When Hanoi declared its support for China’s proposed “community of shared destiny” during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vietnam last December, it was hailed by Beijing. China wants a post-American world order of its own design, and though Xi’s vision is as ambitious as it is fuzzy, Beijing is building its project largely on the cachet of public goods, including $1 trillion in now-precarious loans.

Since taking power, Xi has built off existing, if still sometimes nascent, Sino-centric organizations: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO); the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now four other states; and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), a Eurasian talk shop. Over the past three years, still more initiatives have been added to this alphabet soup of projects: the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), and the Global Development Initiative (GDI).

But while many of these programs may be appealing to the global south, it’s unclear whether these countries really want a post-American future—let alone a Beijing-dominated one. China’s vision of multilateralism is camouflage for its own hegemonic ambitions, not a sincere goal.

The current U.S.-led system is fracturing. G-7 GDP, based on purchasing power parity, has declined to about 30 percent of global GDP, slightly smaller than that of BRICS, and many pledges, from climate to poverty reduction, have failed. That has left countries receptive to China’s overtures, which claim to foster a sensibility of “democratic multilateralism,” or cooperation based on the antithesis of the U.S.-led order. Military alliances are rejected as Cold War relics; human rights are economic-centered, and political rights, minority rights, an independent judiciary, and free speech are restricted as a result. Beijing claims to offer a non-Western path to development, suggesting China’s state-driven model as an alternative. The incipient Chinese displacement of U.S. stewardship is, not coincidentally, absent from the imagined faux utopia that Beijing’s initiatives paint.

Yet so far, all of this is aspirational. While the SCO, BRICS, and CICA serve as talking shops, they have no major achievements. When there was a crisis in Kazakhstan, it was Russia that intervened, not the SCO. When Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Beijing ignored the violation of its purported core principles of sovereignty and noninterference.

Despite Xi’s overreach, there is a deficit of both supply and demand for leadership by Beijing and a lot of multialignment and hedging in the global south. Xi might make “Asia for Asians” speeches, as he did at a 2014 CICA meeting, but it has been China’s aggression in the South China Sea and its bullying of neighbors over projects such as THAAD in South Korea that have determined the responses. U.S. alliances have strengthened, as has a deepening intra-Asian cooperation in response.

Even as its economy stumbles and developing-nation debt to Chinese creditors grows (and Belt and Road loans and investments diminish), Beijing continues to have an outsized global economic footprint. But will Xi’s appeal to a multialigned global south fade? Just ask Zimbabwean or Sri Lankan debtors about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Philippine maritime officials about respect for sovereignty, or climate activists about the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. A 2023 poll by the Pew Research Center indicated that of 24 nations surveyed, a median of two-thirds had a negative view of China, including Brazil, India, and South Korea. A 2017 Pew poll showed pluralities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam saw China’s rise as a threat.

Yet Beijing says its GSI has “support and appreciation” from more than 100 countries. It calls for a commitment to “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries,” “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security,” “the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter,” and “resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation.”

The GSI is a recycled version of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, a pillar of China’s official foreign policy since Zhou Enlai introduced them in 1954 following the signing of the Sino-Indian Agreement.

On its face, what’s not to like? For many in the global south, backing Xi’s initiatives entails no specific costs or commitments, while rejecting them risks offending China. In the real world, however, some are more equal than others. But with the possible exception of Pakistan, Beijing is not a security provider. Nor is there a hint of the subtext: that most of China’s initiatives are aimed at delegitimizing and displacing U.S. power. Countries that exist under the shelter of Washington’s wing might love to complain about it—but they don’t necessarily want it to disappear.

In theory, nonaggression, noninterference, respect for sovereignty, and peaceful resolution of disputes offer small states the hope of not being bullied or coerced by larger powers. In practice, things work out differently. As China’s economic and military capacity has grown, however, it has morphed into noninterference—with Chinese characteristics. Look no further than China’s silence on Russia’s war, a massive violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty; its now toned-down “wolf warrior” diplomacy; and its economic coercion, as Australia, Lithuania, the Philippines, Taiwan, and others suddenly found many of their exports unwelcome for any slightest criticism of China.