In Western discourse, “rebalancing” between China and the West is often framed as a neutral, technical adjustment—addressing trade imbalances, supply-chain resilience, or national security concerns. Yet this language obscures its political function. Rather than a dispassionate economic correction, rebalancing frequently operates as a tool of power, shaped by a global order historically structured around Western dominance and asymmetric rule-making. China’s rise is treated not as a conventional stage of development but as a systemic disruption, while practices long normalized or celebrated in Western histories—industrial policy, protectionism, labor exploitation, and state-led infrastructure—are delegitimized when applied by China. In this sense, rebalancing often implies the restoration of Western advantage rather than the equitable redistribution of opportunity, revealing a deeper clash of interpretation: the West views rebalancing as a means to preserve hierarchy, whereas China understands it as a renegotiation of status within the international system.
The Rhetoric and Reality of “Rebalancing” in Western–China Relations
In official Western discourse, “rebalancing” is presented as a pragmatic and principled response to economic and strategic concerns. It is framed as an effort to correct unfair trade practices, address industrial overcapacity, safeguard national security, strengthen supply-chain resilience, and uphold a so-called rules-based international order. Within this narrative, rebalancing appears technocratic and corrective—an exercise in restoring efficiency, fairness, and stability to a system portrayed as having been distorted by China’s behavior.
What this framing obscures, however, are the assumptions embedded beneath it. The call for rebalancing presumes that the existing global distribution of profits, standards, value capture, and rule-making authority is inherently legitimate and politically neutral. Disruptions to this distribution—particularly those driven by China’s industrial and technological ascent—are thus cast not as a normal evolution of global capitalism, but as distortions requiring containment or reversal. Historical context is largely absent: practices central to Western industrial rise, once celebrated as development or comparative advantage, are reinterpreted as threats when successfully employed by China.
This double standard reveals what rebalancing actually implies. Western industrial expansion is normalized as modernization, while Chinese advancement is problematized as imbalance. Rebalancing, in practice, becomes acceptable only insofar as it restores or preserves Western dominance, not when it leads to a genuine redistribution of power or opportunity. The concept therefore functions less as a neutral economic adjustment than as a political mechanism for managing—and limiting—structural change in the global order.
A Hierarchical Division of Labor: Mobility for the West, Constraint for China
The contemporary global division of labor reflects a deeply asymmetric historical pattern. Western economies did not ascend through passive adherence to open markets, but through active state intervention: protecting infant industries, deploying tariffs and subsidies, coordinating industrial policy, and leveraging colonial monopolies. Through these mechanisms, the West climbed the industrial ladder while consolidating control over high-value domains such as branding, finance, standards-setting, and intellectual property. Only after securing these advantages did Western states begin to champion free trade, market openness, and global efficiency as universal principles.
China’s development trajectory has followed a comparable logic. It initially absorbed labor-intensive manufacturing to stabilize employment, then leveraged scale, infrastructure investment, and accumulated skills to pursue industrial upgrading into higher-value sectors, technology, and standards-setting. Yet this progression—treated as natural and legitimate in Western history—is framed as unfair or destabilizing when undertaken by China. The resulting double standard reveals an implicit expectation that China remain fixed in lower-value roles while the West retains mobility and dominance at the top of the value chain. In this sense, China is criticized not for violating the rules of the global system, but for using them effectively enough to challenge an entrenched hierarchy.
Industrial Policy and the Politics of Legitimacy
In contemporary Western practice, industrial policy has returned to the center of economic governance, openly and unapologetically. Through measures such as the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, expansive subsidy regimes, export controls, investment screening, and reshoring mandates, Western states are actively shaping markets and directing capital. These interventions are consistently justified under the language of national security, strategic autonomy, and risk management, presenting state action not as distortion but as a necessary defense of economic and technological sovereignty.
China’s approach, by contrast, is described in markedly different terms despite its structural similarities. State guidance, the use of state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors, industrial planning, and scale-driven efficiency are portrayed not as policy choices but as evidence of illegitimate interference. What is framed as prudent self-protection when undertaken by Western economies is recast as authoritarian distortion when practiced by China. The divergence lies less in the substance of the policies than in who is deploying them.
This double standard reveals that the contradiction is not fundamentally economic but positional. Industrial intervention is accepted as legitimate when exercised by incumbents seeking to preserve their advantage, yet condemned when used by challengers attempting to alter the balance of power. The debate over industrial policy, therefore, is less about market principles than about who is permitted to shape the rules—and who is expected to remain constrained by them.
Labor and Human Rights as Instruments of Selective Moralization
For decades, Western engagement with China’s manufacturing sector was marked by conspicuous moral silence. When Chinese factories supplied shoes, garments, toys, and low-end electronics, Western firms outsourced at scale, benefiting from low costs while largely ignoring labor conditions. Chinese workers were treated as abstract inputs within global supply chains, and ethical scrutiny was minimal so long as production remained confined to low-value, non-strategic industries that posed no competitive threat.
This posture shifted sharply as China moved into higher-value and strategically sensitive sectors such as electric vehicles, lithium batteries, solar energy, semiconductors, and advanced automotive engineering. With China’s industrial ascent came a surge in forced labor allegations, human rights critiques, and environmental compliance demands. Concerns that had long been muted or absent suddenly became central to policy discourse, trade restrictions, and regulatory enforcement, coinciding closely with intensified competitive pressure.
The resulting pattern reveals a clear double standard. Ethical scrutiny emerges not as a consistent moral commitment, but as a reactive mechanism triggered by industrial rivalry. Labor and human rights, rather than functioning as universal principles applied irrespective of economic interest, are mobilized selectively as tools of competitive containment. In this sense, moral language becomes less an expression of enduring values than a strategic instrument within broader struggles over technological and industrial leadership.
Welfare, Sustainability, and the Politics of Moral Superiority
Western discourse frequently portrays China’s development model as inherently “unsustainable,” while presenting European welfare states as evidence of superior institutions, governance, and social values. This contrast implies that Western stability and social protection are the natural outcomes of ethical capitalism, whereas China’s growth is framed as reckless, extractive, or environmentally and socially deficient. Such narratives, however, abstract welfare and sustainability from the historical and structural conditions that made them possible.
In reality, Western welfare systems were not built in isolation. They have long depended on external supports, including colonial extraction, U.S.-provided military security, financial rent-seeking, currency privilege, and the offshoring of labor-intensive and polluting production. Germany’s celebrated manufacturing model, for example, relies heavily on low-wage labor from Eastern Europe, with much of the environmental and physical burden displaced beyond its borders. Similarly, France’s continued influence in Africa and Switzerland’s role as a global tax haven illustrate how income generated outside domestic productive systems helps sustain internal social stability.
The resulting double standard is clear. When the West captures value through global asymmetries, it is praised as institutional sophistication; when China does so, it is labeled distortion. Sustainability and virtue are evaluated only after wealth has been accumulated and risks externalized. In this sense, Western claims of moral superiority rest less on universal principles than on historically contingent advantages that are rarely acknowledged in contemporary assessments of development and legitimacy.
From Historical Polluters to Environmental Gatekeepers
Western economies accumulated their wealth through prolonged periods of intensive and largely unregulated pollution, producing the majority of historical carbon emissions before environmental constraints were meaningfully enforced. Industrial expansion preceded climate accountability, allowing the West to externalize environmental costs while consolidating economic and technological dominance. Environmental regulation emerged only after prosperity had been secured, transforming pollution from a tolerated byproduct into a managed legacy.
China’s environmental trajectory differs in both timing and motivation. Facing acute domestic environmental pressures and development constraints, China has invested heavily in electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and battery technologies as necessities rather than luxuries. Yet this transition has not shielded China from criticism. Instead, Western governments increasingly accuse China of environmental dumping, impose carbon border taxes, and frame Chinese green technologies as unfairly subsidized threats to market competition.
This shift reveals a temporal double standard. The same actors that industrialized through environmental degradation now position themselves as arbiters of sustainability, while continuing to outsource emissions through global supply chains. Environmental norms are enforced only after the ladder of development has been climbed—and then raised as a barrier to those still ascending. In this sense, climate governance becomes less about shared responsibility and more about preserving established advantage under the guise of environmental stewardship.
The Rules-Based Order and the Politics of Rule-Making
Western discourse frequently conflates adherence to a “rules-based international order” with legitimacy, while implicitly equating that legitimacy with the preservation of its own historical dominance. The rules in question, however, were largely established during a period when Western capital dominated global finance, Western firms controlled intellectual property regimes, and Western currencies monopolized international settlement. Framed as neutral and universal, these rules in fact reflect the material conditions and power distributions of an earlier era.
China’s challenge to this order is therefore often mischaracterized. The central issue is not systematic rule-breaking, but China’s effort to participate in rule formation itself—by co-authoring standards, building parallel institutions, and diversifying supply chains, technological norms, and settlement mechanisms. These actions are portrayed as destabilizing not because they violate existing rules, but because they dilute exclusive control over how those rules are defined and enforced.
The resulting double standard is clear. China is expected to comply fully with established norms, yet is discouraged—or actively resisted—when it seeks a role in revising them to reflect changing global realities. Participation is tolerated, even encouraged, so long as it remains passive. Authorship, however, is treated as a privilege reserved for incumbents. In this way, the “rules-based order” functions less as a framework for shared governance than as a mechanism for preserving asymmetrical rule-making power.
Urban Development and the Politics of Aesthetic Judgment
Western media narratives frequently depict Chinese cities as polluted, overbuilt, and artificial—symbols of excess rather than progress. Rapid construction, dense skylines, and large-scale infrastructure are framed as signs of inefficiency or authoritarian spectacle, reinforcing the perception that urban development in China is inherently distorted or unsustainable. These portrayals rely heavily on aesthetic judgment rather than systematic comparison of urban performance or living conditions.
A contrasting reality emerges when cities are examined side by side. Major Western capitals such as London and New York struggle with aging infrastructure, visible homelessness, and unreliable public transit systems, conditions that are often normalized as inevitable features of mature societies. By contrast, Chinese cities like Shanghai and Chongqing display extensive modern transit networks, functional density, contemporary lighting and utilities, and a demonstrated capacity to build and maintain large-scale infrastructure at speed. Yet these achievements are routinely dismissed as wasteful or excessive.
The resulting double standard is revealing. Western urban stagnation is treated as normal decline, while Chinese construction is recast as overreach. When development comes from established powers, it is accepted as legacy; when it comes from challengers, it is reframed as extravagance. In this way, visible progress becomes suspect not because of its outcomes, but because of who delivers it.
The “China Collapse” Narrative and the Logic of Capitalist Predation
Western economic commentary frequently advances the claim that China must privatize state assets, weaken state control, and liberalize its financial system in order to achieve stability and genuine reform. These prescriptions are framed as technocratic necessities, presented as universal remedies for efficiency, transparency, and long-term growth. Embedded within this rhetoric, however, is a deeper expectation that structural change should culminate in systemic breakdown rather than managed evolution.
The historical subtext is revealing. Calls for rapid liberalization echo the post-Soviet experience, in which state retreat enabled asset fire sales, elite capture, and the absorption of strategic resources by foreign capital. Under this lens, “reform” functions less as institutional improvement than as economic disarmament, clearing the way for external acquisition and internal oligarchization. What is described as correction thus resembles a strategy of opportunistic entry.
The double standard is clear. State control during Western industrial ascent is retrospectively justified as necessary and prudent, while similar mechanisms in China’s development are portrayed as pathological or unsustainable. Reform is offered as a cure, yet its practical implication is often the erosion of China’s capacity to manage its own trajectory. In this sense, the “China collapse” theory reveals not a neutral forecast, but a political economy of expectation shaped by historical patterns of capitalist predation.
Rebalancing as a One-Way Adjustment
In practice, Western calls for “rebalancing” often take the form of unilateral demands on China. Expectations include reducing exports, slowing economic growth, limiting industrial scale, and opening domestic markets to foreign firms. These measures are framed as technical corrections or stabilizing interventions, yet they overwhelmingly target the rising power while preserving the existing advantages of incumbent states.
Conversely, few proposals address reciprocal adjustments in the West. Reductions in financial rent-seeking, sharing of global standard-setting authority, or the consequences of deindustrialization are rarely offered as part of the conversation. The implicit logic of rebalancing, therefore, is positional rather than neutral: it requires China to accommodate global stability on terms that reinforce Western dominance, while the structural privileges of established powers remain largely unchallenged. This asymmetry underscores the fundamentally one-way nature of the adjustment.
Structural Anxiety Beneath the Narrative
Beneath the rhetoric of rebalancing and policy critique lies a deeper structural anxiety within the West. The concern is not simply China’s policies or practices, but the potential erosion of long-held advantages: technological rents, currency privileges, and agenda-setting power in international institutions. These anxieties shape the discourse, turning what might appear as neutral economic or ethical concerns into instruments of strategic containment.
This underlying fear explains the shift in posture toward China over recent decades. Initial engagement gave way to heightened competition and now systemic rivalry—not because China fundamentally changed its behavior, but because its position in the global hierarchy evolved. As China ascends, Western responses increasingly aim to preserve established dominance rather than to address objective distortions, revealing that the narrative of imbalance often reflects incumbent insecurity more than external reality.
Summary & Implications
The double standards embedded in the discourse on “rebalancing” are not mere hypocrisies but structural mechanisms for preserving a hierarchical global order. From the Western perspective, rebalancing is framed as a corrective measure to restore established dominance; from China’s perspective, it represents an effort to renegotiate status and expand agency. These interpretations are inherently incompatible. The resulting tension is not primarily about tariffs, subsidies, or trade deficits, but about mobility and authority: who is allowed to advance, who must remain constrained, and who controls the rules of the system. China’s refusal to acquiesce signals a broader transition from a world organized around financial hegemony to one increasingly defined by production capacity, infrastructure, and industrial capability—a shift that the rhetoric of rebalancing seeks to contain rather than accommodate.