Russia in Global Affairs

For citation, please use:
Lomanov, A.V., 2025. Chinese Civilizational Alternative to the Western Development Model. Russia in Global Affairs, 23(3), pp. 70–89. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-3-70-89

In the 1980s, many socialist countries reassessed their recent histories and looked for a place in the “civilized world.” The USSR dreamed of its own “apartment” in the “pan-European home” (Gorbachev, 1988, p. 204), based significantly on the Soviet leader’s emotional reasoning that Europe had suffered too much from wars and conflicts and should now live in peace and cooperation. Moscow’s desire to avoid nuclear war justified its recognition of the supremacy of “universal values.”

But a critical reassessment of old values was not unique to Gorbachev’s perestroika. In China, similar processes began earlier and, until the end of the 1980s, echoed the Soviet discussions. Then the two countries’ paths diverged, leaving the fateful questions posed in that era unanswered for a long time.

Journey to the West

China, which had embarked on a path of reform, did not try to abandon socialism under the banner of saving humanity from nuclear destruction. The country was not a significant participant in the arms race, and its rapprochement with Washington was reaping economic dividends. In addition, China had no appealing civilizational home nearby with “apartments” able to accommodate it.

Painfully aware of its own backwardness, China opted for rapprochement with the West in the late 1970s. Faced with the West’s real power and prosperity, the Communist Party of China (CPC) urged its people to rally under reform and openness, while part of the intelligentsia sought the roots of China’s troubles in its history and traditional culture.

The New Enlightenment movement urged China to quickly absorb the lessons from Western civilization that it had missed in the first half of the century. Its advocates presented themselves as the successors of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, which had urged the Chinese youth to save the country with science and democracy. They argued that unity in defense of the nation’s sovereignty and dignity, then the priority, had “suffocated the enlightenment.”

Only under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms did the country have the chance to complete its enlightenment.

The movement’s major target for criticism was the “super-resilient” system of Chinese feudalism. For the CPC, there was nothing wrong in condemning feudalism. However, intellectuals of the 1980s extended their critique of China’s imperial institutions and morals of Mao Zedong’s socialism created in the 1950s-1970s. A simplified dichotomy between tradition and modernity—China and the West—generated a desire to join Western civilization at any cost, even by abandoning national tradition. These views were lucidly described by young dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo in 1988: China would need “300 years of colonization” to reach Hong Kong’s level of development (Yongbing, 1993, 2017).

In fact, China had been seeking a balance between its own identity and Western progress since the second half of the 19th century. At the end of the Qing Empire, the Self-Strengthening Movement sought to rely on Chinese ethical norms and values while absorbing Western scientific, technological, military, and educational achievements. Zhang Zhidong’s formula “Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application” (中学为体，西学为用) generalized this approach. Chinese reformers overcame civilizational isolation and hurried to get new knowledge. Recognition of the “Chinese foundation” as unshakable legitimized efforts to learn from the West, but gradual change was unable to solve the rapidly mounting problems that China faced by the early 20th century. This created public demand for revolutionary action to save the weakened state from foreign domination.

Importantly, the New Enlightenment was an influential social movement, not the party leadership’s line. It embodied the intellectuals’ discussions in the mid-1980s about the fate of national culture and the limits to Westernization, but actually continued those that had begun under the Kuomintang during the 1920s-1930s, when, for instance, prominent liberal thinker Hu Shi argued that: “We must unreservedly accept this modern civilization of the West because we need it to solve our most pressing problems, the problems of poverty, ignorance, disease and corruption” (Chou, 2013, p. 55). He condemned “eclectic” attempts to selectively integrate Chinese and Western cultures, and rejected the idea of the “Chinese foundation” for national development. His contemporary, humanities scholar Chen Xujing, recommended adopting Western civilization in toto, fearing that it might not work if lacking even one component.

During Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, intellectuals debated whether borrowing the West’s latest achievements in science and technology would be enough, or whether Western ideas and institutions should also be copied. Some of them, having no illusions about the possibility of convergence, called for borrowing the political system and private ownership along with the ideas. This would have meant a destruction of the government system and party ideology, and a radical weakening of national culture.

In the 1980s, proponents of “total Westernization” reproduced these arguments almost verbatim. They argued that Japan had risen by copying the West in everything. While China’s defeat in the Opium Wars forced its ruling elite to adopt Western technologies and weapons, the effects of this were limited by China’s adherence to the formula of “Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application.” The projection of the past onto the present spurred speculation that feudal ideas would revive, and reforms would fail again, unless China adopted the Western model in its entirety.

The general atmosphere of those years is vividly illustrated by a 1989 article in the magazine Jianghuai Luntan (江淮论坛), published by the Anhui province’s Academy of Social Sciences, which argued that Chinese modernization should recreate the Western “trinity” of market economy, democratic politics, and humanistic culture. Supposedly, this model was spreading across the globe and uniting humanity, and China must not limit its participation in the process. The country’s national specificity was identified with the “Asian social structure” consisting of imperial power, a state-controlled economy, and the interpretation of the “people as the basis,” different from Western democracy.[1] Modernization would destroy this “old system.” Alarmism about the “reform crisis” was directed not only against historical feudalism, but also against existing “bureaucratic power” and the “illusion of socialism” that prevented China’s Westernization. Since Chinese traditional society had no burgher class to provide internal support for modernization,[2] this role fell on the intellectual elite (Jianghuai Luntan, 1989, pp. 10-17). Calls for “total Westernization” grew into dissident appeals to intellectuals “Alter yourself and choose democracy” (Lin, 1989, pp. 20-21).

The “Westernizers” were criticized for lacking patriotism and respect for national culture. Their opponents argued that socialism’s selective adoption of Western achievements would be more successful now that feudalism, incompatible with large-scale public production (Wang, 1987, pp. 5-7), had been eliminated.

Criticism of “Chinese feudalism” was suspected of being a veiled attack on the CPC aimed at dismantling its power. Fang Lizhi, calling for “total Westernization,” was accused of supporting “bourgeois liberalization” and the U.S.’s strategy of China’s “peaceful evolution.” He was condemned for claiming that the CPC had inherited the feudal tradition of merging political and moral authority, and that his claim that Northern Europe had built “socialism” while China had built “modern feudalism” was “mistaking black for white.”

Westernizing criticism of tradition reached its peak in a six-part documentary titled “Heshang” (River Elegy), which was aired on central television in the summer of 1988. The series was full of dramatic statements that China’s “yellow civilization” could not teach its inhabitants the real spirit of science, that the ferocious Yellow River would not acquaint them with true democratic consciousness.

The call for “entering the huge blue ocean,” and saving the “yellow civilization” by joining the Western “blue civilization,” resembled the late Soviet Union’s readiness to abandon its own foundations for the sake of integration with Europe.

The Chinese government noticed this similarity already in the 1980s. It denounced “national nihilism” as engendering the ideology of “total Westernization” and as rejecting national culture as a whole, not just socialism (Zhang, 1989, pp. 17-19). Beijing concluded that Gorbachev’s “humanistic democratic socialism” had led to “national nihilism” (Feng, 1992, p. 50).

It is emblematic that like the Soviet Union’s perestroika-era narratives about East Germany lagging behind West Germany and North Korea falling behind South Korea, the popular view in China held that “the mainland falls short of Taiwan in economic development.” The CPC propagandists had to use statistics to refute this claim that questioned the advantages of the socialist system (Luo, 1990, pp. 8-12).

Thus, in the 1980s, the CPC struggled to explain that its “policy of openness” differed from “total Westernization” and that Deng Xiaoping’s reforms did not mean the “restoration of capitalism.” Sharp criticism of Chinese civilization served as the background for the political confrontation of 1989, whose outcome determined the trajectory of the state’s further development.

“Common” vs. “Universal”

The 1990s saw the rapid development of market relations in China and its active participation in globalization amid a relative lull in ideological discussions. Political Westernism had gone out of fashion, economic liberalism had become an unspoken mainstream ideology, and the supporters of traditional culture had gained great authority.

The idea of value unity between China and the West returned in 2005-2010. Fierce debates about “universal values” (pushi jiazhi 普世价值) flared up under moderate freedom of socio-political speech, when some Chinese media would still take the position of pro-Western globalism.

Following a tragic earthquake in the Sichuan province in May 2008, the weekly Nanfang zhoumo (南方周末) praised the authorities’ efforts to save people as “a demonstration to their people and the world of the recognition of universal values.” Statements about the value of every person’s life and national unity were followed by assertions that China’s political ideals, civilization, and modernization had reached a “turning point”: “If the state thinks about ordinary people and views the citizen’s right to life as fundamental, then this consensus can lay the ethical foundation for national reconciliation and for China’s reconciliation with the whole world. The whole world will lend us a helping hand, and all of humanity will share joy and sadness with us. Then we can move together with the whole world along the highway of human rights, rule of law, and democracy” (Nanfang zhoumo, 2008).

This view was elaborated in the dissident Charter 08, prepared by Liu Xiaobo, published in December 2008, and outlining a plan for dismantling the CPC’s power. The key point was that “the Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humanity and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.” It further stated that “by departing from these values, the Chinese government’s approach to ‘modernization’ has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse.” As an alternative the plan proposed to “embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system” (China’s Charter 08, 2009).

This provoked a wave of criticism of “universal values” in 2009-2012. Supporters of the official ideology argued that there are not, and cannot be, any abstract, equally-applicable “universal values” detached from class and history.

In fact, the West imposes these values on the whole world for its own ends. Their adoption in China would doom socialism and condemn the country to “total Westernization” and market liberalization, placing its future in doubt.

Chinese social scientists recalled Gorbachev’s attempt to make humanism the main attribute of socialism. They argued that Marxism is not opposed to moral humanism, but it rejects the idea of man’s unchanging nature regardless of class. They saw Gorbachev’s “fundamental mistake” as his elevation of humanism to the level of worldview and foundation for assessing Soviet history, thus ignoring specific economic, political, and cultural problems. Such an “idealistic view of history” did not match reality, and as a result, abstract humanism deprived the CPSU of ideological weapons and led to its defeat under pressure from hostile forces (Wang, 2021, pp. 30-31).

The refutation of “universal values” became an integral part of China’s ideological, social, and academic mainstream. However, by the mid-2010s, China had come to see itself as a world power capable of uniting humanity around common goals. This required a foundation of values. Xi Jinping’s speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2015, when he spoke of building a “Global Community of Shared Future,” became a turning point. He said that “peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom” were “common values of humanity and also the lofty goals of the United Nations” (Xi, 2017, p. 570).

The Chinese list of “common values of humanity”[3] is topped by peace and development, which ensure people’s right to life and material well-being. They are followed by equality and justice, understood primarily as standards of international relations. Only then do democracy and freedom follow.

The “common values of humanity” are firmly established in Beijing’s political lexicon. In his report at the 20th Congress of the CPC (2022), Xi Jinping called on all countries to develop “the common values of humanity” and promote rapprochement and mutual understanding between peoples. He stressed the need to respect the diversity of civilizations and to ensure that exchanges between civilizations surpass their disunity, the mutual learning of civilizations surpasses their conflicts, and the coexistence of civilizations surpasses civilizational arrogance (Xi, 2022, p. 5).

The Chinese leader shifted the focus from the need to recognize the “common values of humanity” to interaction between civilizations and joint practical responses to global challenges. After that, the Chinese academic and ideological spheres increasingly drew a distinction between “common values” and “universal values.”

Researchers at the School of Marxism within the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC, Wang Huxue and Chen Wanxin, blamed the theoretical inadequacy of “universal values” on their detachment from the human community’s reality. The scholars noted that the Enlightenment, when “universal values” played a progressive role in the victory of the bourgeoisie over feudal and clerical forces, and in the development of capitalism in Western countries, had long been a thing of the past.

Since global socio-economic and cultural interaction amalgamates national histories into world history, the development of human society leads to the formation of a value consensus, a common denominator of all values gained by all countries as a result of practice. This interpretation is based on Marxist’s key notions and importance of material production, the “real man’s” practice, and human nature as “the ensemble of the social relations.”

Unlike abstract “universal values,” the “common values of humanity” include peace, development, justice, etc. but encompass specific forms of those goals’ fulfillment by specific classes, nationalities, or states, thereby overcoming the “logic of capital” with “human logic” and uniting humanity through the recognition of cultural differences. The CPC presents its “common values of humanity” as a new achievement of Marxism that offers developing countries Chinese wisdom for solving their problems (Wang and Chen, 2023, pp. 72-79).

“Universal values” are not entirely invalidated by the U.S.’s and other Western countries’ use of the values to strengthen their dominance and exploit others. People have always sought freedom, equality, justice, and democracy. But non-Western countries’ adoption of them in the abstract leads to chaos, because they are not associated with practice or productive labor and lie outside social history. Zhang (2023, pp. 1-3) claims that only the “common values of humanity” take into account the subject’s input to the transformation of an object and become universal due to the continuous repetition of human practice.

The most important characteristic of the concept of “common values of humanity” is that it recognizes the possibility of people in different countries to choose their own ways to utilize values, depending on their history and national traditions. As an example of how the common value of democracy can be realized in different specific instances, Chinese authors cite competitive multi-party elections in the West and the whole-process people’s democracy under the CPC in China. It also presents an example of how solid economic foundation and modernization based on national characteristics can be achieved. China’s development has shown that there is no need to worship “universal values,” that the Western model is not the only way of economic development, and that respect for national characteristics is not a “deviation from the norm.” In the modern world, “universal values” have slowed economic growth and spread a Cold War mentality and power politics. If Western countries, with their narrow-minded position, are unable to take responsibility for creating a better future for humanity, China is ready to consolidate it in a “Global Community of Shared Future” that offers security, prosperity, inclusiveness, and environmental protection (Li and Shen, 2024, pp. 21-22).

The recognition of “common values” has not softened China’s assessment of “universal values.” The Chinese mainstream perceives them as an ideological justification for attempts to contain China through economic sanctions, technological blockades, military threats, and diplomatic isolation. The penetration of “universal values” into Chinese ideology is considered dangerous and unacceptable. The CPC promotes “common values” for the sake of building a “Global Community of Shared Future,” while remaining committed to socialist values and socialism with Chinese characteristics in the field of democracy and human rights. This prompts calls for a struggle to break the “blockade” of Western public opinion and the West’s discursive hegemony, promote China’s vision in the outside world, and defend China’s sovereignty, security and development interests (Wang, 2024, p. 118).

The Chinese concept of “common values of humanity” contains no elements of convergence, let alone ideological surrender to the West. It is based on China’s awareness of its material power and readiness for leadership in the modern world. ’

In fact, China seeks to create a new worldview system that can surpass Western “universal values” thanks to its reliance on reality and practice. Its key component is the Chinese leadership’s confidence in the correctness and effectiveness of the national development model.

The proposed interpretation of the “common values of humanity” is directly related to Marxism; hence the emphasis on the integration of community and adherence to socialism with Chinese characteristics and its ideological guidelines: “Integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and fine traditional culture is the path that must be taken to explore and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics within the Chinese civilization” (People’s Daily Online, 2023). Within this theoretical paradigm, the West seeks to hide the class nature of “universal values,” which becomes a source of confrontation, while the Chinese approach based on diversity is designed to unite the world as it takes into account social and cultural differences. It is assumed that “common values” will allow China to unite the “big family” of humanity, leaving behind the West’s “minor group” dominated by “universal values.”

Equally important is the recognition of the link between “common values” and Chinese cultural tradition. China’s readiness for equal and open interaction between civilizations, and its refusal to impose its values, are often explained by the Confucian tradition of striving for “harmony without unification.” China’s integration with the outside world does not mean its loss of identity.

From modernization to civilization

After the end of the Cold War, discussion of civilizations was for many years driven by criticism of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory. Chinese politicians and social scientists repeated that conflict was bad and dialogue was good. It was difficult to go beyond the truism. The West showed no willingness to consider non-Western civilizations as equals. China was unable either to influence the West’s position or offer its own attractive civilizational project.

The discussion rekindled thanks to China’s efforts to creatively rethink its own civilizational characteristics. Fifteen years ago, Zhang Weiwei came up with the concept of ‘civilizational state’ based on Chinese material. Seeking to avoid its comparison to a more modern nation-state, Zhang argued that China’s civilizational state had absorbed the modern basic concepts of sovereignty and human rights along with inherited civilizational characteristics such as “super large population,” “super large territory,” “super long historical tradition,” “superrich culture,” an ancient language, pragmatic public administration, social-governmental cooperation, and seamless private-state economic initiative. Only strong centralized power—relying not on electoral legitimacy but on historical civilizational legitimacy, and responsible to the people through “choosing the virtuous and appointing the able” (选贤任能)—can realize the people’s desire for prosperity and tranquility. The Chinese have gained significant individual freedom, while preserving the family’s place at the foundation of public life through adherence to traditional values (Zhang, 2010, pp. 64-77).

The Chinese intrinsic perception of civilizational characteristics as one whole makes it impossible to single out any one aspect and consider it inferior to the attributes of Western civilization (“backward” vs. “advanced,” “authoritarianism” vs. “democracy”).

This became possible only thanks to China’s convincing economic successes.

In the summer of 2023, Xi Jinping presented a normative interpretation of Chinese civilization’s prominent features. “Xi emphasized that Chinese civilization had a long and continuous history stretching back to antiquity, and said that a comprehensive and profound understanding of that history was essential to promoting the creative transformation and development of fine traditional Chinese culture more effectively, and to developing modern Chinese civilization” (People’s Daily Online, 2023). The innovative nature of civilization “allows it to preserve what is right without clinging to the old, respect antiquity without trying to restore it, not be afraid of new challenges, and accept new things” (Ibid).

Xi noted several prominent features of Chinese civilization: consistency with which the Chinese people follow their own path, originality that determines their enterprising spirit, and unity that makes various ethnic cultures of the Chinese nation rally closely together even when faced with major setbacks. “A strong and unified country is the pillar upon which the well-being of all Chinese people depends,” Xi added. He went on to say that “the inclusivity of Chinese civilization determines the harmonious coexistence of diverse religious beliefs in China, and determines the open-minded and inclusive mentality towards various civilizations around the world. Its peaceful nature determines that China will continue to pursue exchanges and mutual learning with different civilizations rather than cultural hegemony, that China will not impose its own values and political system on others, and that China will promote cooperation rather than confrontation and will not create exclusive blocs” (People’s Daily Online, 2023).

This attempt to formalize long-term characteristics of Chinese civilization can be explained by the state’s need for strong roots that increase resilience amid a global tempest. It is noteworthy that in the same year 2023, the updated version of Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept for the first time mentioned Russia as a “distinctive civilization state.” This is not only about preserving tradition but also about adapting to global challenges.

A “civilization state” fights to preserve itself by ensuring civilizational continuity and maintaining global diversity through respect for other civilizations.

During the celebration of the CPC’s centenary in 2021, Xi Jinping announced that the party had pioneered a new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization and created “a new form of human civilization,” (Xi, 2023, p. 13). This is another important aspect of the Chinese civilizational project. The “new form of human civilization” (renlei wenming xin xingtai人类文明新形态) covers the material, political, spiritual, social, and environmental aspects of China’s development, draws on Marxism and takes into account national features. It is not identical to the traditional civilization of China and presents an alternative to modern Western civilization, being free from subordination to the interests of capital, from the desire for external expansion, and from suppression of the spiritual by the material. It contains “common values” and demonstrates the ability of non-Western civilizations to adapt to current challenges, catch up with the West in terms of development, and narrow the gap between the South and the North.

Researchers note that China not only follows the path of “civilizational development” in accordance with national characteristics, but it also “develops civilization.” It is suggested that Chinese modernization has raised the national development strategy to a civilizational level, and China’s “new form of human civilization” has gone beyond the boundaries of any one civilization (Feng, 2024, pp. 1-13). Such an interpretation of China’s modern contribution to the development of world civilization spurs a search for universal characteristics in the Chinese modernization project that can be applicable in other countries.

Chinese authors distinguish two components of the “new form of human civilization.” Firstly, it is China, and Beijing aims to ensure its integral development. Secondly, it embodies the whole world, including a “Community of Shared Future,” “common values of humanity,” a view on global governance, a correct approach to the duty and reward, and a new type of international relations. The fact that the Chinese-type modernization model combines features common for all countries (economic, social and technological progress, and human development) with unique national characteristics gives the “new form of human civilization” both a Chinese and a global dimension. It turns out that China is creating a modern civilization that belongs to world history and surpasses capitalist modernity (Chen, 2024, pp. 5-17).

The “Chinese modernity plan” differs from its historical predecessors. The West went through the modernity of the Enlightenment that relied on reason and science, and recognized the central place of a human person. Then came the postmodern period that criticized the reign of reason and sought to free human life and will from their subordinate position.

Having traveled the long way of criticizing Western modernity and postmodernity, the CPC has opened up a “new modernity” that differs from postmodernity and surpasses Western modernity.

The emphasis on the individual and the people allowed the party to build, upon the foundation of Chinese-type modernization, a “new form of human civilization” that no longer focuses on the interests of capital, profit, and enslavement and alienation of man in the process of modernization (Li and Xiong, 2024, p. 12).

Xiang Jiuyu, from the School of Marxism at Wuhan University, has proposed the idea of ​‘civilizational modernity’ in order to transcend the dispute between “a single modernity,” which allows only a capitalist path of development, and “multiple modernity,” which recognizes national differences and specific solutions without reference to Western modernity (Xiang, 2024, pp 15-34).

The “new form of civilization” is rooted in the Chinese traditional ‘virtue ethics’(dexing 德性) that was formed in the moral and socio-economic basis of the Chinese agrarian civilization. Today, the global human civilization is transitioning from an advanced industrial civilization to a blended ecological and information civilization. China follows this path as well but with an emphasis on the virtue ethics, which becomes both the moral basis of the “new form of civilization” and a kind of “connecting tissue” that allows harmoniously combining the post-industrial way of life, information technology, and life in harmony with nature (that is, ecology). Thus, China’s moral civilizational tradition is the engine driving the construction of a Global Community of Shared Future as a new “All-under-Heaven civilization” of universal significance (Yang, 2024, p. 11).

Modern China’s confidence in its ability to construct a new common modernity based on its own civilization and describe it using its own conceptual instruments stands in stark contrast to its agitation in the 1980s and its doubts about the significance of national culture. Critically-minded intellectuals of the first decade of reforms spoke of alienation and the lack of humanism under socialism. Now China is offering humanity a path to salvation from capitalist modernity. The Soviet Union harbored similar aspirations, but a unique feature of the forward-looking “Chinese plan” is its reliance on tradition. China is trying to convince the Global South’s civilizations that they can catch up with the West if they find their own way apart from the pernicious scenario of “total Westernization.”

*  *  *

As time passes, the Chinese assessments of Gorbachev as a malicious destroyer of the CPSU and the USSR softened. An authoritative researcher of Soviet perestroika, Zuo Fengrong, has acknowledged that Gorbachev’s New Thinking diplomacy greatly improved the USSR’s international standing. “However, these positive results did not help Soviet reforms or modernization, largely because the USSR still considered itself the most advanced country, and improved relations with the United States primarily for the sake of cooperation to solve common problems facing humanity,” not for the sake of economic cooperation with the United States and European countries.

Faced with the historical task of amending the “Soviet model” and finding a new path to modernization, China and the USSR made the same choice for reform. The difference in results is a product of differences in national historical and cultural traditions, in leaders’ capabilities, and in the ruling parties’ attitudes to the traditional theory of socialism. Zuo Fengrong believes that the CPC was successful because it addressed real problems, overcame theoretical stereotypes, improved the life of the people, and established close interaction with the outside world. The CPSU’s power collapsed because of the party’s persistent inability to rid itself of dogmas or implement effective economic reforms (Zuo, 2024, pp. 34-35).

 The Soviet leader’s desire to integrate the country into European civilization was accompanied by reservations about the equality of the two systems and the inadmissibility of imposing values. However, the USSR’s rapid weakening crushed hopes for equality with the West. As a result, the “pan-European home” was built without Russia and to its detriment.

In an alternative history, where the USSR managed to economically reform itself, survive, and secure its worthy place in the global market economy, Moscow might advance ideological constructs similar to the “new form of human civilization.” Paradoxically, China’s quests since the 1980s validate Soviet perestroika’s aspirations to universality. Perestroika was not a mistake but was pursued too quickly, based on arrogant overestimations of economic potential.

China’s experience confirms that only a strong country ready to claim world leadership can set such objectives. Economic growth gradually moved Beijing towards proclaiming “common values of humanity” and initiating the construction of “a new form of human civilization.” In outward appearance, these slogans are borrowings from the Gorbachev era that were welcomed by the West. Yet, in reality, the confrontation between China and the West is intensifying.

Why do “universal values” not contribute to reconciliation this time? One reason is that China is fully confident of its development path and the value of its own civilization.

This article develops and rethinks the discussion the author took part in at the 21st session of the Valdai Discussion Club in November 2024.