News & insights

Source and discussion: 

Olters, Jan-Peter (2026). ‘Une stratégie chinoise pour les puissances moyennes’, Conseil des relations internationales de Montréal (CORIM), 13 April 2026.

Caron, Jean-François, and Jocelyn Coulon (2026), Podcast ‘L’état du monde’, Season 2, Episode 27 (20 April 2026).

In the words of Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, the current tectonic shift in geopolitics is best understood as a rupture: a long build-up of pressure now being released with sudden force. In the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, that rupture has become unmistakable. It has shaken assumptions on which Western cohesion rested for decades: the primacy of law over power, the reliability of alliances, and a shared commitment to democracy and the rule of law. For the middle powers, this marks the return of strategic uncertainty.

As the prospect of a rules-based international order recedes, Canada, EU member states, and their partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are discovering that they can no longer preserve political and economic autonomy without co-ordination, nor guarantee security without capabilities of their own. This reality is becoming inescapable in their dealings with the three major powers—China, Russia, and the US—each of which increasingly sees the non-American West as the principal obstacle to a world order openly governed by raw power.

This rupture became unmistakable when the Trump administration began to make its new worldview explicit—from its early signals in Davos to the adoption in its national security strategy of a transactional view of alliances. Disputes once dismissed as technical irritants now touch on first principles: sovereignty within alliances, the boundary between negotiation and coercion, and whether territorial integrity remains inviolable or becomes merely another bargaining chip.

Whether the issue is Greenland and Canada, tariffs and commercial coercion, or Ukraine, Venezuela, and Iran, the same conclusion holds: in such an environment, middle powers can no longer merely adapt; they must act together to shape the emerging order. For, as Carney put it, if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

China’s singular position

China occupies a singular position in this new configuration. It is now the major power most committed to the language of international rules and multilateral co-operation, even as it interprets both strictly through the prism of its own interests. Beijing does not yet offer a coherent alternative to the liberal order of yesterday. Yet it is clearly benefiting from the fragmentation of the non-American West, expanding its strategic latitude, increasing its appeal, and strengthening its negotiating leverage. Visits by non-American Western leaders to Xi Jinping have made that clear: when dealing with China, bargaining power depends on the ability to act collectively.

To preserve political and economic room for manoeuvre—on market access, industrial co-operation, and strategic diversification—middle powers can negotiate effectively only if they do not allow themselves to be picked off one by one, even when the rules of the game remain largely set by Beijing’s priorities.

A reconfigured geometry of alliances

The repositioning of the middle powers is shaped by the destabilising dynamics among Washington, Beijing, and Moscow. For Europe in particular, Russia’s war against Ukraine represents a profound threat to the post-1945 European peace order. It has produced a de facto rupture with Moscow while also reviving tensions with Washington. In this context, the relationship with China remains largely undefined. Any strategic reorientation by the middle powers now depends on the shifting interplay among the three great powers.

Washington’s nationalist approach, grounded in tariff threats and political pressure, serves one of Moscow’s longstanding objectives: the weakening of Western cohesion. At the same time, the increasingly asymmetrical partnership between Russia and China is consolidating parallel fora, from BRICS+ to the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, while Washington casts Beijing as its principal strategic rival. The result is a tightening strategic squeeze on liberal democracies that still regard the predictability of law as an advantage, at precisely the moment when Washington increasingly treats it as an impediment.

The decisive question is no longer whether ‘the West’ can still project unity of principle, but whether the non-American West can translate common interests into a co-ordinated position on China, despite growing opposition from the US. China will remain at once an essential market, a systemic competitor, and a power intent on shaping international rules. For the non-American West, the answer must therefore be a three-part strategy: economic interdependence, technology and security, and the setting of rules and standards. One guiding principle stands out: connectivity must be grounded in law. That means joining corridors and networks only where reciprocity is credible, financing is transparent, and disputes are resolved through genuine arbitration.

Beijing, reform, and the rules

As Xi Jinping reaffirmed in January 2026, ‘international law can only be truly effective when all countries abide by it’. But in a world order increasingly shaped by power politics, this multilateral credo is not merely a statement of principle; it is also a language of influence directed at the middle powers. For the non-American West, the essential task is to identify those institutional arenas in which Beijing signals a willingness to reform—and where reciprocal compromise remains conceivable.

Xi’s call at the G20 for a reallocation of IMF quotas was coupled with an appeal to ‘restore the normal functioning’ of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, a sign that China wishes to present itself less as a revisionist disrupter than as a reforming power, even as it seeks greater latitude to write the rules. At the same time, Xi presents governance reform as a limit on Western discretion: rules, he says, must apply ‘equally and uniformly’, and ‘the house rules of a few countries must not be imposed upon others’. This reflects persistent under-representation in the institutions of global economic governance. With close to 17 per cent of global GDP, China’s IMF quota stands at only 6.4 per cent. The point of contact—and of friction—is the same. Beijing wants more voice, access, and influence; the non-American West seeks openness and enforceability.

Against this backdrop, China’s push for greater weight within existing institutions and its construction of parallel platforms follow the same strategic logic: enlarging the space in which Beijing can formulate, interpret, and apply the terms of interdependence. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the clearest expression of that ambition. It is not merely a development programme, but an attempt to shape the infrastructural foundations of globalisation itself. Xi presents it as an instrument for building an open, inclusive, and interconnected world of shared progress.

The BRI as the test case

That is why the BRI is the clearest test of the balance between interdependence and asymmetry. Beijing increasingly presents it as a project of ‘high-quality development’—green, digital, standards-based connectivity—while entrenching itself as the principal gatekeeper of projects and financing. For the non-American West, this is where the real negotiation lies. If China wants to attract Western capital, technology, and legitimacy, the price of entry must be enforceable commitments: reciprocal access, transparent procurement, clear financing terms, common technical and data standards, and dispute-settlement mechanisms that actually adjudicate, rather than vague ‘win-win’ formulae. China’s insistence that rules be applied ‘equally and uniformly’ invites a simple test: is Beijing willing to accept constraints on its own discretion as readily as on that of the West?

Any agreement will fail if it amounts to a single, undifferentiated approach to China. The non-American West is too exposed, and China too central, for any binary choice between engagement and confrontation to be workable. What is needed is a differentiated, disciplined approach—and internal co-ordination robust enough to sustain collective negotiation. Without common instruments to speak with one voice, the non-American West will be treated as little more than an aggregate of markets—and dealt with piecemeal. And if law-based connectivity is not genuinely enforceable, it will not be neutral: it will determine who gets to set the terms of openness—and who ends up paying the price of dependence.

Jan-Peter Olters