A rise in China, built on hard power.

I am the son of two empires, the United States and China. I was born in and raised around Washington in the Nixon-to-Reagan era, but my parents grew up in southern China. My father was a member of the People’s Liberation Army in the 1950s, the first decade of Communist rule, before he soured on the revolution and left for Hong Kong.

So it was with excitement that I landed in Beijing in April 2008 to start an assignment with The New York Times that stretched to almost a decade. I was now in the metropole that was building a new world order.

China had entered a honeymoon phase with other nations. For years, anticipation had built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Though China had suppressed a Tibetan uprising that spring, it earned international good will after a devastating earthquake. People flocked to Beijing for China’s “coming out” party. Foreign leaders gawked at gleaming architecture and opening ceremonies that signaled the nation’s ambitions.

After the festivities, the world arrived at another inflection point — the implosion of the American financial system and the global economic crisis. China’s growth buttressed both the world economy and a belief among its officials that its economic and political systems could rival those of the United States. Though unabashedly authoritarian, China was a magnet. I was among many who thought it might forge a confident and more open identity while ushering in a vibrant era of new ideas, values and culture.

When my China assignment ended last year, I no longer had such expectations. China is shaping the world in ways that people have only begun to grasp. Yet the emerging imperium is more a result of the Communist Party’s exercise of hard power, including economic coercion, than the product of a gravitational pull of ideas or contemporary culture.

Of the global powers that dominated the 19th century, China alone is a rejuvenated empire. The Communist Party commands a vast territory that the ethnic-Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty cobbled together through war and diplomacy. And the dominion could grow: China is using its military to test potential control of disputed borderlands from the South China Sea to the Himalayas, while firing up nationalism at home.

For decades, the United States was a global beacon for those who embraced certain values — the rule of law, free speech, clean government and human rights. Even if policy often fell short of those ideals, American “soft power” remained as potent as its armed forces. China’s rise is a blunt counterpoint. From 2009 onward, Chinese power in domestic and international realms has become synonymous with brute strength, bribery and intimidation — and the Communist Party’s empire is getting stronger.

At home, the party has imprisoned rights lawyers, strangled the internet, compelled companies and universities to install party cells, and planned for a potentially Orwellian “social credit” system. Abroad, it is building military installations on disputed Pacific reefs and infiltrating cybernetworks. It pushes the “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure initiative across Eurasia, which will have benefits for other nations but will also allow China to pressure them to do business with Chinese enterprises.

President Xi Jinping is the avatar of the new imperium. At the 19th Party Congress in October, party officials enshrined “Xi Jinping Thought” in the party constitution, putting him on par with Mao Zedong. Mr. Xi said China had entered a “new era” of strength. He holds appeal for foreign leaders aspiring to strongman status. President Donald J. Trump openly admires him.

The culture of hard power goes from top to bottom. In the provinces, party officials move to suppress any challenges to their authority. When they sense rising resistance, they buy off or imprison the leaders. In my first year in China, officials broke the will of parents furious over deadly tainted milk and ones grieving over thousands of children who had died in shoddy schools during the Sichuan earthquake.

The abuse of power is frequent, and many Chinese say corruption is their top concern. All other issues, from environmental degradation to wealth inequality, are linked to it. Mr. Xi capitalizes on the discontent: He leads an anticorruption drive that allows him to oust rivals and enforce party discipline. China’s domestic security budget has exceeded that of its military in recent years, highlighting its investment in hard power.

I learned in 2016 that Tashi Wangchuk, a young entrepreneur who had spoken to me about his advocacy for broader Tibetan language education, had been detained in his hometown, Yushu. In microblog posts, Mr. Tashi had asked local officials to promote bilingual education, and he had appeared in 2015 in Times articles and video. He is the kind of citizen China should value — someone working within the law to recommend policies that would benefit ordinary people and ease tensions. But he remains imprisoned.

The party’s style of rule threatens to turn sentiments against China even as the empire grows in stature. History teaches us about an inevitable dialectic: Power creates resistance. While the state can bend people to its will, those people meet it with fear and suspicion. The United States learns this lesson each time it over-relies on hard power.

I traveled often to the frontier regions because it was there that the dynamic of power and resistance was most evident. In October 2016, I quietly entered the sprawling Tibetan Buddhist settlement of Larung Gar and watched the government- ordered demolition of homes of monks and nuns. In parts of Xinjiang populated by ethnic Uighurs, the tension is even greater, fueled by cycles of violence and repression. Uighurs speak of restrictions on Islam and mass detentions. Signs across Xinjiang forbid long beards and full veils, and surveillance cameras are everywhere. On my last reporting trip in China, to the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar, I saw police patrols rounding up young men.

An important bellwether is Hong Kong, the former British colony. On this southern frontier, as in the west, the party works to silence the voices of those critical of its rule. Agents have even abducted booksellers. But those moves have led to more resistance and strengthened Hong Kong and Cantonese identity. They have also stoked greater fears of Beijing on Taiwan, the self-governing island the party longs to rule. The party’s ways of governance perpetuate a lack of trust by the Chinese in their institutions and fellow citizens. And its international policies light the kindling of resistance overseas.

Chinese citizens and the world would benefit if China turned out to be an empire whose power is based as much on ideas, values and culture as on military and economic might. It was more enlightened under its most glorious dynasties. But for now, the Communist Party embraces hard power and coercion, and this could well be what replaces the fading liberal hegemony of the United States on the global stage. It will not lead to a grand vision of world order. Instead, before us looms a void.