that the United States is not in terminal decline.”[38] 

While the Biden administration’s policies did not prompt a reassessment in Beijing of U.S. decline, as noted above, neither did the persistent assessment of U.S. decline lead to an emboldened and confrontational Chinese foreign policy. Instead, from the end of the Trump administration through the run-up to President Trump’s meeting with Xi in Busan last November, Chinese foreign policy toward the U.S. was largely reactive.[39] During the first Trump administration, China was caught flat-footed by both the shift to competition and the initiation of the first trade war—and struggled to identify adequate responses that would neither escalate the situation nor appear too conciliatory. Even then, the response was circumscribed—in part because Beijing was unprepared to respond in kind, and in part because Beijing probably did not want to derail President Xi’s November 2022 meeting with President Biden.[40] To some extent, Beijing’s muted responses reflected U.S. efforts to manage the competition with China.[41] Beijing surely complained about U.S. competitive actions in the ensuing years—but seldom did more than that.[42] That dynamic also likely reflected that Beijing was unprepared for many of these moves, and had not yet built a toolkit for responding to U.S. actions. By contrast, the Chinese leadership was quite prepared to react when then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in July 2022, when Beijing nearly precipitated a crisis and established a new normal for its presence around the Taiwan Strait. However, these moves were more intertwined with the peculiar dynamics of that moment rather than an offshoot of PRC views of U.S. decline.

All this raises a more interesting analytical question than whether Beijing judges the U.S. to be in decline. Why has this assessment not prompted a more aggressive shift in Chinese foreign policy than some analysts anticipated, at least not until recently. To some extent, the PRC view of U.S. decline has more to do with how China benchmarks the success of its own system against the West—and Xi in his 2023 speech is clearly touting the successes of his rule to the new members of China’s ruling elite.[43] 

At a more practical level, the reason that Beijing’s bleak assessment of the U.S. has not prompted a more aggressive Chinese foreign policy is somewhat obvious—and is in fact embedded in PRC official statements when queried about their perceptions of U.S. decline. Although the consensus about U.S. decline has settled in among PRC officials and the foreign policy elite, Chinese officials and analysts recognize the dangers posed by the U.S. to China and its interests. In 2024, Chinese MFA officials, when discussing the notion that the U.S. is declining, said, “China will not gamble on the United States losing.”[44] These officials’ statements seem to be quite literal—they elide the question of whether they think the U.S. is declining and instead say that China will not gamble on that possibility.[45] The logic here is rather straightforward—if Chinese officials judge that the U.S. is in fact declining, and therefore time is on China’s side, why would they needlessly provoke the U.S., which, in their characterization, remains both insecure and powerful.

The irony is that this perception of the U.S. is almost an exact mirror image of the “Peak China” theory expounded by scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, an idea that seemed to reach its high-water mark in Washington in 2024.[46] That theory rested on a threefold argument: 1) China was already a declining power; 2) Chinese leaders believed that China’s prospects were dimming; and 3) consequentially, China’s leaders would therefore lash out in violent ways to secure their international position before their position further deteriorated. Setting aside the merits of this argument, which were debated in a previous issue of China Leadership Monitor, this tripartite argument is strikingly similar to the argument that Chinese analysts make about the United States.[47] For example, Chinese scholar Xie Tao, a dean and professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, asserted after Trump’s win in 2024: “Before accepting the harsh reality that it is no longer great—nor can it remain great forever– the United States will experience a prolonged period of growing pains in both domestic and foreign policy, inevitably bringing new upheavals to the unprecedented global changes of the past century.”[48] Though Xie does not explicitly state that the U.S. will “lash out,” he asserts that U.S. foreign policy will endure “growing pains,” implying that the U.S. will become more chaotic and volatile on the world stage. In 2023, China Foreign Affairs University dean and professor Wang Fan similarly wrote: “The U.S. strategy of advantage is built on a foundation of power superiority; when the U.S. is in decline, it can only focus on suppressing what it perceives as challengers.”[49]

Instead of lashing out at the United States, as Brand and Beckley predicted, China intensified its efforts to insulate itself from subsequent rounds of intensified great power competition—and identify potential points of leverage. After being surprised by the blows it took from the first Trump administration, China’s leaders decided to go “back to the gym” to bulk up for the next round of confrontation rather than gratuitously pick new fights with the Biden administration. In the process they created a suite of retaliatory tools, as Evan Medeiros and Andrew Polk have amply documented.[50] China’s relative restraint also reflected a realistic appraisal and appreciation of U.S. power, even if it is waning. Moreover, the Biden administration also orchestrated its diplomacy with China to blunt Beijing’s responses to U.S. competitive actions—arguably the chief manifestation of the administration’s efforts to manage the competition and prevent an escalatory spiral.[51] In more recent private conversations, some Chinese scholars have opined that the problem is not that the United States does not have leverage over China—but that its internal dysfunction diminishes its ability to wield that power.

Instead, the phenomenon that did materialize in the ensuing years was a series of diplomatic initiatives from Beijing, namely the bevy of Global Initiatives by China to supplement U.S. global governance institutions, including a Global Governance Initiative that Xi announced at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last September.[52] This rolling wave of initiatives suggests that Rush Doshi is in fact correct in his assessment that Chinese officials during this period did increasingly believe that “China could fill the void in global governance resulting from U.S. decline.”[53] Indeed, Minister of State Security Chen Yixin said as much in December 2025, noting that “the post–World War II international order is severely incompatible with the current balance of international power.” [54] Though the balance has been undermined by “certain major powers,” Xi has “charted a new path for building a more just and equitable global governance system” through his various Global Initiatives.[55] The mere fact of these initiatives undercuts the notion by Kang et al. in International Security that China lacks “grandiose ambition to a global or even a regional leader.”[56] These initiatives are nothing if not grandiose in their pretenses—as well as grandiloquent. So far, China’s Global Initiatives have been somewhat lackluster substantively. However, this suite of initiatives may yet provide the foundation for more robust global governance leadership from China in the coming years as the Trump administration treats the very idea of global governance with overt animus—most recently evinced in the January 2025 Executive Order pulling the United States out of a wide range of international institutions and agreements.[57] Indeed, in a December 2025 speech on “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi highlights that China is “actively promoting reform and improvement of the global governance system.”[58] 

How Beijing Grades Its Own Homework

Finally, it is important to note that Chinese officials and analysts are not oblivious to China’s own rather pressing and thorny domestic challenges. What has changed in the ensuing five years is the leadership’s confidence in its ability to surmount these challenges. This shifting tone was most apparent in the official statements and documents coming out of the November 2025 Fourth Plenum of the 20^th Central Committee, which laid out the party’s proposals for China’s coming Five-Year Plan.[59] As we have argued elsewhere, Chinese officials feel quite confident about what they have accomplished in the intervening five years, as was helpfully reflected in the party’s documents assessing their last five-year plan.[60] In documents from the Fourth Plenum of the CCP’s 20^th Central Committee in November 2025 that outlined China’s next Five-Year Plan, the leadership agreed that China “possessed many favorable factors for proactively managing its international space and shaping its external environment,” and emphasized that China will “gain strategic initiative in fierce international competition.”[61] That confidence imbued in the plenum’s document—and the emphasis in particular on taking the initiative—was absent from the documents for the last five-year plan. The world saw the symptoms of this confidence just weeks before the plenum, when China decided to impose an expansive rare earth export control regime on the U.S. before President Xi’s meeting with President Trump.[62] Although the proximate cause was the Department of Commerce’s 50 percent affiliates rule, Xi’s decision to escalate in response marked a shift by Xi from playing defense to playing offense.[63] The desire to shape China’s international environment and take the initiative was not just a tactical move—it is now part of Xi’s guidance to the party-state for the coming five years.

Not Doomed to Decline

In the current moment, it would be more remarkable if Chinese leaders did not see the U.S. as a power in decline. Many Chinese officials—and especially an ideological leader like Xi—are congenitally predisposed to see the United States much as Lenin himself would have viewed the great powers a century ago—as decadent and doomed. It would be even more unlikely phenomenon if the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party held a rosier assessment of U.S. prospects than Americans did. After all, large majorities of American people themselves have seen the country as on the “wrong track” for much of the last twenty years.[64] A recent poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds that most survey respondents said the United States is declining in relative power,” and nearly two-thirds of respondents said China currently matches or exceeds the United States in power and influence globally.[65] Similarly, U.S. foreign policy elites across the political spectrum have expressed growing concerns about U.S. relative decline, especially in specific domains like the military. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the outset of the Trump administration that the unipolar moment was “an anomaly,” and “eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world. We face that now with China.…”[66] Rubio’s statement is remarkably similar to the assessment by China’s intelligence chief, Minister of State Security Chen Yixin, who in December 2025 assessed that: “The balance of international power is undergoing profound adjustments,” and the “‘unipolar with multiple strong powers’ pattern established after the Cold War is rapidly evolving toward multipolarity.”[67] 

The deeper question for the United States is not whether China’s assessment of U.S. decline is wrong, but whether if it is right. The quiet recognition of diminishing—if not declining—U.S. power appears to be bipartisan. Indeed, Doshi, along with former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, last year argued that the United States must rely on “allied scale” to cope with the multifarious challenge posed by China’s and America’s limited capacity to respond in kind.[68] This raises the question of what the U.S. can do not just to change China’s perceptions—but to change the underlying reality of U.S. relative decline vis-à-vis China. Interestingly, Chinese analysts themselves have laid out what would change their perspective—a meaningful remediation of the domestic dysfunction that has racked the United States for much of the past decade. As Wang Jisi has succinctly stated: U.S. decline continues, resilience remains.”[69] He considers the declinist view to be a mentality of the people rather than indicative of statistics and historical events, and he points to the confidence of Americans in the 1950s despite increased racial discrimination and inequality. From this perspective, the U.S may be its own worst enemy—and China stands to become the chief beneficiary of U.S. internal contradictions. 

A Note on Methodology

To evaluate the ebb and flow of Chinese views of U.S. decline, we hewed to Swaine’s typology of authoritative, semi-authoritative, and non-authoritative Chinese sources. For consistency, we also measured the frequency of appearances in these sources of the same set of phrases, including “the East is rising, and the West is declining,” “great changes unseen in a century,” and the co-location of references to the “U.S.” and “decline,” relying on the CNKI database. We also detected several other recurring phrases germane to this discussion, including “U.S. political system decline,” “hegemonic decline,” “disruptor of the international system,” and “a shift from unipolar to multipolar,” the latter of which we assess necessarily implies U.S. relative decline. We do not try to self-diagnose whether the United States is, in fact, in decline; rather, we intend to interpret and analyze the logic and implications of Chinese officials’ and commentators’ assessments of U.S. decline.

About the Contributors

Jonathan A. Czin is Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at the CIA and was director for China in the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023.

Allie Matthias is Senior Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center.

Notes

[1] 习近平, “以中国式现代化全面推进强国建设、民族复兴伟业,” 求是, January 2025 https://www.qstheory.cn/20241231/d21bd57c012d4d29824219effd18ca35/c.html.

[2] Michael D. Swaine, “Chinese Views of U.S. Decline,” China Leadership Monitor, issue no. 69 (Fall 2021), https://www.prcleader.org/post/chinese-views-of-u-s-decline.

[3] Rush Doshi, “Beijing Believes Trump Is Accelerating American Decline,” Foreign Policy, October 12, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/12/china-trump-accelerating-american-decline/; Jude Blanchette and Seth G. Jones, “Beijing’s New Narrative of U.S. Decline,” CSIS Open Source Analysis, July 2021, https://opensource.csis.org/features/beijing-narrative-us-decline/; Jude Blanchette, “Beijing’s Visions of American Decline,” Politico China Watcher (newsletter), March 11, 2021, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-china-watcher/2021/03/11/beijings-visions-of-american-decline-492064.

[4] Full Disclosure: One of the authors, Jonathan Czin, was detailed to the National Security Council during this period.

[5] The administration has reversed course on traditional sources of U.S. international power by isolating U.S. allies in Europe and Asia and abusing its global economic position through tariff threats. Domestically, the Trump administration has been consolidating power in the executive branch, questioning voter validity, unleashing federal agents on American cities without restraint, targeting dissent and journalism through lawsuits, violating civil service independence, and calling for increased gerrymandering. Images of protests in Minneapolis and indiscriminate killings of Americans have added to the perception of chaos and decline in the U.S.

[6]吴心伯 and 黄靖, “观学院直播厅【思想者说】第18期（下）：2026年美国政治存在一个关键节点，我们要利用好这机会,” 观察者, December 31, 2025, https://archive.ph/YvzPB.

[7] A. Wess Mitchell, “Trump’s Western Hemisphere National Security Strategy and Geopolitics of China, Russia, Venezuela, and Greenland,” Foreign Policy, January 14, 2026, https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/14/trump-western-hemisphere-national-security-strategy-geopolitics-china-russia-venezuela-greenland-spheres-of-influence/; Diana Stancy, “Iran Strikes Could Signal Limits of Beijing, Moscow’s Power as US Flexes Strength,” Fox News, January 16, 2026, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-strikes-could-signal-limits-beijing-moscows-power-us-flexes-strength; Martin Gurri, “All the Global Benefits Trump Reaped by Grabbing Maduro,” New York Post, January 15, 2026, https://nypost.com/2026/01/15/opinion/all-the-global-benefits-trump-reaped-by-grabbing-maduro/.

[8] Xie Binbin, “专栏丨从贸易战到轰炸伊朗：美国声誉加速崩塌,” Xinhua, June 30, 2025, https://www.news.cn/20250630/401153d8828646c584e0c8eee9d865eb/c.html.

[9] 阿力塔, “夺岛计划暴露美式霸权的‘返祖’冲动,” 求是网, January 9, 2026, https://www.qstheory.cn/20260109/3d9eb4b1cdb94907897c77c376749a36/c.html.

[10] 夺岛计划暴露美式霸权的“返祖”冲动, The island-seizing plan exposes the "regressive" impulse of American hegemony, Beijing Daily/Qiushi, January 9, 2026.

[11] Dan Merica, “Donald Trump Told Xi Jinping About Syria Strikes Over ‘Beautiful’ Chocolate Cake,” CNN, April 12, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politics/donald-trump-xi-jingping-syria-chocolate-cake.

[12] Swaine, “Chinese Views of U.S. Decline.”

[13] As Lenin noted in 1918: "Let the ‘socialist’ snivellers croak, let the bourgeoisie rage and fume, but only people who shut their eyes so as not to see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear, can fail to notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old, capitalist society, which is pregnant with socialism, have begun”; V. I. Lenin, “Prophetic Words,” delivered 29 June 1918; first published 2 July 1918 in Pravda, no. 133. The text is available in Lenin’s Collected Works (Vol. 27) and online from the Marxists Internet Archive.

[14] V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 127.

[15] Xiong Maoling et al., “专访丨保护主义伤己又损人—访美国知名经济学家杰弗里·萨克斯,” Xinhua, January 19, 2025, https://world.people.com.cn/n1/2025/0119/c1002-40404819.html; Guo Shuang, “专访：美国为维护霸权试图分裂世界的做法非常危险—访联合国秘书长前特别顾问、美国著名经济学家杰弗里·萨克斯,” Xinhua, August 4, 2022. https://world.people.com.cn/n1/2025/0327/c1002-40447861.html 

[16] “深度 | 诺奖得主：美国繁荣将如何走向崩塌,” 新华网, March 13, 2025, https://www.news.cn/world/20250313/b9f05afea8334d6fa739a344bd134984/c.html.

[17] “全球瞭望丨美国学者：亿万富翁左右美国政治,” 新华网, August 4, 2025, https://www.news.cn/world/20250804/b3a2e6b1e0304934ab574409ed08832a/c.html; Zhou Guiyin (周桂银) et al., “Contemporary Chinese Views on International Order: Evolution and Characteristics,” 国际展望 (International Vision), no. 1 (2021): 16–32, DOI: 10.13851/j.cnki.gjzw.202101002.

[18]  Ye Shuhong, “新华时评丨搞二元对立没有出路—起底美国政治‘思想赤字,’” Xinhua, March 17, 2024, https://www.news.cn/world/20240317/fed6419105dc4ebca45139e2e2a613cb/c.html.

[19] Zhong Sheng, “自我粉饰难掩美式霸权的危害（钟声）,” People’s Daily (republished in Qiushi), February 13, 2023, https://www.qstheory.cn/international/2023-02/13/c_1129360444.htm.

[20] “漫画|‘去风险’魔怔凸显美国霸权焦虑,” Xinhua, July 26, 2023, https://www.news.cn/world/2023-07/26/c_1212248435.htm.

[21] “王毅就中美元首会晤向媒体介绍情况并答问,” 中华人民共和国外交部, November 15, 2022, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/wjbz_673089/xghd_673097/202211/t20221115_10975081.shtml.

[22] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Remarks on U.S. Export Control Measures,” October 8, 2022, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/lxjzh/202405/t20240530_11347376.html.

[23] Xie Binbin, “专栏丨从贸易战到轰炸伊朗：美国声誉加速崩塌,” Xinhua, June 30, 2025, https://www.news.cn/20250630/401153d8828646c584e0c8eee9d865eb/c.html.

[24]Ma Qian and Liu Si, “国际观察丨‘把世界当作丛林’—起底美国‘掠夺性外交,’” Xinhua, June 2, 2025, https://cn.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202506/02/WS683d3ca6a3102053770362c0.html.

[25]Xie Binbin, “专栏丨从贸易战到轰炸伊朗：美国声誉加速崩塌.”

[26] “外交部就美方提升对华出口管制措施有关情况发布会” [Foreign Ministry Press Conference on U.S. Measures to Tighten Export Controls on China], May 15, 2024, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/wjbzhd/202405/t20240515_11305072.shtml.

[27] 中国现代国际关系研究院 (CICIR), 从单极霸权到多极现实 (Beijing: China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, April 14, 2025).

http://www.cicir.ac.cn/UpFiles/file/20250414/6388022914688522482063516.pdf.

[28] “新华时评丨搞二元对立没有出路—起底美国政治‘思想赤字’” [Xinhua Commentary: There Is No Way Out Through Binary Confrontation — Exposing the “Ideological Deficit” of U.S. Politics], March 17, 2024, Xinhua News Agency, https://www.news.cn/world/20240317/fed6419105dc4ebca45139e2e2a613cb/c.html.

[29] Hua Chunying (华春莹) [@SpokespersonCHN], “Reason 4: China does not allow the drug problem to haunt the nation and kill 100,000+ per year. https://t.co/1H4QMkQdrH,” Post, X, February 21, 2023, https://x.com/SpokespersonCHN/status/1628062833400508417; Jimmy Quinn, “Chinese Official Mocks U.S. Opioid Crisis as Biden Admin Seeks Cooperation on Fentanyl,” National Review, February 21, 2023, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chinese-official-mocks-u-s-opioid-crisis-as-biden-admin-seeks-cooperation-on-fentanyl/.

[30] “2024年9月25日外交部发言人林剑主持例行记者会,” 中华人民共和国外交部, September 25, 2024, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/fyrbt_673021/jzhsl_673025/202412/t20241217_11495343.shtml; “2023年3月29日外交部发言人毛宁主持例行记者会,” 中华人民共和国外交部, March 29, 2023, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/fyrbt_673021/jzhsl_673025/202303/t20230329_11051179.shtml.

[31] 潘亚玲, “美国社会文化危机及其国内、国际政治效应,” 国际展望 (January 2025): 46–64. DOI: 10.13851/j.cnki.gjzw.202501003. http://www.siis.org.cn/updates/cms/cms/202501/13122035idjg.pdf; 李少文. “特朗普现象是美国总统制的危机吗?” [Is the “Trump Phenomenon” a Crisis of the U.S. Presidential System?] 太平洋学报, 2025年第2期: 15–25; 中国社会科学院美国研究所专论写作组, 谢韬, 刁大明, 冯仲平, 孙壮志, 吴怀中, 林宏宇, “2024年美国大选及其对美内政外交的影响 / 2024年美国大选及其世界影响”[The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and Its Impact on U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policy / The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and Its Global Implications].中国社会科学院美国研究所专论, 2024. DOI: 0.13549/j.cnki.cn11-3959/d.2024.05.001.

[32] 王缉思, 贾庆国, 唐永胜, 倪峰, 朱锋, 谢韬, 达巍, 李巍, “美国战略探析与中美关系前景展望” [An Analysis of U.S. Strategy and Prospects for Sino-U.S. Relations], 国际经济评论, 2024.

[33] 钟言 (Zhong Yan), “‘斩杀线’上的美国政治困局,” 求是网 (Qiushi), January 4, 2026, https://www.qstheory.cn/20260104/0a091946537a4ea789a07bd4e40253b3/c.html.

[34] 陈一新, “全面筑牢国家安全的铜墙铁壁” [Building an Impregnable Wall of National Security], 求是网 [Qiushi], December 9, 2025, https://www.qstheory.cn/20251209/4b4c9391614742829ddd067eebc8cee2/c.html.

[35] 王栋, “怎么看美国右翼民粹主义,” 求是网 (Qiushi), September 1, 2025, https://www.qstheory.cn/20250830/27e773f4f55645cd907825e911155535/c.html.

[36] Swaine, “Chinese Views of U.S. Decline.”

[37] Blanchette and Jones, “Beijing’s New Narrative of U.S. Decline.”

[38] Doshi, “Beijing Believes Trump Is Accelerating American Decline.”

[39] Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War (New York: HarperCollins, 2020).

[40] Liza Lin and Jiahui Huang, “China Hits Back at U.S. Chip Controls With Limits on Key Raw Materials,” Economy, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/china-tightens-curbs-on-exports-of-materials-with-chip-making-applications-to-u-s-4348a02c; “商务部 海关总署公告2023年第23号 关于对镓、锗相关物项实施出口管制的公告,” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, July 5, 2023, https://archive.ph/bNZpf.

[41] “Background Press Call by Senior Administration Officials Previewing the President’s Upcoming Bilateral Engagement,” The White House, November 9, 2023, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/11/09/background-press-call-by-senior-administration-officials-previewing-the-presidents-upcoming-bilateral-engagement/.

[42] The one glaring exception was when Beijing nearly precipitated a crisis over the visit of then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in July 2022, but that moment was more intertwined with the peculiar circumstances in cross-Strait dynamics than a reflection of PRC views of U.S. decline.

[43] David C. Kang et al., “What Does China Want?,” International Security 50, no. 1 (2025): 65, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC.a.5.

[44] “2024年10月10日外交部发言人毛宁主持例行记者会,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, October 10, 2024, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/fyrbt_673021/202410/t20241010_11504884.shtml.

[45] 新闻报道, “习近平：中国从不赌美国输，从不干涉美国内政，也无意挑战和取代美国，乐见一个自信开放、发展繁荣的美国。同样，美国也不要赌中国输，不要干涉中国内政，应该欢迎一个和平、稳定、繁荣的中国,” 中国共产党新闻网, November 16, 2023, https://cpc.people.com.cn/n1/2023/1116/c64094-40119713.html.

[46] Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, Into the Danger Zone: The Coming Crisis in US-China Relations (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2021), https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep27632.

[47] Ryan Hass, “Organizing American Policy Around ‘Peak China’ Is a Bad Bet,” China Leadership Monitor, issue no. 81, September 2024, https://www.prcleader.org/post/organizing-american-policy-around-peak-china-is-a-bad-bet.

[48] Zhang Guoxi and Xie Tao, “从特朗普 1.0 到 2.0：美国政治新变局与中美关系新变” [From Trump 1.0 to 2.0: New Changes in American Politics and Sino-US Relations], Contemporary China and the World, 2025.

[49] Wang Fan, “基于优势理念的美国霸权战略及其局限” [American Hegemony Strategy Based on the Superiority Concept and Its Limitations],国际问题研究 (International Studies), no. 6 (2023): 35–50.

[50] Evan S. Medeiros and Andrew Polk, “China’s New Economic Weapons,” The Washington Quarterly 48, no. 1 (2025): 99–123, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2025.2480513.

[51] Nahal Toosi, “Biden, Xi Discuss Need to Avoid Conflict Amid Global Competition,” Politico, September 9, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/09/biden-xi-conflict-competition-511036.

[52] “上合组织天津峰会上，习近平提出全球治理倡议,” 新华网, September 1, 2025, https://www.news.cn/world/20250901/c0c8cc0bd567459691cbef49ea855ec3/c.html.

[53] Rush Doshi, “Beijing Believes Trump Is Accelerating American Decline,” Foreign Policy, October 12, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/12/china-trump-accelerating-american-decline/.

[54] 陈一新, “全面筑牢国家安全的铜墙铁壁.”

[55] Ibid.

[56] Kang et al., “What Does China Want?”

[57] The White House, Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States. Presidential Memorandum, January 7, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/.

[58] 中华人民共和国外交部. “外交部发言人郭嘉昆主持例行记者会（2025年12月9日）”

[Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun’s Regular Press Conference (December 9, 2025)], 中华人民共和国外交部, December 9, 2025,

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/wjbzhd/202512/t20251209_11769758.shtml.

[59] “中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议,” 中国政府网, October 28, 2025, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202510/content_7046050.htm.

[60] Jonathan A. Czin and Allie Matthias, “Assessing China’s Fourth Plenum: Policy Continuity, Personnel Turmoil,” The Brookings Institution, November 26, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/assessing-chinas-fourth-plenum-policy-continuity-personnel-turmoil/.

[61] “中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议,” 中国政府网, October 28, 2025, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202510/content_7046050.htm.

[62] “商务部公告2025第62号 公布对稀土相关技术实施出口管制的决定,” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, October 9, 2025, https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2025/art_6cb42957741440c6984de696b70df9ae.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[63] Bureau of Industry and Security, “Department of Commerce Expands Entity List to Cover Affiliates of Listed Entities,” U.S. Department of Commerce (September 29, 2025), https://www.bis.gov/press-release/department-commerce-expands-entity-list-cover-affiliates-listed-entities； “商务部新闻发言人就对超硬材料等相关物项实施出口管制应询答记者问,” 中华人民共和国商务部, October 9, 2025, https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/syxwfb/art/2025/art_9ef35b6a69f24e61a8cbd63ed0a42d16.html.

[64] Emily Guskin, “Most Americans Say Country Is On the Wrong Track, Blame Trump for Inflation: Poll,” ABC News, November 2, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-country-wrong-track-blame-trump-inflation-poll/story?id=127064620;

[65] Stephen Wertheim et al., “What Americans Think About American Power Today,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 21, 2026, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/01/what-americans-think-about-american-power-today.

[66] Marco Rubio, “Secretary Marco Rubio with Megyn Kelly of The Megyn Kelly Show.” Interview by Megyn Kelly. U.S. Department of State, January 30, 2025. https://www.state.gov/secretary-marco-rubio-with-megyn-kelly-of-the-megyn-kelly-show/.

[67] 陈一新, “全面筑牢国家安全的铜墙铁壁,” 求是网, December 9, 2025, https://www.qstheory.cn/20251209/4b4c9391614742829ddd067eebc8cee2/c.html.

[68] Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, “Underestimating China,” Foreign Affairs, April 10, 2025, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/underestimating-china.

[69] Wang Jisi, “ 美国到底有没有衰落? 中国人应有清醒认识,” 北京大学中外人文交流研究基地, 2022, https://www.igcu.pku.edu.cn/info/2256/3910.htm; Wang also discusses how the Chinese decline is relative and subject to change: “I believe that the United States's overall national strength has remained relatively stable… Therefore, whether "the United States is declining" is more of a political judgment than an academic one.”

Photo credit: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons