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Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

score higher social media penetration scores than many developed countries. social media has swept through Africa as well. We have taken this transformation in our stride, as a great opportunity for information flow, transparency, and connectivity. Yet social media also may be the most disruptive technology in human history, since it changes the way we gather information, think, trust others, relate to authority, mobilize, love and balance between emotion and reason. We are barely beginning to learn the kind of impact that social media has on young generations and beyond, and how it changes social interactions, and above all, politics (both in democratic and authoritarian countries). Humanity will adapt to it, mature with it and regulate it, but we have a long way to go. What we can say today is this: social media has eroded trust in expertise and authority; it generates instant waves of information bundled with emotions, opinions and unclear boundaries; it generates so much information and social overload that it crowds out both physical connections and interactions with fellow citizens outside our core groups; and it is creating an economic and security free-for-all that is very hard to regulate.

the immediate response by policymakers around the world is one of fascination and fear. No leader today can stay unscathed from a tsunami of anger and emotions on social media. Witness the incredible wave that took china by storm earlier this year in the wake of li Wenliang’s death on february 7. A medical doctor who had sought to sound the alarm about the existence and spread of the coronavirus, li himself died of the virus and became a social media

What matters is to understand the roots of the current strategic escalation and the approaches that could abate it. I offer five essential clues to unpack the myth of the unavoidable Us-china conflict and the involvement of other countries in the conflagration.

martyr. this has turned all leaders, including chinese President Xi Jinping, more inward and focused on scoring points with public opinion on social networks than managing international politics. unfortunately, because of the in-group reinforcement effect, social media also facilitates nationalist bubbles and resentments around the world. third, we have just experienced the greatest power shift in a century. Between 2000 and 2018, the share of the global economy represented by Oecd countries (roughly, “the West,” including Japan and south Korea) went from 82 percent to 61 percent in nominal dollar terms.2 the share of the developing world as a whole went from 18 percent to 39 percent. the share of china went from 4 percent to 16 percent. china has consistently represented a third of world growth over the last decade and Asia as a whole represents two-thirds of world growth. Even though military power, economic power in dollar terms, and technological and higher education power lag economic trends by decades and continue

to be us-centric, expectations have started to shift massively. Everyone needs to adjust to such power shifts and calculate their positions in the future. It is a fact that great powers can turn very dangerous during great power transitions. this mega disruption adds to the two others outlined above to create a brew of further volatility.

fourth, in order to navigate such massive change and uncertainty, societies and their leaders require focal points for their actions. domestic narratives provide these focal points.3 In times of great complexity, narratives serve as simplifying devices and emotional rallying points (particularly relevant in the age of social media). they build on culture and history to provide guidance for the present. the problem, of course, is that the rise of national narratives generates parallel realities and parallel meanings in many countries. At best, these narratives are misunderstood by other players and generate misperceptions. At worst, narratives of the “others” create a sense of threat and trigger a kind of fight-or-flight behavior. today, chinese leaders have developed a narrative of the “china dream” to complete the long and painful search for chinese modernity. that narrative is focused on the right to develop and preserve national sovereignty. the narrative also includes extremely strong and historically derived reactions to things like “trade war” (reminding domestic audiences of the 19th century Opium Wars) and “compensation” for international guilt (reminding chinese audiences of reparations imposed after the two Opium Wars and the Eight-nation Alliance of Western Nations leading to the occupation of Beijing in 1900 in response to the Boxer rebellion). to Americans, the china dream narrative and the rising footprint of china around Asia and beyond appear like a threat to the us-led world order. Americans have their own long-standing narrative of American destiny and the us role as the indispensable country to keep a prosperous and peaceful global order. However, this requires a sense of strength and continued benefit. those dueling narratives have replaced a sense of common humanity and a shared global commons.

fifth, the combination of power shifts, crisis in the global order and dueling narratives have led to a process of tit-for-tat strategic interactions about all global rules. for Beijing, the china-dream narrative means that china must play a commensurate role in the existing liberal global order and participate at a high level in global institutions. for the us, this growing chinese presence triggers a sense of loss and displacement. strategic interactions mediated by domestic narratives have permeated all regimes of global governance, from trade (the World trade Organization), to health (the World Health Organization), to climate change (the Paris agreement), to development (the Belt and Road Initiative), and recently, the G20. the actions of each side are interpreted by the other side as a threat that needs to be counteracted. third players, even allies of the us, continue to support global governance regimes and to seek options to maintain global commons, but lack critical mass and fear reprisals from either or both great powers. so, they hedge, adjust, accommodate or bandwagon on one side.

implications and Clues for world order

the framework presented here generates five key implications.

first, it is essential for all players to develop more intelligence and awareness of the core drivers in other powers and to allow a broad debate at home (rather than resort to groupthink behavior or control). careful analysis will reveal that the level of mutual threat between china and the us or other countries is lower than it is perceived or amplified to be. china is not a general