China has effectively aligned the Global South through massive funding of its Belt and Road initiative, with political control of a nation’s foreign policy substituting for repayment of loans. China wants to use its dominance of emerging economies at the UN to protect itself from US dominance by creating an alternative world order it can manipulate. This counterweight to US and European advanced economies has formed a multipolar world order with have’s and have-not’s competing for political control over the world’s human and natural resources.

This no different than the divide during the Cold War between alliances centered on Moscow and Washington, with Beijing replacing Moscow. We know how to win this type of conflict. China is not using nuclear weapons this time the way the Soviets did, but propaganda and cyberwar as an offset strategy.