What is the philosophical nature of fence-riding? At bottom, it is opportunism dressed up as pragmatism — a calculated willingness to bend principle when the payoff outweighs the cost of consistency. China and the United States have arrived at this posture by very different roads, and together they reveal some clues about where the world is headed next.

For 30 years after 1949, China stood squarely inside the socialist camp, all but sealed off from the capitalist world. That certainty cracked after 1978, when Beijing discovered that ideological purity was bankrupting the country — stagnant growth, empty granaries, a widening technology gap. So China struck a bargain with itself: open the economy to the West, absorb its capital and know-how, while never surrendering the Communist Party’s grip on power.