U.S. President Donald Trump’s populist assault on globalization has provoked fears of the death, or the slowing, of the economic force that has arguably done more than any other to shape how we live today. Yet those fears ignore what globalization really is, and how it is evolving. Globalization is a force both more powerful and ancient than Trump. Too often we think of it, of economic integration and the exchange of ideas, people and goods that comes with it, as a recent phenomenon. The reality is it has been with us since the dawn of time. Just think to the spread of mass religion in the humanity history. Globalization also isn’t a static force. We associate globalization today with the shipping container, the 1950s invention that increased the efficiency and lowered the cost of the global trade in goods. Or with the outsourcing of jobs in advanced economies and the rebirth of great trading economies like China’s. But we are entering a new era in which data is the new shipping container and there are far more disruptive forces at work in the world economy than Trump’s tariffs. New manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing and the automation of factories are reducing the economic incentives to offshore production. The smartphones we carry with us are not just products of globalization but accelerants for it. For good or bad, we are more exposed to a global culture of ideas than we have ever been. And we are only becoming more global as a result.As U.S. embraced a protectionist approach (“America First” Policy), now China seems to be willing to step forward and take the lead of the globalized world order. During a speech in the 2017 Davos World Economic Forum, President Xi Jingping expressed China’s emerging ambitions to growingly establish an open economy as well as to champion globalization, attempting to pose China at the center of the new world economic order.Despite the fact that issues remain between China and WTO regarding Western trade norms and values, especially linked to the presence of the State in Chinese companies, China has exploited the international economic order to flourish as a great power and now, after the American partial pull out from multilateralism, it has enough room to challenge such economic order with a new global governance with “Chinese characteristics”. In this view, BRI can be seen as the starting point of a major strategy in which establishing economic connections and new trade routes stretching from Asia to the Mediterranean area finally attempts at creating a sellable alternative to Western economic order through a mix of bilateral and multilateral relations.Such attitude toward globalization is the result of two different while linked processes: on one side, the acceptance of globalization as an inevitable phenomenon from which China cannot be excluded, that led to China’s participation in the Western-shaped international economic institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s, and within the World Trade Organization in 2001. On the other side, the Chinese understanding of globalization as a “double-edged sword”, implying both long-term benefits (such as acquiring competitiveness and efficiency as well as attracting more Foreign Direct Investments) as well as short-term disadvantages (such as unemployment, income disparities within and between states as well as competitive pressure), persuaded China’s political elite to assume a more pro-active role in shaping the international economic order in a way as to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms deriving from globalization.The fist tendency started as a result of the “Open Door Policy” promoted by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. During his leadership, China embraced the principle of liberalism within the economic sector and raised as a market economy, opening up to the foreign realm and supporting its economic growth through an export-driven production. Thanks to this strategy, China was able to gain an impressive trade surplus thanks to its low labor costs and its weak currency. Since China was already rising as a great power, its prominence both allowed and obliged Beijing not only to acquire a stake in the world economic order, but even the opportunity to take on an influential role within the international arena. Therefore, in 2001, after difficult negotiations, China joined the WTO and such accession marked Beijing entrance within the global economy.After having learned from the experience of other countries within the IMF and WB institutional fora, the entrance of China within the WTO was mainly driven by the will to improve its participation into the world economy, while at the same time assuming an active role in shaping the international economic system, in a way as to reflect the developing countries interests and demand, acting as a bridge between the developed and the developing world. In fact, in order to better manage its integration into the world economy as well as meeting the challenges of globalization, China has made important efforts to make state institutions and society structures capable of enduring the foreseeable upheavals which could derive from its new international posture, foremost due to fear generated from the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Despite China was not particularly hit from this crisis, it highlighted the threat that global economic forces posed to national economic security. Therefore, President Jiang Zemin urged to implement further reforms and to further open its economy (at that time, heavily relying on trade with U.S.) in a way to create a modern economy able to compete effectively in a globalizing world.Therefore, particularly because of the pressure exerted by the WTO membership, China implemented its globalization policy by actively adjusting its internal structure in different ways. For instance, by converting thousands of large and medium-size manufacturing enterprises into joint stock companies in a way to tear down the administrative intervention by party organizations and government agencies. Then, Beijing undertook important reforms aimed at optimizing the state institutions in order to make them more efficient and to reduce arbitrary governance at the provincial level. Another area of reform is the legal system: in order to identify those regulations that are not compatible with the WTO provisions, 25 Ministries of the Central Government are still reviewing all the legislations produced by the government since the establishment of the PRC and identifying the ones which have to be abandoned or instead replaced with new regulations. For what concerns the social policies, Beijing has introduced a social security system which heavily relies on government’s funds as well as different programs aimed at developing the human capital and attract high-educated human resources.However, the implementation of policies toward capitalism has been strictly dependent upon the common realistic view on globalization held by the Chinese political elite. Opposed to both the absolute optimism and as well as to the blind pessimism, the realistic view looked at globalization as a “double-edged sword” (as President Zeming liked to describe it), but still it was convenient to integrate China in the current world order. In fact, according to this view, while the disadvantages deriving from globalization are short-term, the advantages have a long-term nature. By fully embrace the international economic rules and opening up its economy, China domestic industry is expected to become more competitive and efficient, even though in the short-term Chinese firms in the sectors of agriculture, automobiles and certain capital-intensive producers could suffer from competitive pressures from foreign competitors. Despite this could lead to increased unemployment, to exacerbated income disparities and a growing gap between the different social strata, the accelerate establishment of a sound market economy would attract a growing amount of FDI.To many scholars, it appeared like China was embracing the Western-made norms of international society to the point that many theories about the “Westernization” of China emerged. Nevertheless, China integration within the international system did not precluded China’s own path toward modernity, mainly because of the manifested interest in securing its independent development and in safeguarding its economic security.To maintain the goal of a increase of the National economy to sustain a social development China took a more active posture in framing the economic order, which revealed to China’s eyes the persisting imbalances and inequalities in the international economic system. This has led to the assumption according to which U.S. has created a dysfunctional economic order, since it has increased the gap between developing and developed countries. Therefore, China advanced an alternative to such order by pursuing its own path toward modernity, starting from the establishment of a network of mainly bilateral relations. However, in order to gain a more mature experience within trade and investments, in a way to attempt to more actively frame the international economic system, Beijing’s first aim after its entrance within the WTO was to create a Free Trade Zone within the neighboring countries.In these early stages, China undertook an experimental and cautious approach that led in 2010 to a first FTA with ASEAN, and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area was established.This “step-by-step” strategy would be used even in the next agreements outside the strict ASEAN area, with Pakistan and Chile, staring from decreasing tariff barriers to trade in goods, and then expanding to address service later. Then, since the agreement with New Zealand in 2008, China shifted toward a more comprehensive approach, therefore addressing goods, services, and goods at the same time. But still, China prefers to carry out a tentative strategy as China’s agreements on trade tend to cover a much narrower lists of product categories, if compared to U.S., and expand it only when necessary. However, after gaining experience with the less-demanding developing countries, China focused on signing deals with the developed ones, such as Australia (2015) and the Republic of Korea (2015). While in the first phase of the negotiations were extremely quick (maximum 3 years), now it took almost a decade to conclude the agreements with Australia and the ROK.Despite such difficulties, the FTA approach shifted further so to cover a much larger area. In fact, the Presidency of Xi Jinping marked the beginning of the “new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics” in which the establishment of FTA were seen as the starting point of a wider strategy of China’s engagement within global economic governance, to pursue through multilateral trade agreement and an open world economy. The 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) set out China’s international goals: to conclude the already ongoing negotiations for the creation of further FTAs with Japan and South Korea (RCEP), with the Gulf Cooperation Council’s countries and the bilateral negotiations with Israel, as well as more ambitious aspirations, such as the possible FTA of China with Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union, or the eventual creation of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.However, the power of China in the global market can not be compared with the beginning of this track that we briefly summarize. By imposing tariffs on $250 billion in products from China and threatening another $300 billion, Trump has committed what may be the greatest act of protectionism since the 1930s. At the centre of U.S. complaints about China is intellectual property and what the U.S. argues is a long and systematic pattern of IP theft encouraged by the Chinese state. But increasingly experts say the incentives are changing for China. In recent years it has become a genuine contributor to global innovation as seen in patent data. There are still people who question China’s capacity to innovate. But the data also points to a broader trend. Innovation has become more global than it once was. Which is one reason why tech companies and universities worry about the prospects of the U.S.-China trade battles turning into a broader technology Cold War. The result of such a war would leave the U.S. isolated and unable to take advantage of innovation that is increasingly cross-border. In this perspective, we could assume that Beijing was able entering the world economy dominated by the West and accepting its “rule of games”, which China had had no part in shaping. But now globalization, as the Chinese global footprint, should not be anything than different in the shaping, at least because Beijing will be no longer prepared to let the West alone determine the “rule of games” for international affairs, and it will try to influence the direction of globalization in a more intensive manner.