Many people are talking about Marco Rubio's speech at the Munich Security Conference a week ago. It may have been the most explicit defense of the colonial tradition by a senior Western official since Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler’s imperial diatribes nearly a century ago — supremacist views that claimed millions of lives from the fields of Bengal to the streets of Leningrad. But few are comparing it to the speech that came right afterwards — from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The two speeches offered perhaps the clearest expression of the shape of the bifurcating world order that we have heard from world leaders in this century. Where Rubio drew a racial line between the governors and the subjects of the world system, Wang Yi outlined principles for global governance rooted in “sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and real actions”. Where Rubio attacked global institutions, Wang Yi defended the universality of the UN in terms that spoke directly to the imperatives of the Global South: “On the UN platform, each country, regardless of its size or wealth, has a voice and a sacred vote as well as its due obligations and equal rights.” Without the United Nations, he warned, “the world would revert to the law of the jungle where the strong prey on the weak.” Where Rubio called on the West to be unapologetic and unashamed in imposing its way of life on others, Wang Yi called on major countries to lead by example — recognizing global diversity, “pursuing cooperation instead of conflict or confrontation” and "promoting equality instead of imposing their will onto others.” Where Rubio insisted on throwing off the fetters of international law, Wang Yi emphasized the importance of “observing rules instead of applying double standards.” There is hope amid all the gloom. First, because Rubio's speech was obviously that of a hegemony in decline. The past to which he refers is over and cannot be brought back. And second, because there are still adults in the room — whose words, like Rubio's, are not hollow, but reflect the ongoing construction of a fairer new world order.