For much of modern history, power has flowed through networks. Trade routes, financial systems, communication technologies, supply chains, and institutions all connect societies into vast webs of dependence and influence. Globalization accelerated this process, knitting economies together at unprecedented speed and scale.
China’s rise is one of the most dramatic products of this interconnected world. It rose through global trade, foreign investment, and technology transfer. Yet as China has grown into a superpower, it has sought to selectively disentangle itself from the interdependence that enabled its rise while binding other countries more tightly to its own systems. This tension between centralization and interdependence is not only China’s story. It is a stress test for globalization itself, and a case study in how rising powers can weaponize connectivity.
Here we examine how China’s rise and push for technological self reliance, its global infrastructure ambitions through the Belt and Road Initiative, its economic trajectory, and Xi Jinping’s consolidation of political power illustrate a deeper systemic pattern. Interconnected systems create power, but power often seeks to reduce dependence on those systems.
Globalization and the Rise of China
China’s transformation from a largely agrarian society into a manufacturing and technological powerhouse was driven by global integration. Beginning with Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in the late 1970s, China opened its economy to foreign investment, joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and became a central node in global supply chains.
Foreign companies relocated manufacturing to China for lower labor costs and growing infrastructure. Western firms transferred technology and management practices. Chinese exports flooded global markets, driving down prices and reshaping consumer economies worldwide.
This integration was mutually beneficial but asymmetric. China accumulated foreign reserves, built industrial capacity, and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. The rest of the world benefited from low cost goods and new markets. Interdependence became the foundation of China’s growth.
According to the World Bank, China’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of around 9 to 10 percent for decades, one of the fastest sustained expansions in modern economic history. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview
From Interdependence to Strategic Vulnerability
Globalization also created vulnerabilities. China depended heavily on foreign technology, especially in semiconductors, software, aerospace components, and industrial machinery. Supply chains spanned continents. Financial markets, energy imports, and trade routes exposed China to external pressure.
Geopolitical tensions, export controls, and sanctions revealed how reliance on foreign technology could become a strategic weakness. Semiconductors became a particularly sensitive chokepoint. Advanced chipmaking equipment and design software remained dominated by firms outside China.
In response, China reframed technological dependence as a national security risk. The government launched ambitious plans to build domestic capabilities across critical sectors.
The Drive for Technological Self Reliance
China’s push for technological independence is formalized in policies such as Made in China 2025 and the Dual Circulation Strategy.
Made in China 2025 aimed to dominate high tech sectors including robotics, aerospace, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
The Dual Circulation Strategy seeks to strengthen domestic consumption and domestic innovation while still engaging with global markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_circulation
These policies reflect a shift in worldview. Economic growth is no longer enough. Control over technology, data, and industrial capacity is treated as geopolitical power.
China has made significant progress. It leads in electric vehicles, battery production, solar manufacturing, telecommunications infrastructure, and certain AI applications. Domestic firms such as Huawei, BYD, and CATL compete at the global frontier. Yet gaps remain in high end chips and specialized manufacturing tools.
The Belt and Road Initiative as Global Infrastructure Power
If technological self reliance represents internal consolidation, the Belt and Road Initiative represents external expansion. Launched in 2013, BRI is a global infrastructure and development strategy spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
It includes railways, ports, highways, pipelines, power plants, digital networks, and financial cooperation mechanisms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
The initiative seeks to reshape global trade routes and economic geography. By financing infrastructure, China deepens economic ties, secures resource access, and expands its geopolitical influence.
Benefits of the Belt and Road
BRI has provided infrastructure financing where Western institutions were slow or unwilling. For many developing countries, Chinese loans and construction offered faster implementation and fewer political conditions.
Projects such as rail corridors in East Africa, ports in Southeast Asia, and energy infrastructure in Central Asia have improved connectivity and economic potential. China has framed BRI as a South South cooperation model, positioning itself as an alternative to Western led development institutions.
BRI also includes a Digital Silk Road, extending Chinese standards and technology into telecommunications, e commerce, and satellite networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Silk_Road
Risks and Criticisms of the Belt and Road
BRI has also generated controversy and risk. Many recipient countries accumulated large debts to Chinese lenders. Some projects were economically unviable or politically contentious.
Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port became a symbol of debt distress, with a 99 year lease granted to China after the country struggled to repay loans. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative/
Other countries such as Zambia and Ghana have faced restructuring negotiations due to debt burdens. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/09/18/pr23321-zambia-reaches-staff-level-agreement-on-debt-treatment-under-the-g20-common-framework
China itself has become exposed to financial risk through BRI lending, leading to bailouts and renegotiations. The initiative expanded influence but also created liabilities and political backlash.
Economic Expansion and Structural Slowdown
China’s economic rise has been extraordinary. It is now the world’s second largest economy by nominal GDP and the largest by purchasing power parity. It is a manufacturing superpower, a major trading nation, and a technological competitor.
However, growth has slowed. After decades of double digit expansion, recent growth rates have fallen to around 4 to 5 percent. This slowdown reflects structural transitions.
Key factors include an aging population, declining workforce, property market overinvestment, rising debt, and diminishing returns on infrastructure spending. Domestic consumption has lagged behind production, and demographic trends point toward long term headwinds.
The slowdown does not negate China’s power. Economic scale, industrial capacity, and global integration matter more than growth rates. China’s influence is embedded in global supply chains, commodity markets, and technological ecosystems.
Xi Jinping and the Centralization of Power
Political structure shapes how a society responds to interconnected systems. Under Xi Jinping, China has shifted toward centralized personalistic leadership.
In 2018, China removed presidential term limits, allowing Xi to remain in power indefinitely. This marked a departure from decades of collective leadership norms. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-parliament-abolishes-term-limits-president-2018-03-11/
Xi has also expanded censorship, surveillance, and ideological control. Media, academia, and technology platforms operate under tighter state oversight. Social credit systems, facial recognition, and data monitoring have become tools of governance.
Centralization enables rapid mobilization of resources. The state can direct capital, coordinate industries, and implement large scale projects. However, it also reduces institutional checks and increases the risk of policy errors going uncorrected.
Centralization vs Interdependence as a Systems Tension
China’s trajectory highlights a fundamental tension in complex systems. Interdependence creates efficiency, innovation, and growth. It also creates vulnerability, diffusion of control, and exposure to external actors.
Centralization reduces vulnerability by consolidating power, technology, and decision making. It also reduces resilience by concentrating risk and suppressing feedback.
China is simultaneously deepening global interdependence through infrastructure, trade, and technology standards, while centralizing control domestically and seeking technological autonomy. This creates feedback loops across political, economic, and technological systems.
Global supply chains depend on China’s manufacturing capacity. China depends on global markets and resources. Belt and Road ties developing economies to Chinese finance and infrastructure. Those economies in turn influence global trade and geopolitics.
Interdependence and centralization coexist in tension, shaping the structure of the global system.
Implications for a Multipolar World
China’s rise contributes to a shift from a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower to a multipolar system with multiple centers of influence. Europe, India, regional blocs, and emerging economies increasingly assert autonomy.
China offers a state led development model that contrasts with liberal democratic capitalism. For some countries, this model appears appealing due to rapid infrastructure development and fewer political conditions. For others, concerns about sovereignty, debt, and governance remain.
Technological bifurcation is emerging. Separate ecosystems for chips, AI, telecommunications, and digital governance are forming. Standards competition, supply chain localization, and data sovereignty policies fragment the global technology landscape.
Trade and finance may also fragment into blocs. Currency systems, development banks, and payment networks could become more regionalized as geopolitical trust declines.
The United States and the Broader Context
The United States is a significant actor in this system, but not the only reference point. Export controls, sanctions, and competition have accelerated China’s push for self reliance. At the same time, U.S. companies remain deeply entangled with Chinese manufacturing and markets.
Other countries also shape the system. European technology regulations, Indian manufacturing ambitions, Southeast Asian supply chain diversification, and African infrastructure development all interact with China’s strategies.
The global system is not a binary rivalry but a network of overlapping dependencies, alliances, and tensions.
Infrastructure, Technology, and Power
China demonstrates that infrastructure is power. Physical infrastructure determines trade routes and resource flows. Digital infrastructure determines data flows and standards. Financial infrastructure determines capital allocation.
By building ports, railways, fiber networks, and satellite systems, China embeds itself in the operating system of globalization. By building domestic semiconductor fabs, AI companies, and energy industries, it reduces reliance on foreign nodes.
Power in the 21st century is increasingly about who controls networks, standards, and chokepoints rather than who controls territory.
Information Control in a Networked Age
Censorship and surveillance in China reflect another dimension of centralization within interdependence. The internet connects societies but also challenges centralized authority. China’s model seeks to harness digital connectivity while constraining information flows.
This has implications beyond China. Other countries observe and adapt aspects of China’s digital governance, whether through surveillance technologies, platform regulations, or data sovereignty laws.
The struggle between open networks and centralized control is a defining tension of the digital era.
Systemic Risks and Feedback Loops
China’s centralization creates systemic risks. Policy errors in property markets, zero COVID strategies, or financial regulation can cascade through global markets. BRI debt crises can affect emerging economies and international financial institutions. Tech decoupling can disrupt global innovation and productivity.
Conversely, interdependence constrains China. Global markets discipline its economy. Resource imports create vulnerability. Global opinion shapes diplomatic relationships.
The system is dynamic, with feedback loops between domestic policy, global markets, technology ecosystems, and political alliances.
China as a Mirror for Globalization
China is not an anomaly. It is a mirror. Globalization produced a highly interconnected world. That world produced a state powerful enough to challenge the system that enabled it. Now the system is adapting.
Countries are rethinking supply chains, technology dependencies, and infrastructure investments. Global institutions face competition. Norms around data, privacy, and governance diverge.
China’s rise forces a broader question. Can a deeply interconnected world coexist with highly centralized political and technological power? Or will interdependence inevitably fragment into competing networks?
Conclusion: The Planetary Scale Tension
Centralization and interdependence are not opposites. They are intertwined dynamics within complex systems. China’s rise illustrates how interdependence can generate centralization, and how centralization can reshape interdependence.
The Belt and Road Initiative, technological self reliance, economic transformation, and Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power are not isolated policies. They are expressions of a systemic response to globalization.
As the world becomes more connected, governments and corporations try to control their place in that system. As actors centralize power, they reshape the network itself. This recursive loop defines the current global era.
China is one of the most consequential nodes in this planetary system. Its trajectory will influence infrastructure, technology, governance, and geopolitics for decades to come, revealing the fundamental tensions of a connected world.
For more on the broader themes explored here, see Interconnected Earth’s sections on World Events (https://interconnectedearth.com/category/world-events/), Technology (https://interconnectedearth.com/category/technology/), and Philosophy (https://interconnectedearth.com/category/philosophy/).