In 2018, 43 leading International Relations scholars in the United States signed a public statement in support of an urgent call to preserve the current international order, triggering heated scholarly debates. The idealized form of the liberal international order was criticized by many scholars for its chronic problems, including the contradictions between proclaimed liberal values and illiberal behaviors, the inability to reform its institutional pillars to accommodate the diverse group of emerging powers, and the tensions between the defenders of this order and its challengers. These problems became fully exposed under the external shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic. As the coronavirus spreads globally and disrupts the world's political, economic, and social fabric, several forces that have gained momentum and strength during the last decade are now converging as a formidable force that may reconfigure the postpandemic international order. This paper addresses three significant challenges to the foundations of the current liberal order: (1) the entrenchment of authoritarianism, characterized by authoritarian resilience, autocratization, and the consolidation of competing authoritarian political-economic models; (2) the exacerbation of nationalism enabled by nationalist and populist politicians; and (3) the intensified competition among major powers. China has played mixed roles in the process of reconfiguring the current order. It challenges the mythologized liberal international order and exposes the contradictions in the dominant Western model, while promoting an alternative hybrid political-economic model. The shock brought by the pandemic has provided ample opportunities for China to extend its networks and expand international space for its model.

To explain the factors behind the regime resilience in China, this article focuses on the foundational and institutional resources that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accumulated in the earlier stages of regime development and their lasting influence on regime trajectory. At the stage of regime foundation, the CCP successfully constructed the founding myth of the party-state as the foundational resource to legitimize its rule. At the later stage of regime adaptation, institutional adaptation during the process of achieving modernization allowed the CCP to accumulate substantial institutional resources to further buttress the regime. While negotiating the space between state and society, the CCP regime demonstrated high capacity in granting more autonomy to market actors to accelerate growth while increasing the embeddedness of economic strata in the system through informal and formal institutional arrangements. When confronted with a serious crisis, the CCP was able to draw strength from the foundational and institutional resources to survive. This article argues that the CCP’s efforts in accumulating strength at the early stages of regime development continue to exert strong influence on China’s regime trajectory at later stages.