The following text is based on a presentation given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at the Latin America Conference held in London on 8 February 2025. The panel also included Morning Star editor Ben Chacko and Canadian author and academic Isaac Saney; it was chaired by Carole Regan of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.
The text attempts to clarify what multipolarity is, as well as addressing the role of China and the rising threat of military confrontation between the US and China.
What is multipolarity?
‘Multipolarity’ is a word that is heard increasingly often, but its meaning is not well or widely understood, including on the left.
There are many people who think that multipolarity simply means a return to the era of intense inter-imperialist rivalry that characterised the period leading up to World War 1. In the early 20th century, the situation was ‘multipolar’ in the sense that there was more than one imperialist country; Britain, the US, Germany, France, Russia and Japan all represented poles of power and were competing fiercely among themselves for control of the world’s land, resources, labour and markets. Needless to say, there was nothing progressive or peaceful about this conjuncture.
However, multipolarity as defined in the modern era does not refer simply to a geopolitical situation with more than one major power; it is more than a shift away from the US-dominated unipolarity of the 1990s. Multipolarity includes the rise of the Global South; it insists on the principle of equality between nations; and it envisions an end to the system of hegemony and domination, whereby one country (or group of countries) can impose its will on others.
In this sense, we could say that the situation in 1914 was actually unipolar: it was a world system where power was concentrated among a small handful of imperialist countries, albeit with significant contradictions and rivalry between them.
Multipolarity sees Latin America as a centre of power. It sees Africa, West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific as centres of power. Its multilateral organisations include not just the G7, NATO and EU, but also BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the African Union (AU), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the G77, and so on.
This geopolitical shift reflects a rapidly-changing global economic landscape. For example, BRICS countries now have a larger share of the world’s GDP than the G7 countries when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). This is a dramatic transformation compared to the beginning of the 21st century, when G7 countries made up 43 percent of global GDP by PPP, compared to the BRICS countries’ 21 percent.
So when we talk about multipolarity, we’re not talking simply about a change of cast in the imperialist world system, such as Spanish/Portuguese colonialism giving way to Dutch colonialism, or Dutch colonialism giving way to British colonialism, or British colonialism giving way to US imperialism. Rather, multipolarity represents an end to the whole system of domination and hegemony; an end to the 500-year-old division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations. It means undermining imperialism and depriving the imperialist countries of their power to determine the fate of the rest of the world.
Needless to say, for the world’s peoples, this will be a very welcome development. The genocide in Gaza is part of the US-led imperialist world system; the proxy war in Ukraine is part of the US-led imperialist world system; the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen were part of that system, as is the criminal blockade of Cuba, as is the campaign of destabilisation and economic coercion against Venezuela and Nicaragua. This is the reality of the ‘rules based international order’. Undermining and overcoming such a situation clearly represents a historic victory for humanity.
The role of China
What’s China’s role in this process? Clearly, China is at the core of the multipolar trajectory. Multipolarity has been part of the Chinese political vocabulary since the early 1990s, and its basic tenets are consistent with the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first enunciated by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1954.
China has been a driving force behind BRICS and the SCO. Its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is providing the physical infrastructure for a multipolar world. The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and China-CELAC Forum are key pillars of China’s international relations. China in recent years has put forward the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilisation Initiative and the Global Artificial Intelligence Initiative, all of which it considers as common goods for humanity.
With China playing an increasingly active role in global affairs over the last 10-15 years, some people are starting to worry that it is set to become a new imperialist power; that instead of the multipolar nirvana described above, China will simply take over the US’s role as superpower and hegemon.
Such a concern is understandable but reflects a superficial and non-materialist analysis. China’s historical trajectory and political dynamics are profoundly different to those of the US. China’s economic rise has never been built on domination, war and hegemony, but on the hard work of the Chinese people, the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and the advantages of China’s economic and political structure.
China’s record speaks for itself. Whereas the US is permanently at war, China has not been at war in 45 years. The US has over 800 overseas military bases; China has one, in Djibouti, to protect shipping lanes. The US has overseas deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, extensive weapons systems – including nuclear weapons – and aircraft carriers; China does not. The US carries out coups, proxy wars, assassinations, destabilisation, unilateral sanctions and economic coercion throughout the world; China does not.
The US’s military budget is three times that of China, in spite of the fact that China’s population is four times larger (not to mention the fact that the US enjoys unparalleled geographic advantages and is in the enviable position of not facing a campaign of containment and encirclement against it).
Yes, China is a nuclear power, but it has approximately 500 warheads as compared to the US’s 5,500. It is also the only nuclear power to have a consistent no-first use policy, meaning that it has made an unambiguous commitment to only ever use nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack against it.
In relation to Gaza, China has been working towards peace while the US has been providing weapons, money and diplomatic cover to Israel. In relation to Ukraine, China has been coordinating with Brazil and the African Union to push for dialogue and a negotiated peace while the US has insisted on fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
Of course, there are capitalists in China, and if they constituted the ruling class and were able to set the country’s foreign policy, they might well push it towards hegemonism and imperialism; however, they do not constitute the ruling class. As long as that remains the case, Deng Xiaoping’s promise at the UN General Assembly will be kept: “China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one”.
So to reiterate, the shift to multipolarity is not simply a change of cast in the imperialist world system; it is an end to the imperialist world system.
Emerging New Cold War
The trajectory towards multipolarity seems inevitable, but of course it faces powerful opposition. The US ruling class is insistent on projecting its dominance from the 20th century onto the 21st century, and has created its foreign policy strategy on that basis. All US administrations – Democratic or Republican – are pursuing some or other variation of the Project for a New American Century. This is the context for Obama’s Pivot to Asia, the creation of the AUKUS nuclear pact, the attempts to create an Asian NATO, the trade war against China, the ‘chip war’ against China, and the propaganda war against China.
Any threat from the US must be taken seriously. While its economic dominance is waning somewhat, it is still by far the world’s biggest military power, and its ‘cold’ war – economic, diplomatic, propaganda – could well turn hot.
The most important dynamic in global politics today is this struggle between, on the one hand, an emerging multipolarity, and on the other, the attempts by the US and its allies to preserve the imperialist status quo.
Taking up our role in this struggle means fighting against wars both hot and cold. It means contributing to a global united front of the socialist countries, the Global South, and the progressive forces in the Global North, against imperialism and war, for sovereignty, peace and sustainable development.
As a socialist Indian, I am with China.
I agree with this excellent article.
As a socialist Kanuri, Nigerian I stand with China.