There were always reasons to doubt it was a real possibility—until now.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping react after posing for photos ahead of a bilateral meeting at Gimhae Air Base on October 30, 2025 in Busan, South Korea. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping react after posing for photos ahead of a bilateral meeting at Gimhae Air Base on October 30, 2025 in Busan, South Korea. ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES
Could China become a hegemon in Asia? Back in 2023, I wrote a column arguing that fears of Chinese regional hegemony were overstated, though not entirely fanciful. A longer version of that argument was subsequently published in the Spring 2025 issue of International Security. I argued that not only had most modern bids for regional hegemony failed (the United States being the sole exception due to some unusually favorable circumstances), but the prospects for a strong balancing coalition in Asia were good. Most of China’s neighbors did not want it to dominate the region, and neither did the United States. Given the propensity of major powers to balance threats, I concluded that an overt Chinese bid for hegemony was likely to fail and that Beijing would be unwise to attempt it.
I still find the logic of this argument convincing, but I gave insufficient weight to the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump would be as impulsive, misguided, and incompetent a steward of foreign policy as he has proved to be. I assumed that the presence of vocal China hawks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, aided by a bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill, would keep U.S. power sufficiently focused on helping our Asian allies keep China in check.
Instead, since 2025, Trump has done just about everything someone would do if they consciously wanted China to supplant the United States and establish a dominant position in its immediate region. He has gone after the pillars of the U.S. scientific establishment: cutting National Science Foundation funding, purging its advisory board, dismissing experienced scientists in dozens of government agencies, and waging a destructive war against the United States’ leading universities. In an era where scientific prowess is the key to economic productivity and military power, this is an act of unilateral disarmament, at a moment when China is doing the exact opposite.
Relatedly, Trump has conceded to China the commanding heights of emerging green technologies—solar and wind power, advanced batteries, electric vehicles, etc.—while doubling down on 20th-century technologies: fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine. It’s mind-boggling: As data centers proliferate and human existence requires ever-larger amounts of electricity, this administration is spending tax dollars to prevent wind farms from being built. The world is being reminded daily that it needs to reduce fossil fuel use and rely more on clean electric power, and Trump is doing everything he can to ensure that China—not the United States—owns that future.
Third, he imposed a poorly designed and seemingly random set of tariffs on China (and others), only to back off when China cut off exports of the refined rare earth minerals on which many advanced technologies (like the laptop on which I’m writing this) depend. Turns out his tariffs were also illegal, which made them even less likely to achieve any of the goals he claimed they’d bring (such as bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States).
Even worse, he used the tariff bludgeon to bully some of our most important partners in Asia, forcing them to pledge to invest in the U.S. economy whether they wanted to or not. Apart from generating resentment, damaging our allies’ economies makes it harder for them to spend more on defense, something the United States has long wanted them to do. Trump and his team are also doing little to nurture warmer ties with Asian countries: Trump indulged in a pointless spat with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, and there are currently no serving U.S. ambassadors in Australia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, or Vietnam. Most of these posts don’t even have anyone nominated.
Trump and Rubio have also pulled the United States out of dozens of international organizations—another arena where China is increasingly active and effective—which means the United States won’t be in the room when the rules and institutions that shape various aspects of international intercourse get written. I know, I know: Some international institutions aren’t that important, and powerful states can flout them when they wish, but a decreasing diplomatic presence at these forums signals to the rest of the world that the United States isn’t interested in working with others. It also means that in the years ahead, U.S. businesses are going to have to navigate global regulatory environments whose rules were written by others. Even a country as powerful as the United States may find this awkward and inefficient.
And then there’s the war with Iran.
For starters, the conflict is a giant distraction, burning up Trump’s limited attention span, as well as the time and energy of his advisors. How do you formulate an effective strategy for Asia when you and your team are busy trying to figure out some way to get the Strait of Hormuz open? Trump is the fourth U.S. president who took office vowing to focus on China’s rising power in Asia, and like all his predecessors, he ended up in a quagmire in the Middle East instead. And like George W. Bush in 2003, he has no one to blame but himself (and maybe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
The war has also undermined the U.S. military posture in Asia, raising legitimate questions about how effectively the United States could respond if trouble were to erupt out there. The U.S. Navy has three aircraft carrier battle groups in the Middle East and only one in East Asia right now, and those carriers in the Gulf have been on station for months and will need some port time when this is all over. The Pentagon has been using up Tomahawks, Patriot missiles, and other advanced systems at a rapid rate, leaving its allies in Asia less protected. I don’t think China or North Korea is about to take advantage of this situation, but it can’t be making our allies in Asia very happy.
Moreover, the entire way the war was “planned” (if that word even applies) and executed must be giving longtime allies considerable pause. None of them were consulted in advance, and no one in the administration seems to have given the slightest thought to how attacking Iran again might affect our partners around the world. The effects have been severe: Gas prices are up sharply in the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere, and growth forecasts have been lowered. Add to that the economic and human consequences of fertilizer shortages and reduced crop yields due to the war, and you have a recipe for real anger at the cavalier way that Washington went to war.
To repeat a point I’ve made in the past: The administration’s shambolic handling of the war can only raise serious doubts about U.S. judgment and competence. In world politics, influence and credibility stem in part from strength, shared interests, and shows of resolve, but they also depend on others’ confidence that a country’s leaders have some idea of what they are doing. Given the administration’s performance so far, should any of America’s allies in Asia (or anywhere else, for that matter) take any of their advice or believe any pledge they might make? Meanwhile, China gets to portray itself as a benign power (it isn’t, really), or at least like one that isn’t in the business of bombing foreign countries, assassinating their leaders, or sending the world economy into a tailspin. A Gallup poll recently reported that China is now more popular around the world than the United States, a remarkable development that ought to worry all of us.
All of which makes me wonder if I was too sanguine about the stability of the United States’ Asian alliances, and the prospects for preventing Chinese dominance there. Although there are powerful structural reasons why a coalition to balance China should be pretty durable, it could still fail if key alliance members—and especially the putative alliance leader—are sufficiently inept. Although most Asian countries do not want to distance themselves from the United States and accommodate China, the possibility may not be as remote as I once believed. The United States’ recent blunders are the main reason.
I’m reluctant to say all this, because defeatism can be self-fulfilling, and I don’t want to imply that the jig is up and Chinese dominance is likely. Even now, I would much rather play the U.S. hand than the one that China has been dealt, because Washington still holds more high cards than Beijing does. But I wish our hand was being played by someone who understood the rules of the game and knew what each card was worth.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
From ForeignPolicy
