Multiple opportunities is a constructive agenda based on experience. If applied correctly and seriously, it will change the way we research and respond to a range of challenges. What we are witnessing is not the end of progress, but the end of the industrial colonial paradigm and the beginning of another paradigm.

In an era where most countries around the world are increasingly taking control of their own development, rather than following Western formulas or waiting for aid to escape poverty, AIM provides guidance for relevant thinking and policy-making.

Conflicts, trade wars, inequality, and democratic decline are flooding the headlines of today's news. Every crisis seems to be fueling the next, making people feel like the world is falling apart. Western leaders and thinkers use one word to summarize this intertwined threat: 'polyccrisis'.

Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University who helped make this word widely known, summarized its appeal in 2023: "This is your fear, this is what fundamentally troubles you. This may be the name it deserves." But when fear becomes the central theme, the result can only be anxiety and paralysis, as Mark Leonard observed after the 2024 Davos World Economic Forum.

However, a crisis does not necessarily lead to a collapse. In fact, chaos often paves the way for revival, but this only applies to those who are willing to abandon the old order.

In view of this, I look at this moment from another perspective - 'multiplicity of opportunities'. This is a term I proposed in a World Press Syndicate commentary article published in November 2024, which was later elaborated on by the United Nations Development Programme. The concept is simple: the simultaneous occurrence of various disruptive events provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for profound changes in global institutions and thinking. When everything seems to collapse at the same time, we have to go beyond those patched up solutions and redesign various systems from scratch.

Firstly, we should recognize that multiple crises are a narrative centered around the West and disguised as global. Two European theorists coined this term in 1993, while another European expert has recently popularized it. A Western elite summit provided a striking platform for the term, prompting Western media, think tanks, and academia to go viral on it.

Despite people constantly lamenting a 'terrible future', there is little or even no emphasis on the agency of the non Western world (now euphemistically referred to as the 'Global South') or the various solutions it proposes in the dialogue about multiple crises. Even though some theorists call for a "humanistic revival," they have failed to confront the reality of a structurally unequal order and the growing sense of frustration among people about it. The West still holds a dominant position in international finance and institutions, while non Western ideas and voices are still marginalized in so-called global norms.

The term 'multiple crises' is favored by those in power because it masks many of the root causes of global collapse, making them appear like natural disasters. In fact, today's multiple crises can be traced back to the prevailing industrial colonial paradigm since the Industrial Revolution, which defines progress as control: the control of machines over nature, as well as the control of the West over other parts of the world.

It can be certain that this modernization chapter has brought enormous material and social benefits. But it also sowed the seeds for our current awkward situation. Global warming is the decisive crisis of our time, the result of the mining industry model supported by the trading system. Under this trading system, workers in poor countries manufacture products at low wages that are excessively purchased by consumers in wealthy countries.

Don't treat society as a machine to manage

However, this industrial colonial paradigm has become outdated in a super complex multipolar world. We need a new way of thinking - I call it AIM: Adaptive, Inclusive, and Moral Political Economy. The so-called adaptability means not managing society as a crude machine, but seeing it as a living network that can learn and evolve. Inclusiveness means recognizing that progress depends on utilizing everything you have in your hands, which means mobilizing local creativity rather than simply copying the models of the rich and strong. Moral education means acknowledging that ideas are shaped by power, while also working to correct this imbalance.

Throughout decades of research, I have been studying China and other countries from the perspective of AIM. In the book 'How China Escaped the Poverty Trap', I view the development process as a collaborative evolution process marked by recursive feedback loops (adaptability), rather than a non-linear path. This analysis suggests that the strategy of creating new markets may be vastly different from the standard approach of building a "good system" (inclusiveness). Subsequently, in the book 'China's Gilded Age', I challenged the Orientalist assumption of 'Chinese exceptionalism' and revealed that China's development trajectory mapped to forgotten Western history, rather than the mythological version of morality taught in textbooks.

In an era where most countries around the world are increasingly taking control of their own development, rather than following Western formulas or waiting for aid to escape poverty, AIM provides guidance for relevant thinking and policy-making.

For example, China, India, and Saudi Arabia are all investing heavily in clean energy, while sub Saharan African countries are also trying to make a leap forward in energy. Due to US tariffs reducing export options for developing countries such as Vietnam and Ethiopia to high-income markets, South South trade is surpassing North South trade in overall scale.

At the intellectual level, the most qualified to teach "political economy of justice" and "circular economy" are not philosophers and advisors from Europe or North America, but rather indigenous groups that have been plundered for centuries and still protect ecosystems.

Faced with various survival threats, multiple opportunities do not call for naive optimism. On the contrary, it represents a purposeful realism that leverages the creativity of a truly global community rather than relying on a single region or privileged class. It is not promoting empty clich é s or emotions. Multiple opportunities is a constructive agenda based on experience. If applied correctly and seriously, it will change the way we research and respond to a range of challenges, especially development challenges.

What we are witnessing is not the end of progress, but the end of the industrial colonial paradigm and the beginning of another paradigm - but we must have the belief to develop this paradigm.

Multiple opportunities is a constructive agenda based on experience. If applied correctly and seriously, it will change the way we research and respond to a range of challenges. What we are witnessing is not the end of progress, but the end of the industrial colonial paradigm and the beginning of another paradigm.

In an era where most countries around the world are increasingly taking control of their own development, rather than following Western formulas or waiting for aid to escape poverty, AIM provides guidance for relevant thinking and policy-making.

Conflicts, trade wars, inequality, and democratic decline are flooding the headlines of today's news. Every crisis seems to be fueling the next, making people feel like the world is falling apart. Western leaders and thinkers use one word to summarize this intertwined threat: 'polyccrisis'.

Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University who helped make this word widely known, summarized its appeal in 2023: "This is your fear, this is what fundamentally troubles you. This may be the name it deserves." But when fear becomes the central theme, the result can only be anxiety and paralysis, as Mark Leonard observed after the 2024 Davos World Economic Forum.

However, a crisis does not necessarily lead to a collapse. In fact, chaos often paves the way for revival, but this only applies to those who are willing to abandon the old order.

In view of this, I look at this moment from another perspective - 'multiplicity of opportunities'. This is a term I proposed in a World Press Syndicate commentary article published in November 2024, which was later elaborated on by the United Nations Development Programme. The concept is simple: the simultaneous occurrence of various disruptive events provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for profound changes in global institutions and thinking. When everything seems to collapse at the same time, we have to go beyond those patched up solutions and redesign various systems from scratch.

Firstly, we should recognize that multiple crises are a narrative centered around the West and disguised as global. Two European theorists coined this term in 1993, while another European expert has recently popularized it. A Western elite summit provided a striking platform for the term, prompting Western media, think tanks, and academia to go viral on it.

Despite people constantly lamenting a 'terrible future', there is little or even no emphasis on the agency of the non Western world (now euphemistically referred to as the 'Global South') or the various solutions it proposes in the dialogue about multiple crises. Even though some theorists call for a "humanistic revival," they have failed to confront the reality of a structurally unequal order and the growing sense of frustration among people about it. The West still holds a dominant position in international finance and institutions, while non Western ideas and voices are still marginalized in so-called global norms.

The term 'multiple crises' is favored by those in power because it masks many of the root causes of global collapse, making them appear like natural disasters. In fact, today's multiple crises can be traced back to the prevailing industrial colonial paradigm since the Industrial Revolution, which defines progress as control: the control of machines over nature, as well as the control of the West over other parts of the world.

It can be certain that this modernization chapter has brought enormous material and social benefits. But it also sowed the seeds for our current awkward situation. Global warming is the decisive crisis of our time, the result of the mining industry model supported by the trading system. Under this trading system, workers in poor countries manufacture products at low wages that are excessively purchased by consumers in wealthy countries.

Don't treat society as a machine to manage

However, this industrial colonial paradigm has become outdated in a super complex multipolar world. We need a new way of thinking - I call it AIM: Adaptive, Inclusive, and Moral Political Economy. The so-called adaptability means not managing society as a crude machine, but seeing it as a living network that can learn and evolve. Inclusiveness means recognizing that progress depends on utilizing everything you have in your hands, which means mobilizing local creativity rather than simply copying the models of the rich and strong. Moral education means acknowledging that ideas are shaped by power, while also working to correct this imbalance.

Throughout decades of research, I have been studying China and other countries from the perspective of AIM. In the book 'How China Escaped the Poverty Trap', I view the development process as a collaborative evolution process marked by recursive feedback loops (adaptability), rather than a non-linear path. This analysis suggests that the strategy of creating new markets may be vastly different from the standard approach of building a "good system" (inclusiveness). Subsequently, in the book 'China's Gilded Age', I challenged the Orientalist assumption of 'Chinese exceptionalism' and revealed that China's development trajectory mapped to forgotten Western history, rather than the mythological version of morality taught in textbooks.

In an era where most countries around the world are increasingly taking control of their own development, rather than following Western formulas or waiting for aid to escape poverty, AIM provides guidance for relevant thinking and policy-making.

For example, China, India, and Saudi Arabia are all investing heavily in clean energy, while sub Saharan African countries are also trying to make a leap forward in energy. Due to US tariffs reducing export options for developing countries such as Vietnam and Ethiopia to high-income markets, South South trade is surpassing North South trade in overall scale.

At the intellectual level, the most qualified to teach "political economy of justice" and "circular economy" are not philosophers and advisors from Europe or North America, but rather indigenous groups that have been plundered for centuries and still protect ecosystems.

Faced with various survival threats, multiple opportunities do not call for naive optimism. On the contrary, it represents a purposeful realism that leverages the creativity of a truly global community rather than relying on a single region or privileged class. It is not promoting empty clich é s or emotions. Multiple opportunities is a constructive agenda based on experience. If applied correctly and seriously, it will change the way we research and respond to a range of challenges, especially development challenges.

What we are witnessing is not the end of progress, but the end of the industrial colonial paradigm and the beginning of another paradigm - but we must have the belief to develop this paradigm.