The 11th Asian Conference of the Valdai Club, titled “Russia and Asia After the Pandemic” took place on December 9. ZHOU Bo, Senior Fellow of Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and China Forum Expert, joined the session themed “The Shock of 2020: What We Lost and What We Gained in International Relations.” 

With more than 1.5 million lives lost to the ongoing pandemic, it has become far more lethal than a war caused by traditional threats. Unfortunately, at a time when the world should be united in the fight against COVID-19, the U.S., the country that suffers the most in this pandemic, continues to treat China as its primary adversary and play up the great-power rivalry.

The West has narcissistically equated the 70 years after World War II with the “liberal international order” and wants that order to continue, but such an order just does not exist, said Zhou Bo. Since 1945, the world order has been reshaped with more than 50 African countries gaining independence, the U.S.-Soviet confrontation, and the rise of China. 

China’s challenge to the West is not ideological, but psychological: it is utterly unacceptable to them that China, an “authoritarian” state, will soon become the world’s largest economy. But China has no intention whatsoever to challenge the current international system; it simply proves that not all roads lead to Rome—countries with different development models and values can still succeed.