How Beijing's double standards are shaping world order

As China edges toward becoming the world's largest economy, its insistence on being treated as a developing nation becomes increasingly untenable.

- DANIEL WAGNER

Representational image: This July 15 photo shows Chinese President Xi Jinping hosting a meeting with members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in Beijing, ANI

The Chinese government has perfected the art of having it both ways.

It is at once the world's second-largest economy and a self-styled "developing country", a lender and aid recipient, aggressor and victim, socialist crusader and capitalist opportunist. This identity duality is not accidental-it is the foundation of Beijing's global strategy, a deliberate balancing act that allows it to extract benefits from every system it touches while avoiding the obligations of full membership in the rules-based international order.

When Beijing wants climate indulgence, it claims to be a developing nation still climbing out of poverty. When it seeks geopolitical influence, it insists on the privileges of a great power. When criticized for coercive lending under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it dons the cloak of solidarity with the Global South. China's self-imposed glaring contradictions are not weaknesses-they are strategic assets.

At global forums like the UN and COP summits, China presents itself as the champion of the developing world. It insists that stringent carbon-reduction standards should apply only to wealthy countries while it continues to build and finance coal plants from Pakistan to Kenya. Beijing styles this as climate justice; in practice, it is just climate hypocrisy. At the Paris Climate summit, the world's largest carbon emitter pledged net-zero targets that begin after 2030, while simultaneously exporting its dirtiest technologies abroad under the guise of "South-South cooperation." The message is clear: China is "developing" when it needs leniency and "developed" when it wants leverage.