Every empire eventually discovers the same inconvenient truth: It is mortal. The Americans are discovering it now. The Chinese, to their credit, discovered it long ago. They know there will be no Chinese century in the way there was an American one because the age of world order is finished. What we have now is ordering, world-building, a process without end. This is a problem for Washington, which prefers finality. The prevailing strategy, pioneered by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo,