As the US under Donald Trump and European powers like Britain and France turn their backs on globalisation, could or would China step in to be the next champion of globalisation? As Beijing attempts to demonstrate leadership and garner global trust through initiatives like AIIB and OBOR, a litmus test awaits President Xi Jinping and his “pro-globalisation” team.

Since 1979 when China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping made the world-transforming decision to abandon once and for all the Maoist semi-autarkic model of self-reliant development and pursue an “Open Door” policy, Beijing’s geo-economic goal has remained remarkably consistent. This, namely, is to modernise China’s backward economy and catch up with the developed world by integrating the country with the capitalist global economic order, which was created at Bretton Woods immediately after the last world war.

By joining all the major multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Bank for International Settlements (BIS), World Trade Organisation (WTO), etc, Beijing has demonstrated that it is a conscientious and scrupulous rule-abider of the international economic and financial architectures forged by the West, which until recently has consistently championed the economic benefits of globalisation.

… Friedrich Wu is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University,Singapore. He was a former economics director at Singapore’s Ministry of Trade & Industry, and earlier the chief economist at DBS Bank. An earlier version of this appeared in The Business Times.