For a mathematician, 2025 might stand out for being a “perfect square”: 45 multiplied by 45, a rare symmetry. But its significance goes far beyond numerical elegance – it marks the year the postwar global order expired, and a new one was about to be born.

In November 2024, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping made their first substantive joint statement about the national-security risks posed b

Is the United States engaging in retrenchment or a new form of hegemony? Venezuela and Greenland are not separate stories but a single thread. A more transactional, more emotional and more coercion-oriented U.S. is taking shape.

The cases of Greenland, Venezuela and Ukraine signal what’s coming in the next phase of global governance. It is not disappearing but is being rebuilt—faster, more contested and more deal-driven than ever under the pressure of crisis and rivalry.

When lawless behavior by powerful nations can be carried out with virtual impunity—with no significant international opposition—a civilized world order founded on rules rather than brute force can no longer be guaranteed.

Even among America’s allies in the West there is a growing willingness to resist unrestrained U.S. unilateralism. The U.S. must establish a new equilibrium between its traditional isolationist orientation and its commitment to global engagement.

For China-U.S. relations today, the realistic question is not how to construct a G2 but how the two countries can find a workable mode of coexistence under conditions in which cooperation and competition can coexist.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s China policy aims to balance economic engagement with security concerns while ending the UK’s tendency to swing between confrontation and accommodation, but mixed signals have drawn criticism from both China hawks at home and officials in Beijing. Meaningful progress in UK-China relations will depend on delivering concrete cooperation rather than rhetoric or symbolic high-level visits.

China’s Global Governance Initiative contains some clear structural and cognitive differences compared with the West. Global governance has entered a post-Western era and requires the building of a new governance regime that features consultation and sharing.

As geopolitical tensions rise, competition for the cutting-edge science and talent that underpins advanced technology has heated up. The United States, China, and other major powers now regard leadership in areas like AI, semiconductors, quantum technologies, and biotechnology as central to military capability, economic security, and ideological influence.