No, the Coronavirus Will Not 
Change the Global Order

We should be skeptical toward claims that the pandemic changes everything. 
China won’t benefit, and the United States will remain preeminent.


BY JOSEPH S. NYE JR.

 | APRIL 16, 2020, 2:46 PM





How will the coronavirus pandemic reshape geopolitics? 
Many commentators predict the end of an era of globalization 
that has prospered under U.S. leadership since 1945. Some 
see a turning point at which China surpasses the 
United States as a global power. Certainly, there will be 
changes, but one should be wary of assuming that big 
causes have big effects.

For example, the 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed more 
people than World War I, yet the lasting global changes 
that unfolded over the next two decades were a consequence 
of the war, not the disease.

Globalization—or interdependence across continents—is the 
result of changes in transportation and communication 
technology, and these are unlikely to cease. Some aspects 
of economic globalization such as trade will be curtailed 
but financial flows less so. And while economic globalization 
is influenced by the laws of governments, other aspects of 
globalization such as pandemics and climate change are 
determined more by the laws of biology and physics. 
Walls, weapons, and tariffs do not stop their transnational 
effects, though deep and persistent economic stagnation 
would slow them down.



This century has seen three crises in two decades. The 9/11 terrorist attacks did not kill very 
many people—but like jujitsu, terrorism is a game in which a smaller player can use the shock 
of horror to create a disproportionate impact on the opponent’s agenda. U.S. foreign policy 
was profoundly distorted by choices made in a state of panic that led to long wars in Afghanistan 
and Iraq. The second shock, the 2008 financial crisis, brought on the Great Recession, gave 
rise to populism in Western democracies, and strengthened autocratic movements in many 
countries. China’s fast, massive, and successful stimulus package contrasted with the West’s 
lagged response, leading many to predict that China was on course to become the 
world’s economic leader.

Initial responses to the century’s third crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, also went down the 
wrong path. Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump started off 
with denial and misinformation. Delays and obfuscation wasted crucial time for testing and 
containment, and the opportunity for international cooperation was squandered. Instead,
after imposing costly lockdowns, the world’s two largest economies engaged in propaganda battles. 
China has blamed the U.S. military for the presence of the virus in Wuhan, and Trump has 
spoken about the “Chinese virus.” The European Union, with an economy roughly the size 
of the United States’, dithered in the face of disunity. Yet a virus could not care less about
 borders or about the nationality of its victims.


The incompetence of its response has hurt the United States’ 
reputational (or soft) power. China has provided aid, 
manipulated statistics for political reasons, and engaged 
in vigorous propaganda—all in an attempt to turn the 
narrative of its early failure into one of a benign response 
to the pandemic. However, much of Beijing’s effort to restore 
its soft power has been treated with skepticism in Europe 
and elsewhere. That is because soft power rests on attraction. 

The best propaganda is not propaganda.


In soft power, China starts from a weak position. Despite 
major efforts since former President Hu Jintao announced 
the objective of increasing the country’s soft power at the 
17th National Congress in 2007, Beijing has created its 
own obstacles by exacerbating territorial disputes with 
neighboring countries and by its insistence on repressive 
party control, which prevents the full talents of society 
from being unleashed in the way that happens in democracies. 

It is not surprising that global public opinion polls and 
rankings such as the Soft Power 30 rank China low in 
soft power.It is not surprising that global public 
opinion polls and rankings such as the Soft Power 
30 show China weak in soft power. 

The top 20 spots in the index are held by democracies.


In hard power, too, the balance favoring the United States 
will not be changed by the pandemic. Both the U.S. and 
Chinese economies have been hit hard, as have those of 
the United States’ European and East Asian allies. 
Before the crisis, China’s economy had grown to two-thirds 
the size of the United States’ (measured at exchange rates), 
but China entered the crisis with a slowing growth rate and 
declining exports. Beijing has also been investing heavily 
in military power, but remains far behind the United States 
and may slow down its military investments in a more adverse 
budgetary climate. Among other things that the crisis has 
exposed is China’s need for major expenditures on its 
inadequate health care system.

Moreover, the United States has geopolitical advantages that 
will persist despite the pandemic. The first is geography: It is 
bordered by oceans and friendly neighbors, while China has 
territorial disputes with Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, 
Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. A second 
advantage is energy: The shale oil and gas revolution has 
transformed the United States from an energy importer to 
a net exporter. China, on the other hand, is highly dependent 
on energy imports passing through the Persian Gulf and the 
Indian Ocean, where the United States has naval supremacy. 

The United States also has a demographic advantages: Over 
the next decade and a half, according to research by 
Stanford University’s Adele Hayutin, the U.S. workforce is 
likely to grow by 5 percent, while China’s will shrink by 9 percent, 
mainly a result of its former one-child policy. China’s 
working-age population peaked in 2015, and India will 
soon pass China as the world’s most populous nation. And 
it barely needs repeating that U.S. power also results from 
its place at the forefront of the development of key technologies 
including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information 
technology. U.S. and other Western research universities 
dominate higher education.