On the afternoon of April 30, 2025, the Institute for International and Are Studies (IIAS) of Tsinghua University invited Professor Robert Wade, Professor of Political Economics and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science and winner of the Leontief Prize for the Promotion of Economic Thought, to give a special lecture on the theme of "China-US Rivalries and Implications for the Global South". The lecture was hosted by Qin Beichen, a doctoral student at IIAS, Tsinghua University. Dozens of invited audience from home and abroad participated in the lecture offline and online.

Professor Wade pointed out that China has become the first non-Western power to challenge the hegemony of the United States and break the unipolar order. The United States regards the competition between China and the United States as a "zero-sum game" and suppresses China through means such as technological blockades and tariff wars. However, the current interaction has evolved from "zero-sum" to "double losses". For example, the high tariff policy of the Trump administration has pushed up global inflation and disrupted the supply chain, which is in line with the "epic fail" theory. Then, Professor Wade proposed that the competition between China and the United States has a dual impact on the global South. On the one hand, Vietnam and Mexico benefit from the transfer of industries, but the least developed countries face shrinking exports; the United States cuts aid to create space for China, but also increase the pressure of "taking sides". In this context, the reform of the multilateral governance system has become the focus. Although the G7 still holds the leading position in the G20, the expansion of the BRICS mechanism shows that the global South is seeking greater voice. Subsequently, Researcher Su Qingyi commented on the nature of China's development, the "transactional thinking" of Trump's policy, and the "balanced strategy" of the global South, and exchanged views with Professor Wade and the audience.

Finally, Professor Wade emphasized that the competition between China and the United States has escalated from structural confrontation to systemic risk. To avoid "double losses", it is necessary to reshape the concept of competition and promote inclusive governance. The active participation and mechanism innovation of the global South will become the key to solving the dilemma.

Robert Wade, Professor of Political Economy and Development at the London School of Economics (LSE), one of the "50 Most Influential Economists in the World" of the Financial Times Economist Forum, and winner of the 2008 Leontief Prize for the Promotion of Economic Thought. His book "Governing Markets" (1990, 2003) on Asian industrialization won the American Political Science Association's Best Political Economy Book Award and is one of the world's most well-known industrial policy research works.

Su Qingyi, PhD in Economics, is a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the director of the International Trade Research Office. His paper was selected as one of the top ten papers of the year in the World Economic Yearbook. He has won more than 20 provincial and ministerial awards, including the Special Prize for Excellent Policy Information of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the First Prize for Papers in the Business Development Research Achievement Award of the Ministry of Commerce, and the Second Prize for Excellent Works in the An Zijie International Trade Research Award (the first prize was vacant).